I bought the 16mm lens with my a6500 and sold it soon after as the corners were so soft. I thought it was my copy of the lens but after watching your review I feel vindicated. Love your reviews and looking forward to the next one.
Thanks for doing this video, very informative. This lens was always on my “possible lens to purchase” list, but after seeing this I won’t bother. Especially because I have the kit lens. Sony needs to make a better wide angle (that is affordable :p)
Love your videos, but please consider when you compare sharpness, lenses can be focused in different places. This is what this looks like to me. So I think the 16mm is overall better and the way to check it definitely would be to shoot a flat control image (poster, etc.).
The 16mm should be corrected in camera if you have lens corrections turned on. The kit lens is so badly distorted at 16mm that Sony turn on corrections automatically for it, in fact I don't think you can turn them off with it attached. My 16mm is pretty much unusable below f8 but just about okay there and at f11. Amazingly with the wide angle (12mm) and fish eye (10mm) adaptors, it improves and is quite usable. To be honest I only really use it with the fish eye now as I have the 10-18mm which is far superior.
I have both lenses and even though the SEL16 has its issues I enjoy using it, especially with the adapters. Bought the lens and adapters all used. If I would've paid full price I probably wouldn't be too happy with it. I've recently found out that in Capture One 11 with Diffraction Correction photos shot with this lens look better than in Lightroom (that might be able to do the same, but I couldn't find it). At one point I might get the SEL20 as well and the adapters are compatible with that as well.
The pancake lens has a nice central focus range, but the blurring on the edges and the blur transitions is not even/smooth. You always continue to make great lens videos and all the ones I have now are thanks to your comparisons. Keep up the great work!!
mid 2021, these 16mm go for $50 used and at that price they are just fine for street photo. leave it at f5.6 (the sharpest f for apsc), and i'll be a great combo on $80 nex5n, it'll be as compact as x70 but at 1/4th of the price, and corner softness is fine for street, personnaly i always add i little of bit darneking vignette to my street stuff...
Great video and nice comparision to the lens kit. It seems Sony never updates old lenses (like Canon does with II and III). They just keep selling the lenses even if they are not that good. Would love to see a review of the Sony 85mm 1.8 in the future to see if it is worth it compared to the 18-105. I know primes are supposed to be better and sharper, but like this video proves, with Sony is not always the case. Keep up the good work.
Thank you so much! So, in conclusion if I already have the kit lens (16-50mm) is not a really good idea to buy the Sony 16mm because there is not much difference? (Quality, sharpness, etc)
It depends on how you use it. This lens is fast. But when it comes to sharpness, I don't care. Can you list 20 people using a 24-inch display on a daily basis and zooms in all photos at 100% all the time? None! We're viewing most of the content on small displays. I own the Sigma 16mm f1.4 and its weight alone is discouraging. I find the kit lens to be more useful than the 16mm Sigma. I want to acquire this lens since it is extremely light, thin, and sharp (check thousands of sample photos on Flickr!). Better portability = more opportunity to take photos.
Wide angle adapter do not fix the problem of the sharpness in the eges 😉. I have the 16mm f1.4 and I am wating for your opinion. You must test it by night. I make some shots with 8 seconds on f2.8 and there are amazing sharp...
can't wait for your sigma 16 dc dn review, thx..espacialy if you could compare FOV, sharpness and low light with the rokinon 12. I'm looking for a great landscaper, and astro wide lense. ;)
What this review misses about the 16mm quality is that it's that soft only focused far or close to infinity; selfies, portraits andd close stuff is a lot better, this (and the 20mm) are basically vlogging lenses and they have compromised the quality of far focusing. Peoblem is this and most reviews test these lenses like they were landscape lenses, which is not correct, both in usage and expectations.
Hello from Russia! Please try Sigma 16 mm on the Eye-AF. Will this lens use all hybrid AF points? Or only in the central "square" as 30 mm DС DN? How Sigma 16 mm AF work in video mode with face tracking? Thank you! Very interesting channel.
