Sony 24mm G Master VS G - does the f_2.8 ultra compact hold up

# Article: Sony's 24mm f/2.8 G Lens vs. G Master f/1.4: A Comprehensive Comparison

## Introduction

In a recent video, the host delved into a detailed comparison between Sony's 24mm f/2.8 G lens and the more expensive G Master f/1.4 version. The discussion highlights the performance differences, focusing on sharpness, chromatic aberration, distortion, and other critical factors that photographers should consider when choosing a lens.

## Testing Methodology

The host employed a unique testing method to evaluate lens performance. By creating test images with something flat and textured, such as streets or dead trees, he applied the "Find Edges" filter in Photoshop to map sharpness and focus areas. This technique revealed that the 24mm lenses exhibited mustache-shaped distortion, which is common at this focal length. The f/1.4 G Master lens showed slight wave patterns, while the f/2.8 G lens had a more pronounced but manageable distortion.

## Real-World Performance

Field tests were conducted using both lenses under various conditions, including tripod and handheld photography. The results demonstrated that the f/1.4 G Master lens excelled in low-light scenarios and produced superior bokeh due to its wider aperture. However, it exhibited more purple fringing at wide apertures, which could be corrected in post-processing.

The f/2.8 G lens, while not as sharp in the corners, offered better edge-to-edge performance when stopped down. It also showed less focus breathing, making it a preferable choice for video work. The host noted that both lenses had vignetting issues, but these were easily correctable in post-production.

## Lightroom Profile Considerations

A significant finding was the need for software correction in Lightroom for the f/2.8 G lens. Severe distortion required manual adjustments, which could slightly reduce sharpness. This was a surprising revelation given Sony's usual profile support. The host mentioned that other brands like Nikon and Fujifilm use baked-in profiles, but this approach by Sony marked a notable shift.

## Conclusion

The host concluded that the choice between the two lenses depends on individual needs. The G Master f/1.4 offers exceptional low-light performance and bokeh at a higher price point, while the G f/2.8 is an affordable option with impressive performance for its price. He emphasized the importance of considering portability, budget, and specific use cases when making a decision.

## Final Thoughts

Sony's 24mm f/2.8 G lens represents a remarkable value, offering photographers a high-performing compact prime that doesn't compromise on image quality. While it may not match the G Master in every aspect, it stands as a formidable contender for those seeking a balance between cost and performance.

