Lensrentals and the mysterious case of the Sony FE 70-200mm F2.8 GM

Oh I see. Thanks. What's behind the underperformance of the lens though? I am not a pro-tog with the trinity zooms, but I'm interested nevertheless.

I can't say yet, some of it is still under contract. But in general it's a variance thing.

I have to repeat all the testing on Lensrentals-owned copies, and we're kind of backed up with some contract work. A couple of weeks at least, maybe a month, I'm afraid.

Cheaper? ROFL. Sorry DVT80111, but I don't think you know how this game works. Did Sony's SLR lenses turn out to be cheaper, because they didn't need OSS?

Tariag: I'm not sure what you mean. Sony uses a combination of lens IS and IBIS in its A7 series cameras including the A7II and the A7RII. The stabilization is IBIS-only if the lens doesn't have OIS.

Camley: even if Sony claims that, I have never seen a clearly visible improvement when having both. On Panasonic the gain is easily 1 stop or more.

Yesh, isn't the 35-105 af supposed to be one of the trickier lenses in the Minolta AF zoom lineup to dis- (and re-)assemble?

Stevo: I sympathize. I had enough fun with the ball bearing on a Minolta MD 50 1,2. That itty bit can fly quite the distance across the room before disappearing in a carpet.

Who paid you to post that comment?

It's 12:30am on a Saturday night, so I can put my hand on my heart and say that nobody has been paying me for quite a few hours, at this point :)

There's being invited to the next Sony show, being flown down and put up in a nice hotel and being given exclusive access to the new cameras and lenses so you can feature them on your blog (if you say nice things and omit the obvious bad things).

Not exactly "getting paid" but it has a huge influence on the information being put out. I don't trust any of them any more...

Donald (aka EvilTed), how do you find the time to make all these posts on Twitter, let alone on DPR as well?

Fake Nooze really gets under your skin doesn't it. :)

@EvilTed every manufactures does this, so should you never trust any of them again for the rest of your life?

@iamatrix, @EvilTed, et al - can anyone give an example of a lens that's widely praised by sites like DPR but are, in fact, dogs? I own only 3 "modern" lenses, and all of them are deserving of acclaim. My other lenses are all "legacy glass".

I'm amazed that 10 people "liked" the comment by iamatrix.

It appears that the curse of "fake news" has made its way into the photographic community. . .

But Barney.....
With all due respect....
There is a reason sites like Luminous Landscape doesn't get Canon cameras to review.
They angered the Canon gods.
They were too critical of Canon.
So websites like DPR and photography publications aren't as critical of cameras as someone like Luminous Landscape.
And DPR has parted ways with Andrew Reid, and you now ban links to his webpage in comments, but Andrew is more brutally honest and direct.
It's rare for DPR to be so direct, unless something is off the scale awful.
So in my opinion DPR tends to soft pan things that are bad.
Just an opinion.
I know the original comment was about being paid to praise something.
I'm just commenting on the reviewing in general.
I don't consider my comments complaints about DPR.
Just a statement about how I think things are.

EvilTed - Curious, why are you here taking time to read and comment if you don't trust anyone here?

#Kerry....
Why does it have to be all or nothing?...
:-)
There are shades of grey you know....
:-) :-)

But you can, right, tell the truth and all? Clever man you!

Cameras and lenses are technical gadgets. If you want to review something, you have to put up technical quality measurements. You put up image samples. You put up DPR studio test, of Boyle Joeff Raw test (cinema), or TDP Studio tests, and of course Autofocus tests in video form. You put Video samples to download. You put RAW images to play with. You put up pictures of the product from every angle, and of course read specifications to know what's there and what's not.

I think we have an incredibly solid database being updated everyday on every photographic equipment, that are much more than enough to KNOW the product very well with having to read a single subjective word by a writer.

These always accompany text written by the writer. If you have an obsession that they might be paid, just stick to the facts in the reviews and ignore the text.

judge not lest be judged. We're all compromised in one way or another. I myself will literally do anything for money. The staff at this website will trade their journalistic credibility for nice trips to exotic locations. So what? the Devil offers much worse deals as any anti-gay congressman or minister who has been caught with a teenage boy can tell you.

EvilTed, that's a very simplistic way of seeing things, and also unwarranted distrust in the ethics of journalists. Firstly, if the manufacturers did not fly journalists to venues for the introduction of new products, how would they get there? Their publication certainly does not have the money to spare, and neither have they themselves. Of course you can decide not to go, but would it be fair to only feed your readers with press releases?

What usually happens is that the journalist will first write quite a positive piece on the new camera or car or whatever is the product in question, except if there are glaring shortcomings he/she already knows about.