I'm using Sigma 30 mm with 6500. I'll check the firmware version later. The hybrid AF uses the frame height completely. And the width is the same as the height. But not completely frame. Thus, a square is formed in the middle of the frame. It's like in the video "Sigma 30mm 1.4 DC DN + Sony a6500 autofocus test on f / 1.4" I'm sorry, I do not know how to insert a link. You can find it by searching. Sorry for possible errors. I'm using Google Translator.
I got the Sony 16mm f2.8 with the fisheye converter and the 18-55 for 180usd. Do you think it is a good deal ? Would you recommend other lens for that price ? Thanks for all your videos
Hey guy, very interesting and appreciate all your review videos. Pls take a review for Sony 18-200mm and compare with Sony G 18-105mm, i think it will be useful for many persons who need a multi functional lens :)
This lens only supports contrast autofocus. There is no firmware update to fix this. The old 18-55 kittens has V2.0 update and supports now phase detection autofocus. Hope this pancake lens gets an update to.
OK... had to watch it in HD after all because of sample pictures and my thoughts are like this: 16mm is not as soft as everybody describe but it's not good either. I had real thinking about what to choose to my small room where I'm recording and 16mm was one of the options. But... because of OSS which is deal breaker for me because I have only manual lenses and I probably would go with 16-50 cuz after all I was using F2.8 few months ago but now I have a softbox and LED light so I have that much light that I can record in my room at F5.6 and ISO 160. And... If you would want to sell your kit lens Mafia then I'm winking my eye to you ;)
The only reason I considered buying this lens is to have the Fish eye and Ultra wide adaptors. Is there an alternative option of Fish Eye/UW with another wide lens with great quality (like sigma)? Thank you!
I own a 16mm for a few months and honestly it's the crappiest lens i've used for a while, except it's fast AF and lightweight, the pictures are not near usable, i don't recommend buying it at all except if you use it for holidays
I wonder what's better samyang 12mm f2 or the new sigma?? how much wider does samyang goes in practical terms and how much darker it is?? hmm.. For astro photography sigma will be better for sure.
I don't know the new sigma, but when shooting landscape the difference between 18mm and 24mm (because of the crop sensor) is quite noticeable. The Samyang is also extremly sharp and very easy to use (just set the focus to infinity and go). The best lens I own so far. I am however exited for the sigma as well, especially because of astro photography. But the Samyang is hard to beat.
Oh... almost forgot... You totally have to check Sigma 16mm F1.4. It was released like week ago and it's great! Heavily improved MF in comparison to 30mm F1.4.
i dont know if my kit lens is a one off. but it was horrrrrrible . anything shot with it is soft and foggy. when i got a 35 prime. i couldnt believe the difference
Hey. I'm looking for a pancake wide angle lens. I'm not gonna buy the 16mm after I watched this video but will stay with the kit lens. But what about the 20mm ? Could you compare the 20mm pancake with the kit lens at 20mm. Is it wort buying it or is it as bad as the 16mm?
Just a nitpick. Or maybe I'm wrong. But E 2.8/16mm makes no sense from what I understand. The diameter of the aperture is aperture = focal length / f-number (from f-number = focual length / aperture). So 16/2.8 actually means something in camera terms, but the inverse does not. And the aperture actually means something, the size of your bokeh balls should be the size of the aperture when filming a ruler against a point light in the distance. End of random rant haha. Thanks for the video!
Why did you compare them at different ISOs for the wide open test? Makes no sense. Also don't understand why you didn't just use ISO 100 for every single shot since you're on a tripod. Shutter speed didn't matter for practically any of your shots.
I just shot them wide open in Aperture priority, which is how most casual users would use the lenses. Shutter speeds matter if I am trying to take a shot at a faster aperture while maintaining a low ISO....
The kit lens. Lol. The other pancake lenses are not great. The Sony 20mm is the best pancake that Sony makes, but youll be way happier spending similar money on the Sigma 30mm F1.4.
Answering your question, you'd get a 11 Mpx photo, but you may use it for video (super 35mm). But in my opinion, I'd get a better lens. You should consider the 14mm f/2.8, or the 28mm FE (this is a great lens).