---

**Note:** For Chinese readers, here is the translated summary of the key points:

### 主要比较点：

- **24mm f/2.8 G**: 性价比高，适合预算有限且注重便携的用户。在边缘锐度和软件校正后表现出色。

- **G Master 24mm f/1.4**: 提供更好的低光表现和虚化效果，但价格较高，并且存在更多的像差问题。

### 结论：

选择哪款镜头取决于个人需求：追求高性能和独特虚化的用户可以选择G Master，而注重性价比和日常使用的用户则适合24mm f/2.8 G。

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enthis video is brought to you by squarespace from websites and online stores to tools and analytics squarespace is the all-in-one platform to build a beautiful presence and run your business welcome back everyone last week i did a video on sony's announcement of their new ultra compact prime lenses in fact there are three of these now we're going to talk specifically today about the 24 millimeter f 2.8 i had an interesting question from someone that wanted to know what the biggest difference is between this and sony's other 24 millimeter the g master f 1.4 version we're going to be and of course you know this lens is more than double the cost of the ultra compact prime and so this is designed at a much cheaper price point this has much more glass in it bigger elements xa glass it's a f 1.4 lens and so of course performance is going to be better but how do they compare up i thought this was an interesting idea so i went ahead and did some tests i did a bunch of shots i want to share these with you today the results came back and i was actually pretty surprised at how well a performer the 24 millimeter f 2.8 g actually is so what we're gonna do is uh look at some visual examples and hopefully we'll give you a little bit of an overview that'll explain it and if you want to dive a little deeper we'll do that later in the video because this kind of gets pretty interesting the first thing that i like to do when i'm looking at a lenses performance is actually looking at the field of focus and so there's a little touch that you can do i encourage you guys to do this with lenses that you guys own i completely stole this from roger sakala over at lens reynolds so thank you roger and i'm serious this is a really cool way to evaluate a lens and i want to show you what it is that we're looking at so we're going to make a test image and it doesn't really matter what it is so much it just needs to be something flat that has texture to it in this case i'm photographing the street and i prefer to do this at a low angle and what you're going to do is you're going to put your point of focus right in the middle of the image and you're going to create that image what we want to do is we want to bring this into photoshop and you're going to use something called the find edges filter now this filter is kind of interesting it doesn't really do much there's no options but what it does is it creates sort of a map of what the highest points of detail are in the image so we can look at this as sharpness and so you're going to see that line that runs across the middle of the image there and what that is is that is the field of focus now what's interesting is we can start to judge some of the characteristics of the lens by what we see in that field of focus so the first thing that you're going to look at here is you're going to notice that in the middle of the screen this is let me grab the tool here this is my sharpest area right here now you're going to see that as we move towards the sides of the screen and you could also shoot this diagonally if you want to actually see full corner to corner but you're going to see these areas are less sharp than what you see in the middle see it's much more black much more dense here and it kind of starts to fall off and so that's essentially what you're looking at in terms of this line the other thing you're going to see and i'm going to sort of attempt to draw this here but you're going to see that the line is not perfectly straight it kind of comes in it goes down it goes back up again and then out this is a little bit uh you know oversimplified here in my bad drawing skills but this is very typical in a 24 millimeter focal length a 24 millimeter lens is actually somewhat difficult for manufacturers to make in fact when the g-master lens came out that was such a big deal because it was such a high performer compared with canon ef mount offerings or nikon f-mount offerings we didn't have z-mount yet we didn't have rf mount yet so things have changed a little bit but anyway i digress what we're looking at here is what we refer to as a mustache shaped distortion so it just has a wave to it and it means that at 24 millimeters it's really hard to get something in focus straight across a lot of compensation has to be done in the lens design itself and so this only matters is if you're shooting something straight it could drift out of focus so architecture a line of people for instance other thing to note about this and i should have done more images so i could show you but as you move that focus point back let's say it was back towards closer to infinity or more up towards the minimum focus distance the shape can change and intensify a little bit doesn't change the shape but it pronounces it somewhat and so it's something to understand too so obviously a lens that has this mustache distortion is something that is not really preferable unless it's pronounced and in this case um this is actually pretty well dealt with this is you know they found a way to actually get this evened out somewhat so this makes it a pretty good performer of course as you stop the lens down from f 2.8 if you are shooting architecture it's going to make a wider depth of field or a deeper depth of field and so more will be in focus so it's going to be less of an issue but what's interesting is if we compare this