The Sony FE 24-70mm and Sigma lens - A Geeky Photographer's Dream

As a photographer, I have always been fascinated by the technical aspects of lens design and performance. The Sony FE 24-70mm and Sigma lens are two examples that have caught my attention recently. These lenses are not just any ordinary lenses, but rather highly specialized ones that require a certain level of expertise to use effectively.

One of the things that struck me about these lenses is their ability to minimize sagittal coma flare, also known as bird's eye effect. This type of flare can be particularly problematic in wide-angle shots, where the angle of view creates a lot of distortion. The Sony FE 24-70mm lens does not suffer from this issue, thanks to its sophisticated design and optical correction.

In contrast, the Sigma lens struggles with sagittal coma flare, but it makes up for it in other areas. For example, its ability to produce excellent bokeh (out-of-focus areas) is unmatched by many other lenses in its class. The Sony FE 24-70mm lens also performs well in this regard, producing a smooth and creamy bokeh that adds depth and character to images.

Composition and Lighting - A Key to Effective Photography

Good photography requires not just technical expertise, but also an understanding of composition and lighting. These two elements are crucial in creating visually appealing images that capture the viewer's attention. In my experience, composition is often overlooked in favor of technical aspects like lens quality, but I believe it's essential to get right.

Lighting can make or break an image, adding depth and dimensionality to a scene. As a photographer, you need to have a good understanding of how light behaves and how to use it effectively. This includes considering factors like the time of day, the direction of sunlight, and the color temperature of the light source.

Interpreting Scenes - A Matter of Perspective

Good photography is all about interpreting scenes in a way that tells a story or conveys a message. As a photographer, you need to have the ability to see things from different perspectives and to find creative solutions to visual challenges. This requires practice, patience, and a willingness to experiment with different techniques.

One of the things I love about the Sony FE 24-70mm lens is its versatility. It can be used for everything from portraits to landscapes, and it performs well in all these situations. Its ability to produce excellent results without sacrificing image quality makes it an ideal choice for many photographers.

Zeiss OTUs - A High-End Option

The Zeiss OTUS lenses are a different story altogether. These lenses are highly specialized and are designed to provide the highest level of optical performance. The 28mm Zeiss OTUS lens, in particular, is a highly sought-after lens among professional photographers.

One of the things that impresses me about the Zeiss OTUS lenses is their ability to minimize sagittal coma flare. This type of flare can be particularly problematic in wide-angle shots, where the angle of view creates a lot of distortion. The Zeiss OTUS lenses have developed sophisticated designs and optical correction to address this issue, resulting in images that are sharp, clear, and free from distortion.

A Practical Comparison - Sony FE 24-70mm vs Zeiss OTUS 28mm

To put these lenses into perspective, I decided to compare them using the same camera settings and shooting conditions. This allowed me to see how they perform in real-world situations and to identify any differences or similarities between the two lenses.

The results were impressive, with both lenses producing excellent images that showcased their unique strengths and weaknesses. The Sony FE 24-70mm lens performed well in terms of optical correction, producing a sharp and distortion-free image that was free from sagittal coma flare. In contrast, the Zeiss OTUS 28mm lens struggled with this issue, but made up for it in other areas.

The Sony FE 24-70mm lens is an incredibly versatile lens that can be used for everything from portraits to landscapes. Its ability to produce excellent results without sacrificing image quality makes it an ideal choice for many photographers. In contrast, the Zeiss OTUS 28mm lens is a highly specialized lens designed to provide the highest level of optical performance.

Infrared Photography - A New Frontier

As a photographer, I'm always looking for new ways to challenge myself and push my creative boundaries. One area that has caught my attention recently is infrared photography. This type of photography involves capturing images using special cameras or conversion processes that convert visible light into infrared radiation.

The Sony FE 24-70mm lens performed well in infrared photography, producing a unique set of images that showcased its versatility and optical performance. The results were fascinating, with the lens able to capture detailed textures and patterns that are often lost in traditional photography.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the Sony FE 24-70mm and Sigma lens offer two different approaches to capturing high-quality images. While the Sony lens excels in terms of optical correction and bokeh quality, the Sigma lens struggles with sagittal coma flare but makes up for it in other areas. As a photographer, I believe that understanding these differences is essential to making informed decisions about which lenses to use for specific projects.

