14 DAY TRIAL // Along with the world's first full-frame interchangeable lens cameras, 24MP A7 and 36MP A7R, Sony also announced five new full-frame lenses that promise to take mirrorless photography to another level.
Among the five newly introduced lenses we can find the E-mount Zeiss Sonnar T* FE 55mm f1.8 ZA, which was recently evaluated by DxO Labs to see just how well it performs on the new Sony A7R mirrorless camera.
The Sony Zeiss Sonnar T* FE 55mm f1.8 ZA comes with a simple construction if compared with other lenses in its class, featuring only 7 elements in 5 groups, each of them using the Carl Zeiss T* anti-reflective coating for improved contrast and color fidelity and reduced flare and ghosting.
When tested on a Sony A7R full frame mirrorless camera, the Sony Zeiss Sonnar T* FE 55mm f1.8 ZA received a total score of 42, which places it among the top lenses of its class, close to the optical performance of the pricier Zeiss Distagon Otus 55mm f1.4.
The lens comes with outstanding sharpness levels at any aperture value, having less than 5 percent loss across the entire frame. Astigmatism is very well corrected thanks to Zeiss' anti-reflective coating, keeping horizontal and vertical acutance around constant values.
Chromatic aberration and distortion are at minimum levels, while the 1.8Tstop transmission reveals that the lens has an outstanding optical formula with little loss of light.
Head-to-head with the best DSLR lens on the market (Carl Zeiss Distagon T* Otus 1.4/55 ZF.2), the new Zeiss Sonar packs similar optical performance with the same peak sharpness level, although the Distagon is optimized for better performance at large apertures.
The Sony Zeiss Sonnar T* FE 55mm f1.8 ZA full-frame lens is one the best optics available on the market for E-mount mirrorless cameras, boasting a high image quality, impressive sharpness levels, and bright transmission.