Sony 24-70mm GM II vs Nikon vs Canon - is this the ONE

**Comparing Field Charts: The Sony G Master II Lens**

We've been looking at the original G-Master lens, which is the first G-Master lens from Sony. This lens has a lot of problems, particularly with curvature. As we start going through the focal range, you'll see that even at 35mm, there's still a significant amount of curvature. And if we go to 50 and 70mm, it smooths out somewhat, but compared to other lenses, it doesn't quite measure up.

Now, let's compare this lens with the new G-Master II, which is a 24-70mm lens. One thing that stands out about this lens is its well-controlled curvature. As we zoom through the focal range, you can see that the distortion is very well-managed, and for the most part, it's going to be fairly flat. What's really impressive, however, is how much better this lens performs as you zoom out from 35mm. In contrast, the original G-Master lens doesn't seem to get rid of its curvature at all. This new design is one of the best we've seen in a 24-70mm lens.

**Comparing with Other Lenses**

So, how does the Sony G-Master II compare with other lenses on the market? Let's take a look at the Nikon 24-70. One thing you'll notice about this lens is that it has a bit of curvature, which is normal for a zoom lens. However, as we progress towards 70mm, the curvature becomes less pronounced. Still, compared to the Sony G-Master II, it's not quite as tight and controlled.

On the other hand, when we look at the Canon EF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM, it performs very well. The edge-to-edge sharpness is excellent, and the lens controls distortion nicely as you zoom out. One key feature that sets this lens apart from the others, however, is its optical image stabilization (OIS). This means that if you're shooting in low light or doing a lot of handheld video work, this lens will be your best bet.

**Ergonomics and Value**

It's worth noting that the Canon EF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM is also heavier than the other lenses on this list. However, if ergonomics are important to you, this lens may be a better choice.

Finally, it's worth mentioning that the Sony G-Master II will replace the original G-Master lens, which means that it'll be available at a lower price point. If you're not particularly concerned with optical image stabilization or ergonomics, and you just need a general-purpose zoom lens for portraits and everyday use, the original G-Master lens is still a decent choice.