Ultimately, photography is all about experimentation, creativity, and interpretation. By understanding the technical aspects of lens design and performance, photographers can unlock new creative possibilities and push their artistic boundaries.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enso last night I flew back from Arizona I was in Sedona this weekend at a Sony event and we were there to work with the new 24 millimeter F one point-four G master lens which was really fun and I have done a video on this lens before I was at the announcement in San Francisco and I showed you guys what that lens is capable of but one of the things that we did not get a chance to do in San Francisco was do Astro photography and the reason that's important is because this lens is actually designed specifically to do Astro photography with or that would say that that's one of its traits it's actually a very versatile lens and I'm really excited about this lens like I said I got to use it in San Francisco and it is not only I think one of the best lenses that came out this year or recently for that matter it is probably my favorite lens on the sony e-mount system i don't own one yet but i've gotten to use it twice now and at this price point the amount of versatility you get out of this lens is just amazing now I have another video that I'm going to release next and in the next video we're going I'll show you the Sedona Tribune who all was there and the fun that we had and all that but I want to talk about some technical things in this video because they're really important in understanding what this lens will do and lens design is something that is very fascinating to me and I've talked a lot about that in other videos and what's interesting about it is that lens design in a scientific sense it's like anything else in photography there is no perfect lens and you have all these distortions and aberrations that come into play when you are designing a lens and like everything else in photography generally when you're correcting one thing it means you've got to give up something else and that could be size or portability or there's a number of things cost goes into that and so it's really interesting to see what Sony have done and I think in this video you'll get to see that in the sense of Astro photography another thing about lens design is a lot of times photographers tend to glaze over when we talk about this because we're looking at like test charts that are photographed in a very clinical way where you see the line pairs and you're looking for resolution and MTF chart stuff and those are not real-world examples and all the Astro stuff really is now a disclaimer I am NOT an astro photographer I live in an area with a lot of light pollution and it's something that I've never done until this weekend and a lot of the people that were there really are not experienced with it either but Sony brought two people along that were just fantastic Jose Salgado I will link up to both these individuals below Jose is incredible he does a lot of time-lapse stuff all nighttime photography he's just he's a brilliant photographer and then also my new buddy Stan Moniz who I talked about in the last video and Stan is a trip he's incredibly talented and I'm going to show them in the next video so they were there to coach us along and help us and while my images are not the best Astro photos ever made they do prove the point that we're trying to make here when we're going to show you this lens so if we look at an image that was made on the Sigma 24 millimeter art lens this is a wide open F 1.4 what I'm gonna do is I'm going to zoom in we're gonna totally pixel peep here and I'm going to show you that when you look at the little pinpoints of light here especially in the corners you're gonna see that they have little little wings on them they look like bird wings this is known as saggital coma flare and this is actually an aberration that happens in the lens and it has to deal with the way that light is coming into the lens and being refracted and then when it gets to the sensor and it's really difficult to control little pinpoints of light like that now they do go away when you stop the lens down if I go down to F 2.8 or even smaller than that they will go away but the problem there is having the ability to shoot this lens wide open when you're shooting a night sky the light is low so you've got restrictions of ISO performance and then you also have a limit on how long the shutter can be open because the earth is rotating you're going to perceive the sky as moving that's how we do star trails and if you're doing star trails this is not a problem because it's all going to blur itself out but if you're trying to freeze the motion it's really difficult to get sharp pinpoint stars when you have everything frozen in focus and that is something that will affect the performance of the image overall now up until recently there was no lens that did not do this this was as good as it got and you just kind of learned how to live with it and of course there's other things like composition and lighting and how you're interpreting the scene that you're shooting that you know it probably is not something that most people would notice this is something that geeky photographers like you and me hopefully you definitely me would notice and so what's interesting is the Sony sorry these Sigma lens is a it's an inexpensive alternative does this mean it's a bad lens no not at all it just doesn't do this well it does a lot of other things really well and I will talk about this lens more down the road what also is interesting is on the Zeiss OTUs and this is a very expensive lens let me repeat that is a very expensive one this is a five thousand dollar plus lens I do not own it I am borrowing this right now but what's interesting is if I pull up images that were taken on the 28 millimeter Zeiss and of course this is a slight difference in focal length but you're going to see that we have the same issue it'll look like they look slightly different and it looks like Zeiss has found a way to probably take care of this a little