this is the f 2.8 g lens if you compare this to the f 1.4 g master you're gonna see that we have a much straighter line there is still a slight minimum wave but you can see how these compare it's also much more shallow because it's a wider aperture but you can see that it maintains a little more integrity towards the corners than let's say the f 2.8 does it just kind of tends to scatter a little more so that's one of the big differences that you're going to be looking at with these lenses creating a field of focus map like this is going to give you a pretty good general understanding of what you can expect in terms of performance out of a lens we're talking about things like contrast resolution sharpness detail that sort of thing how it works in the center of the lens and how you might lose that going edge to edge or you could expect to keep it and so having that in mind that's not typically a real world example so it's time to take that application and go get some real world examples so what i did this morning is i went and just shot around the neighborhood for a few hours and i used both lenses and i compared them both wide open even though one is an f14 the others in f28 i compared them both stopped down at 5 6 f 8 so on and so forth just to see what the differences were going to be in performance some of these were done on a tripod some of these were done handheld now speaking of aperture and depth of field the g master version the f 1.4 has a clear advantage now with the f 2.8 version you can get some nice fall off and a little bit of bokeh especially for a wide angle lens if you're close enough to your subject when you switch over to the f 1.4 this is where the 1.4 has a really serious advantage gives you a much shallower depth of field a beautiful fall off really beautiful bokeh i think that sony have done an outstanding job with the g master in that regard so the g lens is an f 2.8 so it's at a slight disadvantage when we're comparing depth of field but in other ways there are other things to look for than just depth of field for instance when we made that field of focus map remember the f 2.8 version of this lens was sharpest in the center and where there was a noticeable fall-off in detail as we move towards the edge of the frame that's something i wanted to test here with both lenses so what i did here is you're looking at a 60 megapixel image this is with my sony a7r4 this is with the 1.4 version of this lens actually i'll start here and so if we move up to the top right hand corner here we one of the lovely things about texas is we have all these dead trees which are great for testing sharpness and detail and you can actually see that going on here so this is the f 1.4 version if i move over to the f 2.8 version you're going to notice put these side by side you can notice that it is a lot less sharp than the f 1.4 version is and that was to be expected but i want to show you something that i found that i didn't expect if we look at the f 1.4 version you're going to notice that we start to see purple fringing that is pretty much absent on the f 2.8 version so though we have a trade-off in terms of sharpness corner to corner with the f 2.8 with the f 1.4 it is sharper but the sacrifice is a little bit of purple fringing which can be fixed in post i haven't touched these you're seeing these unedited but that is an important note to make the other thing i want to talk about with chromatic aberration is that a lot of lenses have chromatic aberrations this is something that people tend to make i think a too big of a deal about chromatic aberration happens when you have a lens that's going to exhibit it it's in high contrast fine detail areas like an edge where you have something black against something white so in the case of the trees we have black edges against kind of somewhat going white sky or a bluish sky so it's a high contrast area and this is where we start to see the purple fringing there's another type of chromatic aberration where you actually get green frenching it's a little harder to solve in post-production but anyway either way it depends on what you're shooting it depends on compositionally what you're going to be doing what your lighting is like and i don't know sometimes it exhibits it but it's such a fine detail that it's just not worth worrying about and you're never going to find the perfect lens some lenses manage it better than others i just want to put my two cents in there and i think a lot of people make way too much a big deal about this stuff the other thing is when you stop down the lens it will start to correct and i did some tests with that as well so if you take the 24 millimeter for example and you shoot something this is that sorry the g master version you have something in the corner where you're going to get that purple fringing this is wide open when i stop that lens down to about f 2.8 or so you can see that it cleans up considerably of course we're kind of comparing an apple to an orange here because we're comparing two lenses at two different apertures and the design couldn't be any different but when you look at the mtf for the 24 millimeter f 2.8 it is still really impressive and this competes i think in terms of contrast and resolution anyway with lenses that come in at much higher price points so sony has come out swinging with these compact primes both lenses do have a little bit of vignetting it's nothing it's going to be so intense that you can't fix it in post and it's better than i've seen on some lenses this becomes a bigger problem with a bigger sensor like medium format and a wide angle lens but i thought it was pretty much fair that they both clean up pretty easily in here flare