**Conclusion**

In conclusion, when comparing field charts, the Sony G-Master II lens stands out as one of the best performers in this test. Its excellent edge-to-edge sharpness and well-controlled curvature make it an ideal choice for photographers who want a compact and reliable zoom lens. While other lenses may excel in specific areas, such as optical image stabilization or ergonomics, the Sony G-Master II offers a well-rounded package that makes it a top pick among our test lenses.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: entoday sony has released the brand new 24 to 70 millimeter f 2.8 g master 2 lens sony was actually gracious enough to send me a preview copy i've been using it for the last couple weeks and i'm actually very impressed i want to share the results with you in this video so we're going to be looking at performance and i also want to compare it with a few other lenses including the original 24 to 70 g master as well as the nikon z 24 millimeter to 70 millimeter f 2.8 s and the canon rf lis usm lenses to see just how the sony compares with the competition okay so why a version two of the 24 to 70 millimeter lens well this year we've seen sony do this with a lot of lenses where we have the original version and they do an update and there's several reasons for that so up to this point sony have 67 lenses in their e-mount lineup 47 of those are full-frame lenses and their technology has improved rapidly over the years and so we have things now like using extreme aspherical elements we also have xa motors which have a linear capacity for autofocus which require focus much quicker much more silently and so a lot of that new technology is now available when you consider the original 24 to 70 millimeter g master lens that was actually the first g master lens that sony ever produced that is not my favorite lens in their lineup it's a little bit soft and i think there was definitely room for improvement and now that nikon and canon are in the mirrorless game they have newer offerings so it was time for sony to update this lens that's kind of what i want to look at in this video to see how they compare but first let's talk about the physical aspects of this lens of the four lenses that we're looking at in this video it is definitely the lightest and most compact so if you compare this with the original 24 to 70 millimeter it is noticeably more compact and considerably lighter it's also lighter than the competing mirrorless systems when you compare it to the nikon and the canon the canon is definitely the heaviest of the bunch it also is the only one with image stabilization so if that's important to you that's the only game in town i do want to note though that when you put these on the bodies while the sony is still the lightest the nikon is actually pretty close because the z6 and z7 bodies are so light the z9 would be a different story so if ergonomics and weight are important to you this is definitely a contender lens now despite being the lightest and most compact ironically it has the most glass elements it has 20 elements in 15 groups this includes three aspherical two extreme aspherical 2ed and two super ed elements now while zooming is not internal focusing is and focus breathing actually from my testing has been extremely well controlled focus is driven by sony's use of four xa linear motors which are capable of tracking up to 30 frames per second and they allow focus tracking during zooming so sony is clearly supporting both still and video creators with these lenses so there's quite a few physical options on the lens itself in addition to the physical focus and zoom rings we also now have a physical aperture ring there's an autofocus manual focus selection switch we have two custom function buttons there's a d clickable aperture switch there's an option switch for smooth or tight zoom response i left it on smooth for mostly doing stills but you can actually select tight if you want to do something more controlled in a video application there's also an iris lock switch for video so most importantly what are the improvements in image quality to the original 24 to 70 millimeter well it's noticeably sharper edge to edge i'm going to show you some test results that i did in a second this lens has a beautiful rendering across the entire zoom range contrast is extraordinary and color rendering is about the best i've seen on any zoom lens i've had no problem with chromatic aberration or any other aberration for that matter bokeh is very well controlled it's smooth especially when you're shooting at 70 millimeters it's extremely well designed but how does it compare necessarily to the other 24 to 70 millimeter lenses so i'm going to show you some technical visualizations so that we can see the difference in each four of these zoom lenses real quick though i do want to make a note that if you haven't been keeping up and haven't seen the video i do have my new preset packs for adobe lightroom as well as capture one out now this is a project that i started two years ago and i'm really excited about this this was just something i was doing for myself because i wanted to be able to get the same color interpretation and rendition of contrast that i was getting on film of course applying this to digital this gives you more control over the dynamic range and all the great things that you get out of digital and so i wanted a way to combine those two things so about two years ago i started with fujifilm and i started emulating some of my favorite fujifilms so things like provia or even velvia and then i started working on kodak simulations because i wanted to be able to get a really cool kodachrome type look it's a film that hasn't been available for a long time probably will never be available again but it has a certain way of rendering contrast in reds and these are some of my favorites i've got several different kodachrome simulations in here anything from the 1930s up to some of my favorites which would be the high contrast look of the 1970s versions of this film and there's other films in here as well from both kodak and fujifilm and so i fondly call these kodakifide and fujified because you now can kodakify or fujify your own images so if you want more information if you want to use these yourself check out the link in the description but right now we're going to look at some 24 to 70 millimeter zoom lenses so before we get into testing and i've got some visualizations that i want to show you but i want to say this that first of all we're comparing all four of these lenses we're like comparing olympian athletes it's like you know when you go to the olympics you're seeing the best of the best compete none of these lenses are bad and so i'm this is literally i mean we are getting very nitpicky in terms of the differences between these but they are notable