Later a sample of the camera or car or whatever will be made available to the journalist for testing, and at this stage shortcomings and faults in the design can be thrashed out and reported on.

FLruckas - Grey is fine. The statement was that he didn't trust any of them anymore. Hardly grey. Hence my question out of curiosity.

I didn't say that they were paying people directly to say nice things.
I just suggested that it is in their collective interest not to make waves (if they want to get a future invite).

I just find it hard to believe that none of the set of people, and they represent most of the blogs and review sites we all read, can find problems during these initial review sessions that we, the paying public find out immediately.
Maybe they are all drunk on the free champagne and not paying attention? :)

Two recent examples include the Sony A7r II locking up the UI when writing a file and the Sony 85mm F1.4 GM being a noisy clunker :(

How come nobody in their collective set found either of these problems?

Shhhh.....
And there was a mid level Sony video camera that the RAW was screwed up on and the major cinema cites never caught it.
It got caught in the wild.
Like I said above, Luminous Landscape basically got banned by Canon for things they said....
It's a bit like the blue code of silence...
But it is what it is...
:-)
You make the assumption the UI and clunker items were never found.
You should ask why they were never reported.
They were probably found.
:-)
Things are just are the way they are.
You're not going to change them...
:-)

@Flruckas

I thought I gave a very valid reason why these things were never reported? :)

I'm not trying to change anything, just letting them all know that they are too obvious. It only happens with Sony and this is why I cannot trust any of these people to give honest, technical reviews of Sony products including the bad parts.

Sony are the only company that employs this type of "marketing".
I find it all somewhat disingenuous, that's all...

"I don't trust any of them any more..."

Exactly. You can argue all you want that the junkets and "sponsored videos" do not affect reviews but the first time someone reads a glowing partially junket-based review then picks up a camera that turns out to be a real turd.... BAM your credability goes out the window.

Your special relationships may have helped your bottom line but you've lost trust and that's almost impossible to get back.

I take your reviews as a data point. A faulty, biased, shoveling lock ups under the rug data point but now I look elsewhere, a lot more elsewhere before purchasing.

@ligthandpray "I'm amazed that 10 people "liked" the comment by iamatrix."
He's paying them.

Evolution took a strange path for us human beings, at a certain point our ancestors casually had a little more intelligence than needed, and used it to adapt to an environment that they were not suitable to. Evolution continued through that path till humans conquered the whole world, and after society was born we had a safe place to live, a place where every little improvement made in technology could be safely stored, to have a solid expanding base for any new generation to use the spare intelligence not needed because of survival was sure. If you take a human being, and you take away anything society provided him, he would at best have the abilities to just survive.

Evolution is not about "merely surviving". Evolution is the continuous change of species. The "better" individuals of each species have a better chance of survival and passing on their "better" genes. This means that effectively each species competes with others. A certain level that is "merely surviving" at one point would mean "becoming extinct" a thousand or a million years later because the competition has gotten better. Therefore continuous change, adaptation and improvement, an eternal trade-off between specialisation and flexibility is at the very heart of evolution.
Now, we can discuss how or why our conscious perpetual developments from taming fire to the moon landings mirror the unconscious perpetual developments by evolution, but I don't think we need to invoke any creator for that either.

LOL Sexual Selection ..... you can never be good enough for the opposite sex .... the bar just keeps getting higher.

A failure of imagination is not proof of anything. People do all sorts of things for all sorts of reasons. People may derive money (a generic form of value) by building something which makes life more enjoyable. (high performance lenses) These people can be employed and earn a living and provide for a family instead of delving into a risky life of crime which could end their life prematurely... Use some imagination for Pete's sake.

Being a highly skilled engineer in the lens industry saved me from a life of crime.

That's a perspective I hadn't expected.

Evolution isn't about survival, it is about competition, i.e., about expansion and dominance. And technology is one means of a heck to dominate, for sure. Can't imagine how anybody could not see how evolution leads to technology. BTW, it emerged when mankind would almost disappear. Human the tool maker saved our asses. And not surprisingly, most people today wouldn't survive w/o technology.
And if you are amazed at this Sony lens, then have a look at a CERN detector ...

Lensrentals tests lenses on their optical bench, without the camera body.

Personally, I'm more interested in the results from lens/body combinations. How does an A2 print of the same scene shot with various lenses on the same body compare? How's the autofocus? Is the lens robust?

While I find the Lensrentals teardowns (and opinions) fascinating, my purchase decisions are decided by example photos and user opinions.

I saw the aren't pretty words.
I thought there might be more like I said.
What about it wasn't great?