and sun stars i've never really thought this was sony's thing if you want flare and sun stars i think voigtlander lenses there's some other options that are going to give you a much better gimmick if that's what you're into focus breathing is interesting as well this is another thing people seem to be overly concerned about these days and i guess it is an issue if you're doing video with these so focus breathing i'm going to give a nod actually to the g version the f 2.8 it exhibits much less focus breathing where there is slightly more and slightly noticeable focus breathing with the f 1.4 g master a lot of this is going to have to do with the size of this lens how far those elements are moving so and so forth but if you're doing video i think that the 24 millimeter g the f 2.8 probably is a little bit better choice if you're doing a lot of focus pulls so unfortunately there is one big flaw with the 24 millimeter f 2.8 g lens and it's something that if you're actually considering getting this lens you should know about and so i want to get into that but real quick i want to give a shout out to our sponsor today who are the awesome folks over at squarespace.com squarespace is the easiest way to build a website photo gallery or online store without having to write a single line of code start with one of their gorgeous templates use the drag and drop interface build your brand online but squarespace is way more than just a way to build a website squarespace provides an amazing set of tools to create revenue and run a business squarespace now features dedicated member areas allowing you to connect with your audience and generate revenue through members only content you can manage members you can send them email communications and you can leverage audience insights building an e-commerce site couldn't be any easier and squarespace now also supports collecting donations so you can get support for a cause or charity by gathering contributions with paypal apple pay stripe and venmo and build your audience using social sharing the squarespace blogging platform has a sharing button that you can customize that's going to allow sharing on facebook twitter linkedin stumbleupon reddit pinterest and tumblr so head over to squarespace for a free trial once you feel that squarespace is right for you i can save you an additional 10 on your first order by using offer code aop on checkout or just use the link below this video once again that offer code is aop and i want to give a special shout out and thanks to the awesome folks at squarespace for sponsoring this video so at the time i'm filming this these lenses are not actually available other than pre-order at this point so sony were nice enough to send me all three of these lenses to evaluate and do some test images and share my results with you guys so typically when you get lenses from any manufacturer sometimes lightroom doesn't support the lens profiles just yet and that is definitely the case here and what you're going to see in the case of lightroom is that we have some severe distortion this was actually kind of a little bit surprising to me because even sony i've seen and evaluated most of the lenses in their lineup and there usually is some correction maybe just a little bit but not like this what sony have done is they made a design compromise in this lens where they're going to allow the software to handle that post production so if you're shooting in camera jpegs or if you're shooting video this is going to be corrected in camera so you're not going to notice any of this distortion if you're shooting raw then you're going to bring it into lightroom and by the time these lenses are available i'm sure lightroom will be updated with the correct profile but this is a lot and what's interesting is they've made that compromise just saying we're gonna let the software deal with it well there is an argument with that where you can lose a little bit of sharpness and detail and that is true if for instance when i go into capture one and i toggle between the uncorrected version and the corrected version you're gonna see that it gets corrected and you lose just a little bit of sharpness of course you have to be completely zoomed in to see this in your pixel peeping and i would even bet that most people are not going to see a difference between these two but if it's something that's really important to you you're probably considering a lens at a higher price point anyway i just wanted to point this out now there are other companies that do this all the time nikon is one of them fujifilm actually does it what they do is they have baked in profiles so when they hit lightroom even if you're shooting raw you would never know you'll know because when you go down to that panel and just says built in and there's no adjustments that you can make on it that they've done some work behind the scenes but anyway i just thought that was interesting because i've never sexually seen that on a sony lens before that severe of a difference now it's still great all the images that i've showed you i did do manual correction on and i still think this is an incredible lens especially at this price point like i said earlier we're comparing an apple to an orange here because these are two different lenses designed for two different price points and i thought that would be interesting to point out here actually because 24 millimeters is a hard focal length designed for you're starting to get into wide territory it's very difficult for a lot of manufacturers and when you probably be more fair to compare this lens to another budget conscious 24 millimeter lens i just don't have one on hand and i wanted to show you guys what went into