and i want to make that point as we get into this so the way that i work with these is i use what is called a field map now this is a technique that i've used a lot essentially what we want to do is get an image of something that is flat that has texture and we want to be shooting in the distance so we can see near and far and so what we're going to do is take this into photoshop we're going to run it through the find edges filter and that is going to give us a visualization of the field of focus that we're going to be looking at here so if you were interested in learning how to make these is something that i do with all of my own lenses for testing i have a whole dedicated video i will link it up here i will put it in the show description as well and so i would highly encourage you guys to try this with your own lenses it's also worth noting that these are all done with the lens wide open so at its largest aperture setting the reason for that is that is typically where a lens is at its most vulnerable in other words if you stop a lens down it starts correcting things you get improved contrast improved sharpness obviously your field of focus increases and so what we're doing is we're looking at these wide open so i want to see where they are at their weakest now a couple things that i want to say about a 24 to 70 millimeter lens now historically this is actually a very difficult lens to design it's the ultimate utility lens but there's something about that focal range that actually makes this very difficult to engineer from an optical standpoint and so one of the problems that you're going to see typically with any 24 to 70 millimeter lens is that its widest focal length which is going to be 24 millimeters is that it's prone to a type of distortion that we have in that field curvature that we typically refer to as a mustache or wave pattern and you can see it clearly we're looking at the original 24 to 70 millimeter g master this is the the original sony lens and so you're gonna see that curve pattern now what does this tell us two things first of all there is a curve in the field of focus also you can see that it sort of falls off on the sides it's not as sharp that darkness decreases so this tells us two things one we're going to have problems with sharpness corner to corner especially when we get towards the edges it's also going to tell you that if you're shooting something flat like architecture like a building or something like that and you're wide open that you're going to have things that drift in and out of focus now this doesn't necessarily impact every type of image for instance if you're shooting portraits and you're blowing out the background generally this is not a big deal but from a technical standpoint if you're shooting things that involve a great deal of detail this is something that you want to know now we've been looking at the original g-master this is the one that sony put out it's the first g-master lens and it has a lot of problems there's a huge amount of curvature to it as we start going through the focal range you're going to see that even at 35 millimeters is still very curved and if we go to 50 and 70 it smooths out but let's compare this a second with the new lens this is the 24 to 70 millimeter g master ii and you can see that there is a little bit of distortion in here but this is very well controlled and for the most part it's going to be fairly flat if you're shooting wide open now what's really impressive is where the other lens did not seem to get rid of that curvature as you zoomed out from 35 millimeter 50 millimeter this lens does and by the time you get to 70 millimeter it looks like any prime lens should just got a little bit more depth of field because it's an f 2.8 but this is very impressively controlled it really is good this is one of the best designs of any 24 millimeter to 70 that i've seen anywhere in fact let's do just that let's compare it to the other two mirrorless systems so if we look at the nikon 2470 you're gonna notice that it has a little bit of feel curvature remember that is normal it's just not as tightened up as what we're seeing with the sony g master ii it does get better as we progress towards 70 millimeters but it's just not quite as tight as what we're seeing out of the new sony in fact i think this lens sits somewhere between the original g master and then the new version if we look at the canon however it performs very well it has better edge to edge sharpness and as we zoom out it is very well controlled i would say that the canon is probably second in this little test behind the sony g master ii now another note that i want to say about the canon version of this lens is the canon is the only lens in this entire test that features optical image stabilization so if that's something that's important to you if you shoot a lot in low light or you're doing a lot of handheld video well that's going to be the only game in town and it's going to perform well with that in mind now it is the heaviest lens of the bunch so if ergonomics are important that's another pro of the sony over the canon another thing i want to say that i think is really important in the context of comparing field charts to one another is that we're just simply comparing a certain aspect of each one of these lenses now if you're wondering from just an opinion standpoint what is the best lens this is not going to tell you the best lens is the one that you feel is right for you i will say what this is showing us is it's showing us an addition to field curvature it's showing us edge to edge sharpness if that is important to you i think you can see from the results easily what the best lens is going to be however having said that sony are not replacing the original g master lens with the g master ii it will be a little bit cheaper and if this is something you don't need like if you shoot just a lot of portraits and you just want a general day-to-day purpose lens you don't have a lot of need for video capabilities then the original still a decent pick as well and for that matter the offerings that we have from canon and nikon are really good as well as i said when we started this these are all four incredible lenses we're in an interesting point with technology and it didn't used to be this way in the 70s and 80s particularly with zoom lenses zoom lenses were just never as good as prime lenses we didn't have the technology to make the elements and all of the nice things that we have in these lenses now and so comparing modern lenses is just a little bit like splitting hairs in some ways however having said that this is about the new sony lens and it's one that i've been really impressed with i love the images that i'm getting out of this i'm a big fan of compact cameras and so having a smaller lens is a big deal to me and the fact that this is