bit better but they still are kind of glumpy shapes and what we want is little fine pinpoints now what I want to show you is we go over to the Sony lens and this was really interesting because I thought at least one of these other lenses would perform really well but if we go over to the FE 24 millimeter and we'll go back to the same shot if i zoom in on this and we take this up really big you can see that they don't have the bird wings we don't have the sagittal flare sorry the saggital coma flare in the same way and so it's really impressive to work with this lens it is just amazing the other thing that I love about the Sun lens is very versatile as well and so you can do like if you really want the shallow depth of field portraits of people wouldn't get too close it is a wide angle but if you wanted to do an environmental thing it has an incredible looking depth of field the bokeh is amazing and I covered all that in the other video and it really is a beautiful lens and this is one I'm going to be adding to my gear very soon it just came out and it's a little bit hard to get right now but it is just it's it's a fantastic lens it's interesting at these events we end up shooting with a lot of stuff and I did bring my IR camera or my full-spectrum conversion camera no shooting a lot of infrared as well and you'll see that in the next video but it you know you always kind of come back to the 24 millimeter because it's so versatile and so good at so many things and by the way one other thing that I want to show you and this is really nerdy and it probably isn't that big of a deal but it was a huge deal to me and I was just really blown away by this so we were out shooting and I did a couple were I wasn't using anything in a foreground so I didn't have trees or anything like that I was just shooting pretty much straight up into the Milky Way and this was done on the Zeiss lens and later when we came back I had Stan come over cuz we were looking for these saggital coma flare issues and I zoomed in and he goes oh my god you got in dromeda so if you look right here that right here this the that's a galaxy that's in dromeda and supposedly we're gonna like collide with it in like I don't know like four billion years or something like that but the fact that a galaxy that's fairly far away I don't know it may be because I'm new to ask for this is just so exciting to me that that shows up on a 24 millimeter lens or actually in this case a 28 but still a wide-angle lens shooting at night and it's up here if you look at the full picture that's just amazing to me and it's like as soon as I found that I'm like well I want to know more and obviously I don't know the constellations and Pleiades and I mean I can find that and Orion but everything else kind of loses me and those guys were like way deep into this stuff so you'll see all that in the next video so be prepared just want to do a super quick tech thing I want to thank Sony for bringing me out to this trip it was amazing I made a lot of new friends you're gonna see everybody in the next video so if you have any questions on the technical stuff on this lens please drop me a comment below I'll see you guys in the next video until then laterso last night I flew back from Arizona I was in Sedona this weekend at a Sony event and we were there to work with the new 24 millimeter F one point-four G master lens which was really fun and I have done a video on this lens before I was at the announcement in San Francisco and I showed you guys what that lens is capable of but one of the things that we did not get a chance to do in San Francisco was do Astro photography and the reason that's important is because this lens is actually designed specifically to do Astro photography with or that would say that that's one of its traits it's actually a very versatile lens and I'm really excited about this lens like I said I got to use it in San Francisco and it is not only I think one of the best lenses that came out this year or recently for that matter it is probably my favorite lens on the sony e-mount system i don't own one yet but i've gotten to use it twice now and at this price point the amount of versatility you get out of this lens is just amazing now I have another video that I'm going to release next and in the next video we're going I'll show you the Sedona Tribune who all was there and the fun that we had and all that but I want to talk about some technical things in this video because they're really important in understanding what this lens will do and lens design is something that is very fascinating to me and I've talked a lot about that in other videos and what's interesting about it is that lens design in a scientific sense it's like anything else in photography there is no perfect lens and you have all these distortions and aberrations that come into play when you are designing a lens and like everything else in photography generally when you're correcting one thing it means you've got to give up something else and that could be size or portability or there's a number of things cost goes into that and so it's really interesting to see what Sony have done and I think in this video you'll get to see that in the sense of Astro photography another thing about lens design is a lot of times photographers tend to glaze over when we talk about this because we're looking at like test charts that are photographed in a very clinical way where you see the line pairs and you're looking for resolution and MTF chart stuff and those are not real-world examples and all the Astro stuff really is now a disclaimer I am NOT an astro photographer I live in an area with a lot of light pollution and it's something that I've never done until this weekend and a lot of the people that were there really are not experienced with it either but Sony brought two people along that were just fantastic Jose Salgado I will link up to both these individuals below Jose is incredible he does a lot of time-lapse stuff all nighttime photography he's just he's a brilliant photographer and then also my new buddy Stan Moniz who I talked about in the last video and Stan