Sony E 11mm F1.8 Evaluation

Introduction

Ease of Use

The Sony E 11mm F1.8 is a completely weather-sealed, ultra-wide-angle prime lens with a devoted Sony E mount that’s product of steel. Communication between lens and digicam physique is supplied by way of 10 electrical contacts.

Observe nonetheless that in an effort to take full benefit of the weatherproofing, you have to to mount it on a equally weather-sealed physique, not like the Sony ZV-E10 digicam that we examined it with.

The weather-proofing conjures up confidence that the lens will survive all types of inclement circumstances.

Contemplating how small and lightweight it’s, the E 11mm F1.8 lens is sort of effectively constructed, though it is not fairly on a par with the corporate’s costlier G-branded lenses.

Tipping the scales at simply 181 g (6.4 oz.) and measuring 66 x 57.5 mm (2-5/8 x 2-3/8 in.) in diameter and size, the Sony E 11mm F1.8 is a really compact and light-weight ultra-wide-angle prime lens you could carry round all day with out noticing.

The Sony ZV-E10 used for this check proved to be match for the lens, providing very pleasing steadiness and quick and near-silent auto-focusing.

The E 11mm F1.8 prime’s primary exterior management is the adequately sized focus ring.

You possibly can rapidly and simply use the main target mode swap to toggle the perform of the lens between AF and MF.

Guide focusing is completed in a standard trend, with the main target ring electronically coupled to the shifting lens parts and working with linear-response, though there aren’t any exhausting stops at both finish. Focusing is totally inner and the 55mm filter thread doesn’t rotate on focus.

With the E 11mm F1.8 lens connected to a Sony ZV-E10 physique, focusing proved to be satisfyingly fast in most conditions because of the Linear Motor system which makes use of two separate motors.

This mixture is able to locking deal with a topic virtually immediately, even when alternating between shut and faraway topics, and it is nearly silent too.

In excessive low-light conditions you might expertise somewhat focus looking on the lengthy finish, though utilizing the quick f/1.8 most aperture largely helps to keep away from this.

This lens doesn’t characteristic built-in picture stabilisation, as a substitute counting on the digicam physique to provide it, which is able to show irritating for homeowners of Alpha digicam our bodies with out IBIS, once more just like the ZV-E10 that Sony despatched us for testing.

The lens has a customisable focus maintain button which retains the lens locked to the present focusing distance, helpful for those who’re auto-focusing and don’t desire the lens to try to discover focus once more. It will probably additionally, amongst different issues, be usefully set to Eye AF.

Included within the field is a slim petal-shaped lens hood (ALC-SH170), which is straightforward to connect to the lens – merely line up the pink line with the pink marking on the lens and twist into place till it clicks. It’s also possible to reverse the lens hood for lowering the general measurement when transporting the lens. This lens accepts 55mm entrance filters.

Focal Vary

The 15mm focal size supplies an angle of view of 104 levels.

Chromatic Aberrations

Chromatic aberrations, sometimes seen as purple or blue fringes alongside contrasty edges, aren’t an excessive amount of of an issue with the Sony E 11mm F1.8 lens, besides in areas of very excessive distinction.

Vignetting

With the lens set to its most aperture of f/1.8, there may be some gentle fall-off within the corners, requiring you to cease down by a minimum of 3 f-stops to fully stop it.

Distortion

The Sony E 11mm F1.8 does not exhibit very a lot barrel distortion in JPEG information, as you may see within the photograph beneath, because of in-camera lens distortion controls which might be routinely utilized (and which may’t really be turned off).

JPEG

It is a totally different story for the Uncooked file, although, which reveals tons of barrel distortion which you may must both appropriate in post-processing or apply a lens profile.

RAW

Sunstars and Flare

The Sony E 11mm F1.8 is able to producing good sunstars when stopped-down to f/16, as proven beneath, though the lens is considerably prone to flare when taking pictures immediately into the solar even with the equipped lens hood fitted.

Macro

The Sony E 11mm F1.8 shouldn’t be actually a macro lens, nevertheless it does supply a usefully shut focus level of 15cm when auto-focusing and even nearer 12cm when guide focusing, with a most magnification of 0.13x for AF and 0.20x for MF.

Bokeh

Bokeh is a phrase used for the out-of-focus areas of {a photograph}, and is normally described in qualitative phrases, akin to easy / creamy / harsh and so on.

Sony have paid shut consideration to this side of lens use, using a 7-segment diaphragm with rounded blades, which mixed with the quick most aperture permits for extra pleasing bokeh.

In our view, their efforts have been pretty profitable for a wide-angle prime lens – see the examples beneath to evaluate for your self.

Sharpness

As a way to present you the way sharp the Sony E 11mm F1.8 lens is, we’re offering 100% crops on the next web page.