also in my opinion the best performer of these four it really makes a big difference and it's a lens that i will be putting into my kit and so i would love to know what you guys think though so drop me a comment below and i'll see you guys in the next video until then latertoday sony has released the brand new 24 to 70 millimeter f 2.8 g master 2 lens sony was actually gracious enough to send me a preview copy i've been using it for the last couple weeks and i'm actually very impressed i want to share the results with you in this video so we're going to be looking at performance and i also want to compare it with a few other lenses including the original 24 to 70 g master as well as the nikon z 24 millimeter to 70 millimeter f 2.8 s and the canon rf lis usm lenses to see just how the sony compares with the competition okay so why a version two of the 24 to 70 millimeter lens well this year we've seen sony do this with a lot of lenses where we have the original version and they do an update and there's several reasons for that so up to this point sony have 67 lenses in their e-mount lineup 47 of those are full-frame lenses and their technology has improved rapidly over the years and so we have things now like using extreme aspherical elements we also have xa motors which have a linear capacity for autofocus which require focus much quicker much more silently and so a lot of that new technology is now available when you consider the original 24 to 70 millimeter g master lens that was actually the first g master lens that sony ever produced that is not my favorite lens in their lineup it's a little bit soft and i think there was definitely room for improvement and now that nikon and canon are in the mirrorless game they have newer offerings so it was time for sony to update this lens that's kind of what i want to look at in this video to see how they compare but first let's talk about the physical aspects of this lens of the four lenses that we're looking at in this video it is definitely the lightest and most compact so if you compare this with the original 24 to 70 millimeter it is noticeably more compact and considerably lighter it's also lighter than the competing mirrorless systems when you compare it to the nikon and the canon the canon is definitely the heaviest of the bunch it also is the only one with image stabilization so if that's important to you that's the only game in town i do want to note though that when you put these on the bodies while the sony is still the lightest the nikon is actually pretty close because the z6 and z7 bodies are so light the z9 would be a different story so if ergonomics and weight are important to you this is definitely a contender lens now despite being the lightest and most compact ironically it has the most glass elements it has 20 elements in 15 groups this includes three aspherical two extreme aspherical 2ed and two super ed elements now while zooming is not internal focusing is and focus breathing actually from my testing has been extremely well controlled focus is driven by sony's use of four xa linear motors which are capable of tracking up to 30 frames per second and they allow focus tracking during zooming so sony is clearly supporting both still and video creators with these lenses so there's quite a few physical options on the lens itself in addition to the physical focus and zoom rings we also now have a physical aperture ring there's an autofocus manual focus selection switch we have two custom function buttons there's a d clickable aperture switch there's an option switch for smooth or tight zoom response i left it on smooth for mostly doing stills but you can actually select tight if you want to do something more controlled in a video application there's also an iris lock switch for video so most importantly what are the improvements in image quality to the original 24 to 70 millimeter well it's noticeably sharper edge to edge i'm going to show you some test results that i did in a second this lens has a beautiful rendering across the entire zoom range contrast is extraordinary and color rendering is about the best i've seen on any zoom lens i've had no problem with chromatic aberration or any other aberration for that matter bokeh is very well controlled it's smooth especially when you're shooting at 70 millimeters it's extremely well designed but how does it compare necessarily to the other 24 to 70 millimeter lenses so i'm going to show you some technical visualizations so that we can see the difference in each four of these zoom lenses real quick though i do want to make a note that if you haven't been keeping up and haven't seen the video i do have my new preset packs for adobe lightroom as well as capture one out now this is a project that i started two years ago and i'm really excited about this this was just something i was doing for myself because i wanted to be able to get the same color interpretation and rendition of contrast that i was getting on film of course applying this to digital this gives you more control over the dynamic range and all the great things that you get out of digital and so i wanted a way to combine those two things so about two years ago i started with fujifilm and i started emulating some of my favorite fujifilms so things like provia or even velvia and then i started working on kodak simulations because i wanted to be able to get a really cool kodachrome type look it's a film that hasn't been available for a long time probably will never be available again but it has a certain way of rendering contrast in reds and these are some of my favorites i've got several different kodachrome simulations in here anything from the 1930s up to some of my favorites which would be the high contrast look of the 1970s versions of this film and there's other films in here as well from both kodak and fujifilm and so i fondly call these kodakifide and fujified because you now can kodakify or fujify your own images so if you want more information if you want to use these yourself check out the link in the description but right now we're going to look at some 24 to 70 millimeter zoom lenses so before we get into testing and i've got some visualizations that i want to show you but i want to say this that first of all we're comparing all four of these lenses we're like comparing olympian athletes it's like you know when you go to the olympics you're seeing the best of the best compete none of these lenses are bad and so i'm this is literally i mean we are getting very nitpicky in terms of the differences between these but they are notable and i want to make that point as we get into this so the way that i work with these is i use what is called a field map now this is a technique that i've used a lot essentially what we want to do is get an image of something that is flat that has texture and we want to be