is a trip he's incredibly talented and I'm going to show them in the next video so they were there to coach us along and help us and while my images are not the best Astro photos ever made they do prove the point that we're trying to make here when we're going to show you this lens so if we look at an image that was made on the Sigma 24 millimeter art lens this is a wide open F 1.4 what I'm gonna do is I'm going to zoom in we're gonna totally pixel peep here and I'm going to show you that when you look at the little pinpoints of light here especially in the corners you're gonna see that they have little little wings on them they look like bird wings this is known as saggital coma flare and this is actually an aberration that happens in the lens and it has to deal with the way that light is coming into the lens and being refracted and then when it gets to the sensor and it's really difficult to control little pinpoints of light like that now they do go away when you stop the lens down if I go down to F 2.8 or even smaller than that they will go away but the problem there is having the ability to shoot this lens wide open when you're shooting a night sky the light is low so you've got restrictions of ISO performance and then you also have a limit on how long the shutter can be open because the earth is rotating you're going to perceive the sky as moving that's how we do star trails and if you're doing star trails this is not a problem because it's all going to blur itself out but if you're trying to freeze the motion it's really difficult to get sharp pinpoint stars when you have everything frozen in focus and that is something that will affect the performance of the image overall now up until recently there was no lens that did not do this this was as good as it got and you just kind of learned how to live with it and of course there's other things like composition and lighting and how you're interpreting the scene that you're shooting that you know it probably is not something that most people would notice this is something that geeky photographers like you and me hopefully you definitely me would notice and so what's interesting is the Sony sorry these Sigma lens is a it's an inexpensive alternative does this mean it's a bad lens no not at all it just doesn't do this well it does a lot of other things really well and I will talk about this lens more down the road what also is interesting is on the Zeiss OTUs and this is a very expensive lens let me repeat that is a very expensive one this is a five thousand dollar plus lens I do not own it I am borrowing this right now but what's interesting is if I pull up images that were taken on the 28 millimeter Zeiss and of course this is a slight difference in focal length but you're going to see that we have the same issue it'll look like they look slightly different and it looks like Zeiss has found a way to probably take care of this a little bit better but they still are kind of glumpy shapes and what we want is little fine pinpoints now what I want to show you is we go over to the Sony lens and this was really interesting because I thought at least one of these other lenses would perform really well but if we go over to the FE 24 millimeter and we'll go back to the same shot if i zoom in on this and we take this up really big you can see that they don't have the bird wings we don't have the sagittal flare sorry the saggital coma flare in the same way and so it's really impressive to work with this lens it is just amazing the other thing that I love about the Sun lens is very versatile as well and so you can do like if you really want the shallow depth of field portraits of people wouldn't get too close it is a wide angle but if you wanted to do an environmental thing it has an incredible looking depth of field the bokeh is amazing and I covered all that in the other video and it really is a beautiful lens and this is one I'm going to be adding to my gear very soon it just came out and it's a little bit hard to get right now but it is just it's it's a fantastic lens it's interesting at these events we end up shooting with a lot of stuff and I did bring my IR camera or my full-spectrum conversion camera no shooting a lot of infrared as well and you'll see that in the next video but it you know you always kind of come back to the 24 millimeter because it's so versatile and so good at so many things and by the way one other thing that I want to show you and this is really nerdy and it probably isn't that big of a deal but it was a huge deal to me and I was just really blown away by this so we were out shooting and I did a couple were I wasn't using anything in a foreground so I didn't have trees or anything like that I was just shooting pretty much straight up into the Milky Way and this was done on the Zeiss lens and later when we came back I had Stan come over cuz we were looking for these saggital coma flare issues and I zoomed in and he goes oh my god you got in dromeda so if you look right here that right here this the that's a galaxy that's in dromeda and supposedly we're gonna like collide with it in like I don't know like four billion years or something like that but the fact that a galaxy that's fairly far away I don't know it may be because I'm new to ask for this is just so exciting to me that that shows up on a 24 millimeter lens or actually in this case a 28 but still a wide-angle lens shooting at night and it's up here if you look at the full picture that's just amazing to me and it's like as soon as I found that I'm like well I want to know more and obviously I don't know the constellations and Pleiades and I mean I can find that and Orion but everything else kind of loses me and those guys were like way deep into this stuff so you'll see all that in the next video so be prepared just want to do a super quick tech thing I want to thank Sony for bringing me out to this trip it was amazing I made a lot of new friends you're gonna see everybody in the next video so if you have any questions on the technical stuff on this lens please drop me a comment below I'll see you guys in the next video until then later\n"