a lens now having said that when we talk about lens design one thing i don't think that a lot of people realize is that you have a team that designs a lens at any of these companies and there's a set of restraints that are put on any lens that's being designed and these can be things like oh it has to come in at this price point so that's going to limit you in terms of what you're going to be able to do with glass elements it has to be a certain size that's going to put a lot of limitations on what you're able to do so a lot of these are probably challenges to any optics designer but they exist one thing that's very impressive is all three of these sony compact primes that they they announced are really incredible performing lenses i've been really impressed with all three of them the distortion is the only flaw on the 24 and i'm not even sure it's a big deal breaker in the end but the other thing to notice is that all three of these lenses are in the exact same housing so that was another constraint you're going to do three different lenses they're all going to be in the same package you got to make it happen they're all three different focal lengths so it's a really interesting problem that that sony have solved here and i think these are amazing for the price point they didn't just put out cheap compact primes they put out some of the best compact primes that you can buy on any system and of course another thing that i want to throw out there is when we look at all the technical data it really means nothing because a lot of this is going to come down to what kind of a photographer you are what it is that you shoot and i'll give you an example so let's just take sharpness edge to edge so we have a sharpest point in the center it falls off a little bit on the corners it's not as high a detail this is something that if you have one photographer and this individual shoots a lot of portraits or family shots or street photography and usually the subject is somewhat near the middle of the frame it's not going to be as big of a deal because the the important parts of the photograph are not being scrutinized but if you have another photographer somebody who shoots architecture or landscape and that edge to edge sharpness is extremely important that individual is going to think very differently of the exact same lens so you've just got to figure this stuff out and decide whether it's right for the stuff that you do these are compact primes they come in at a cheaper price point and i think for somebody who's on a budget that wants a lens that's going to be super portable super lightweight that they can kind of throw around and carry anywhere pair this up with the a7c that's a system that now makes sense because it's ultra compact and i think it gives some really interesting choice if you're traveling lighter you're going to shoot more and you're going to get better images in the end i would love to know what you guys think so drop me a comment below i'll catch you guys in the next video until then laterthis video is brought to you by squarespace from websites and online stores to tools and analytics squarespace is the all-in-one platform to build a beautiful presence and run your business welcome back everyone last week i did a video on sony's announcement of their new ultra compact prime lenses in fact there are three of these now we're going to talk specifically today about the 24 millimeter f 2.8 i had an interesting question from someone that wanted to know what the biggest difference is between this and sony's other 24 millimeter the g master f 1.4 version we're going to be and of course you know this lens is more than double the cost of the ultra compact prime and so this is designed at a much cheaper price point this has much more glass in it bigger elements xa glass it's a f 1.4 lens and so of course performance is going to be better but how do they compare up i thought this was an interesting idea so i went ahead and did some tests i did a bunch of shots i want to share these with you today the results came back and i was actually pretty surprised at how well a performer the 24 millimeter f 2.8 g actually is so what we're gonna do is uh look at some visual examples and hopefully we'll give you a little bit of an overview that'll explain it and if you want to dive a little deeper we'll do that later in the video because this kind of gets pretty interesting the first thing that i like to do when i'm looking at a lenses performance is actually looking at the field of focus and so there's a little touch that you can do i encourage you guys to do this with lenses that you guys own i completely stole this from roger sakala over at lens reynolds so thank you roger and i'm serious this is a really cool way to evaluate a lens and i want to show you what it is that we're looking at so we're going to make a test image and it doesn't really matter what it is so much it just needs to be something flat that has texture to it in this case i'm photographing the street and i prefer to do this at a low angle and what you're going to do is you're going to put your point of focus right in the middle of the image and you're going to create that image what we want to do is we want to bring this into photoshop and you're going to use something called the find edges filter now this filter is kind of interesting it doesn't really do much there's no options but what it does is it creates sort of a map of what the highest points of detail are in the image so we can look at this as sharpness and so you're going to see that line that runs across the middle of the image there and what that is is that is the field of focus now what's interesting is we can start to judge