shooting in the distance so we can see near and far and so what we're going to do is take this into photoshop we're going to run it through the find edges filter and that is going to give us a visualization of the field of focus that we're going to be looking at here so if you were interested in learning how to make these is something that i do with all of my own lenses for testing i have a whole dedicated video i will link it up here i will put it in the show description as well and so i would highly encourage you guys to try this with your own lenses it's also worth noting that these are all done with the lens wide open so at its largest aperture setting the reason for that is that is typically where a lens is at its most vulnerable in other words if you stop a lens down it starts correcting things you get improved contrast improved sharpness obviously your field of focus increases and so what we're doing is we're looking at these wide open so i want to see where they are at their weakest now a couple things that i want to say about a 24 to 70 millimeter lens now historically this is actually a very difficult lens to design it's the ultimate utility lens but there's something about that focal range that actually makes this very difficult to engineer from an optical standpoint and so one of the problems that you're going to see typically with any 24 to 70 millimeter lens is that its widest focal length which is going to be 24 millimeters is that it's prone to a type of distortion that we have in that field curvature that we typically refer to as a mustache or wave pattern and you can see it clearly we're looking at the original 24 to 70 millimeter g master this is the the original sony lens and so you're gonna see that curve pattern now what does this tell us two things first of all there is a curve in the field of focus also you can see that it sort of falls off on the sides it's not as sharp that darkness decreases so this tells us two things one we're going to have problems with sharpness corner to corner especially when we get towards the edges it's also going to tell you that if you're shooting something flat like architecture like a building or something like that and you're wide open that you're going to have things that drift in and out of focus now this doesn't necessarily impact every type of image for instance if you're shooting portraits and you're blowing out the background generally this is not a big deal but from a technical standpoint if you're shooting things that involve a great deal of detail this is something that you want to know now we've been looking at the original g-master this is the one that sony put out it's the first g-master lens and it has a lot of problems there's a huge amount of curvature to it as we start going through the focal range you're going to see that even at 35 millimeters is still very curved and if we go to 50 and 70 it smooths out but let's compare this a second with the new lens this is the 24 to 70 millimeter g master ii and you can see that there is a little bit of distortion in here but this is very well controlled and for the most part it's going to be fairly flat if you're shooting wide open now what's really impressive is where the other lens did not seem to get rid of that curvature as you zoomed out from 35 millimeter 50 millimeter this lens does and by the time you get to 70 millimeter it looks like any prime lens should just got a little bit more depth of field because it's an f 2.8 but this is very impressively controlled it really is good this is one of the best designs of any 24 millimeter to 70 that i've seen anywhere in fact let's do just that let's compare it to the other two mirrorless systems so if we look at the nikon 2470 you're gonna notice that it has a little bit of feel curvature remember that is normal it's just not as tightened up as what we're seeing with the sony g master ii it does get better as we progress towards 70 millimeters but it's just not quite as tight as what we're seeing out of the new sony in fact i think this lens sits somewhere between the original g master and then the new version if we look at the canon however it performs very well it has better edge to edge sharpness and as we zoom out it is very well controlled i would say that the canon is probably second in this little test behind the sony g master ii now another note that i want to say about the canon version of this lens is the canon is the only lens in this entire test that features optical image stabilization so if that's something that's important to you if you shoot a lot in low light or you're doing a lot of handheld video well that's going to be the only game in town and it's going to perform well with that in mind now it is the heaviest lens of the bunch so if ergonomics are important that's another pro of the sony over the canon another thing i want to say that i think is really important in the context of comparing field charts to one another is that we're just simply comparing a certain aspect of each one of these lenses now if you're wondering from just an opinion standpoint what is the best lens this is not going to tell you the best lens is the one that you feel is right for you i will say what this is showing us is it's showing us an addition to field curvature it's showing us edge to edge sharpness if that is important to you i think you can see from the results easily what the best lens is going to be however having said that sony are not replacing the original g master lens with the g master ii it will be a little bit cheaper and if this is something you don't need like if you shoot just a lot of portraits and you just want a general day-to-day purpose lens you don't have a lot of need for video capabilities then the original still a decent pick as well and for that matter the offerings that we have from canon and nikon are really good as well as i said when we started this these are all four incredible lenses we're in an interesting point with technology and it didn't used to be this way in the 70s and 80s particularly with zoom lenses zoom lenses were just never as good as prime lenses we didn't have the technology to make the elements and all of the nice things that we have in these lenses now and so comparing modern lenses is just a little bit like splitting hairs in some ways however having said that this is about the new sony lens and it's one that i've been really impressed with i love the images that i'm getting out of this i'm a big fan of compact cameras and so having a smaller lens is a big deal to me and the fact that this is also in my opinion the best performer of these four it really makes a big difference and it's a lens that i will be putting into my kit and so i would love to know what you guys think though so drop me a comment below and i'll see you guys in the next video until then later\n"