some of the characteristics of the lens by what we see in that field of focus so the first thing that you're going to look at here is you're going to notice that in the middle of the screen this is let me grab the tool here this is my sharpest area right here now you're going to see that as we move towards the sides of the screen and you could also shoot this diagonally if you want to actually see full corner to corner but you're going to see these areas are less sharp than what you see in the middle see it's much more black much more dense here and it kind of starts to fall off and so that's essentially what you're looking at in terms of this line the other thing you're going to see and i'm going to sort of attempt to draw this here but you're going to see that the line is not perfectly straight it kind of comes in it goes down it goes back up again and then out this is a little bit uh you know oversimplified here in my bad drawing skills but this is very typical in a 24 millimeter focal length a 24 millimeter lens is actually somewhat difficult for manufacturers to make in fact when the g-master lens came out that was such a big deal because it was such a high performer compared with canon ef mount offerings or nikon f-mount offerings we didn't have z-mount yet we didn't have rf mount yet so things have changed a little bit but anyway i digress what we're looking at here is what we refer to as a mustache shaped distortion so it just has a wave to it and it means that at 24 millimeters it's really hard to get something in focus straight across a lot of compensation has to be done in the lens design itself and so this only matters is if you're shooting something straight it could drift out of focus so architecture a line of people for instance other thing to note about this and i should have done more images so i could show you but as you move that focus point back let's say it was back towards closer to infinity or more up towards the minimum focus distance the shape can change and intensify a little bit doesn't change the shape but it pronounces it somewhat and so it's something to understand too so obviously a lens that has this mustache distortion is something that is not really preferable unless it's pronounced and in this case um this is actually pretty well dealt with this is you know they found a way to actually get this evened out somewhat so this makes it a pretty good performer of course as you stop the lens down from f 2.8 if you are shooting architecture it's going to make a wider depth of field or a deeper depth of field and so more will be in focus so it's going to be less of an issue but what's interesting is if we compare this this is the f 2.8 g lens if you compare this to the f 1.4 g master you're gonna see that we have a much straighter line there is still a slight minimum wave but you can see how these compare it's also much more shallow because it's a wider aperture but you can see that it maintains a little more integrity towards the corners than let's say the f 2.8 does it just kind of tends to scatter a little more so that's one of the big differences that you're going to be looking at with these lenses creating a field of focus map like this is going to give you a pretty good general understanding of what you can expect in terms of performance out of a lens we're talking about things like contrast resolution sharpness detail that sort of thing how it works in the center of the lens and how you might lose that going edge to edge or you could expect to keep it and so having that in mind that's not typically a real world example so it's time to take that application and go get some real world examples so what i did this morning is i went and just shot around the neighborhood for a few hours and i used both lenses and i compared them both wide open even though one is an f14 the others in f28 i compared them both stopped down at 5 6 f 8 so on and so forth just to see what the differences were going to be in performance some of these were done on a tripod some of these were done handheld now speaking of aperture and depth of field the g master version the f 1.4 has a clear advantage now with the f 2.8 version you can get some nice fall off and a little bit of bokeh especially for a wide angle lens if you're close enough to your subject when you switch over to the f 1.4 this is where the 1.4 has a really serious advantage gives you a much shallower depth of field a beautiful fall off really beautiful bokeh i think that sony have done an outstanding job with the g master in that regard so the g lens is an f 2.8 so it's at a slight disadvantage when we're comparing depth of field but in other ways there are other things to look for than just depth of field for instance when we made that field of focus map remember the f 2.8 version of this lens was sharpest in the center and where there was a noticeable fall-off in detail as we move towards the edge of the frame that's something i wanted to test here with both lenses so what i did here is you're looking at a 60 megapixel image this is with my sony a7r4 this is with the 1.4 version of this lens actually i'll start here and so if we move up to the top right hand corner here we one of the lovely things about texas is we have all these dead trees which are great for testing sharpness and detail and you can actually see that going on here so this is the f 1.4 version if i move over to the f 2.8 version you're going to notice put these side by side you can notice that it is a lot less sharp than the f 1.4 version is and that was to be expected but i want to show you something that i found that i didn't expect if we look at the f 1.4 version you're going to notice that we start to see purple fringing that is pretty much absent on the f 2.8 version so though we have a trade-off in terms of sharpness corner to corner with the f 2.8 with the f 1.4 it is sharper but the sacrifice is a little bit of purple fringing which can be fixed in post i haven't touched these you're seeing these unedited but that is an important note to make the other thing i want to talk about with chromatic aberration is that a lot of lenses have chromatic aberrations this is something that people tend to make i think a too big of a deal about chromatic aberration happens when you have a lens that's going to exhibit it it's in high contrast fine detail areas like an edge where you have something black against something white so in the case of the trees we have black edges against kind of somewhat going white sky or a bluish sky so it's a high contrast area and this is where we start to see the purple fringing there's another type of chromatic aberration where you actually get green frenching it's a little harder to solve in post-production but anyway either way it depends on what you're shooting it depends on compositionally what you're going to be doing what your lighting is like and i don't know sometimes it exhibits it but it's such a fine detail that it's just not worth worrying about and you're never going to find the perfect lens some lenses manage it better than others i just want to put my two cents in there and i think a lot of people make way too much a big deal about this stuff the other thing is when you stop down the lens it will start to correct and i did some tests with that as well so if you take the 24 millimeter for example and you shoot something this is that sorry the g master version you have something in the corner where you're going to get that purple fringing this is wide open when i stop that lens down to about f 2.8 or so you can see that it cleans up considerably of course we're kind of comparing an apple to an orange here because we're comparing two lenses at two different apertures and the design couldn't be any different but when you look at the mtf for the 24 millimeter f 2.8 it is still really impressive and this competes i think in terms of contrast and resolution anyway with lenses that come in at much higher price points so sony has come out swinging with these compact primes both lenses do have a little bit of vignetting it's nothing it's going to be so intense that you can't fix it in post and it's better than i've seen on some lenses this becomes a bigger problem with a bigger sensor like medium format and a wide angle lens but i thought it was pretty much fair that they both clean up pretty easily in here flare and sun stars i've never really thought this was sony's thing if you want flare and sun stars i think voigtlander lenses there's some other options that are going to give you a much better gimmick if that's what you're into focus breathing is interesting as well this is another thing people seem to be overly concerned about these days and i guess it is an issue if you're doing video with these so focus breathing i'm going to give a nod actually to the g version the f 2.8 it exhibits much less focus breathing where there is slightly more and slightly noticeable focus breathing with the f 1.4 g master a lot of this is going to have to do with the size of this lens how far those elements are moving so and so forth but if you're doing video i think that the 24 millimeter g the f 2.8 probably is a little bit better choice if you're doing a lot of focus pulls so unfortunately there is one big flaw with the 24 millimeter f 2.8 g lens and it's something that if you're actually considering getting this lens you should know about and so i want to get into that but real quick i want to give a shout out to our sponsor today who are the awesome folks over at squarespace.com squarespace is the easiest way to build a website photo gallery or online store without having to write a single line of code start with one of their gorgeous templates use the drag and drop interface build your brand online but squarespace is way more than just a way to build a website squarespace provides an amazing set of tools to create revenue and run a business squarespace now features dedicated member areas allowing you to connect with your audience and generate revenue through members only content you can manage members you can send them email communications and you can leverage audience insights building an e-commerce site couldn't be any easier and squarespace now also supports collecting donations so you can get support for a cause or charity by gathering contributions with paypal apple pay stripe and venmo and build your audience using social sharing the squarespace blogging platform has a sharing button that you can customize that's going to allow sharing on facebook twitter linkedin stumbleupon reddit pinterest and tumblr so head over to squarespace for a free trial once you feel that squarespace is right for you i can save you an additional 10 on your first order by using offer code aop on checkout or just use the link below this video once again that offer code is aop and i want to give a special shout out and thanks to the awesome folks at squarespace for sponsoring this video so at the time i'm filming this these lenses are not actually available other than pre-order at this point so sony were nice enough to send me all three of these lenses to evaluate and do some test images and share my results with you guys so typically when you get lenses from any manufacturer sometimes lightroom doesn't support the lens profiles just yet and that is definitely the case here and what you're going to see in the case of lightroom is that we have some severe distortion this was actually kind of a little bit surprising to me because even sony i've seen and evaluated most of the lenses in their lineup and there usually is some correction maybe just a little bit but not like this what sony have done is they made a design compromise in this lens where they're going to allow the software to handle that post production so if you're shooting in camera jpegs or if you're shooting video this is going to be corrected in camera so you're not going to notice any of this distortion if you're shooting raw then you're going to bring it into lightroom and by the time these lenses are available i'm sure lightroom will be updated with the correct profile but this is a lot and what's interesting is they've made that compromise just saying we're gonna let the software deal with it well there is an argument with that where you can lose a little bit of sharpness and detail and that is true if for instance when i go into capture one and i toggle between the uncorrected version and the corrected version you're gonna see that it gets corrected and you lose just a little bit of sharpness of course you have to be completely zoomed in to see this in your pixel peeping and i would even bet that most people are not going to see a difference between these two but if it's something that's really important to you you're probably considering a lens at a higher price point anyway i just wanted to point this out now there are other companies that do this all the time nikon is one of them fujifilm actually does it what they do is they have baked in profiles so when they hit lightroom even if you're shooting raw you would never know you'll know because when you go down to that panel and just says built in and there's no adjustments that you can make on it that they've done some work behind the scenes but anyway i just thought that was interesting because i've never sexually seen that on a sony lens before that severe of a difference now it's still great all the images that i've showed you i did do manual correction on and i still think this is an incredible lens especially at this price point like i said earlier we're comparing an apple to an orange here because these are two different lenses designed for two different price points and i thought that would be interesting to point out here actually because 24 millimeters is a hard focal length designed for you're starting to get into wide territory it's very difficult for a lot of manufacturers and when you probably be more fair to compare this lens to another budget conscious 24 millimeter lens i just don't have one on hand and i wanted to show you guys what went into a lens now having said that when we talk about lens design one thing i don't think that a lot of people realize is that you have a team that designs a lens at any of these companies and there's a set of restraints that are put on any lens that's being designed and these can be things like oh it has to come in at this price point so that's going to limit you in terms of what you're going to be able to do with glass elements it has to be a certain size that's going to put a lot of limitations on what you're able to do so a lot of these are probably challenges to any optics designer but they exist one thing that's very impressive is all three of these sony compact primes that they they announced are really incredible performing lenses i've been really impressed with all three of them the distortion is the only flaw on the 24 and i'm not even sure it's a big deal breaker in the end but the other thing to notice is that all three of these lenses are in the exact same housing so that was another constraint you're going to do three different lenses they're all going to be in the same package you got to make it happen they're all three different focal lengths so it's a really interesting problem that that sony have solved here and i think these are amazing for the price point they didn't just put out cheap compact primes they put out some of the best compact primes that you can buy on any system and of course another thing that i want to throw out there is when we look at all the technical data it really means nothing because a lot of this is going to come down to what kind of a photographer you are what it is that you shoot and i'll give you an example so let's just take sharpness edge to edge so we have a sharpest point in the center it falls off a little bit on the corners it's not as high a detail this is something that if you have one photographer and this individual shoots a lot of portraits or family shots or street photography and usually the subject is somewhat near the middle of the frame it's not going to be as big of a deal because the the important parts of the photograph are not being scrutinized but if you have another photographer somebody who shoots architecture or landscape and that edge to edge sharpness is extremely important that individual is going to think very differently of the exact same lens so you've just got to figure this stuff out and decide whether it's right for the stuff that you do these are compact primes they come in at a cheaper price point and i think for somebody who's on a budget that wants a lens that's going to be super portable super lightweight that they can kind of throw around and carry anywhere pair this up with the a7c that's a system that now makes sense because it's ultra compact and i think it gives some really interesting choice if you're traveling lighter you're going to shoot more and you're going to get better images in the end i would love to know what you guys think so drop me a comment below i'll catch you guys in the next video until then later\n"