I agree with James, thank you for taking the time.

Thanks, dpreview for taking the time to post pre-production pictures!

Not being a optical expert at all, I'm trying to understand the DOF we can expect with this lens at, let's say' 1m distance and f2.0, given

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circle_of_confusion

so that pictures look tack sharp when pixel peeping?

Anyone?

This gallery seems no better than what greatly surprised me just a few days ago, a Samsung NX200 with a 30mm/f2.0 pancake. Comparing their portrait shots, I think Samsung gives sharper center and nicer bokeh. Come on Sony, your Korean competitor is half priced, and it is a PANCAKE.

dpreview rocks! Thank you so much for your great reviews and for sharing your knowledge with us all. The last posts make me laugh. Grow up you guys! Bullied at home by the wife??

Depending on what your intention was, of asking the worst possible photographer to test drive the camera and lens, I would think it was a gross mistake to be so careless and uninterested in what you offer your readers. Absolute lack of professionalism, I might think. Unless you of course wanted to make SONY and Zeiss appear in the worst possible light intentionally. I think an apology to your readers is merited.

I think we have to blame a mediocre photgrapher for taking some aweful instead of what the fanbois expect awesome shots. Not impressed.

But as several fanbois state : you can maybe save sony with hours in LR3 or photoshop on those massive raw files, which is what we all really want to do, with $3000 monitors....right...

Is there a special reason why DPReview gave this combo to such a bad photographer ? There is not a single picture that I consider to be a "photo".

To be honest ... I call these samples a real shame for this site.
Sorry to say this.

Wasn't too impressed with these Sony shots. Seems like every shot that had a person or action was very soft. I thought that this was the camera that was going to bridge warring countries?

That said, do Bidyut, you can't judge a company on product failure, as every company is going to have them. What you grade them on is how well they take care of the customer after something does happen. In past repairs, my experience is that Nikon has been slow at times getting my camera back to me, but it was fixed properly, so I really have no qualms or bash its reputation.

I hate Sony!!!--did you notice the purple fringing in that picture of a drink in the wine glass? Not just fringing, but purple bleeding everywhere!
Oh....wait....it's a glass of wine...
Seriously, I love these Canonikoniacs who push their noses against CRT monitors and pronounce their verdict on the picture samples.
How about waiting a bit until dpreview can review the pictures?
They got the originals and I trust that they will give the camera an objective review. Right now, you could substitute these shots for a lot of dSLRs and no one could identify the brand of lens or camera. In fact, I would bet that some dSLR shots could be switched for a decent P&S and no one here could guess which comes from what with any certainty.
So...let's all take a breath and stop being fan-boys and haters. The pros at dpreview will soon speak with authority on the picture quality, etc.

PHENOMENAL !!!

I don't know what's wrong with the rest of your eyesight, but that lens is amazing on the NEX-7!! It produces better photos than ANY of the Nikon DSLR's (with the possible exception of the D3x)!!! And just so that you know, I owned a D700 and a 24-70mm and a 14-24mm.

In my opinion, there is nothing close to this combo.

I am buying it FOR SURE. (and getting rid of the rest of my equipment).

This is the way to go.

I am already planning my trips!!!

Bob from Ohio

Carl Zeiss would be rolling over in his grave if he found out what Sony was doing to his name.

I bought my first digital Sony camera, the highly anticipated revolutionary 8mp DSC-828 because it had a Carl Zeiss Sonnar T* lens. This was probably the worst digital camera lens ever produced, more complaints about purple fringing/chromatic aberration than any other lens.

Fast forward eight years later... Sony produces yet another Carl Zeiss Sonnar T* lens for the highly anticipated revolutionary 24mp NEX-7.

It's beginning to feel like deja vu.

C'mon team!

All these samples show is that the NEX-7 plus JPEG isn't the best combo to pixel peep on.

That and the Zeiss may be a bit overpriced. Who knows.

Heck, even the exalted Oly jpegs look like crud if you pixel peep and they have half the pixels.

Reserve judgement for RAW.

These test photos are seriously worrying.

Because the photographs themselves are so bad it makes it harder to judge the lens/camera but if you try hard and imagine that the photos were any good you come away extremely disappointed.

Disappointed enough in my case to consider cancelling a pre-order on the camera.

It is a Zeiss lens but shows absolutely no character. Bland would be the kindest word that you could use. The dynamic range is average.

This glass just can't make up its mind about anything. It is struggling.

Unlike the photos posted here if you look at photos taken with classic Zeiss lenses, say those for Hasselblad, there is no comparison. It is just not possible to take a bad photo with Hasselblad lenses. There is some voodoo magic in there that says 'we have given you a lens created by the hand of god, step up to the mark.'

This lens says 'Sony paid us a lot of money to put our name on this. We are really sorry'.

Agree, this lens does not provide amazing photos at f1.8. The subject in the photos are borderline blurry and just do not pop at you. The photos do get better when the lens is stopped down. But what is the point of buying this lens at $1000 when it only provides the best pictures when it is stopped down.

The Lumix 20mm f1.7 lens provides much better photos wide open when paired with a Lumix G3 body- the photos just pop at you and have amazing contrast and sharpness. The larger aperture 20mm f1.7 is 1/3 the price of this Sony f1.8 lens.

Perhaps that is why the Micro 4/3 system has big advantage over the NEX system, the 4/3 system has amazing lenses that have better sharpness and contrast when used wide open.

DP review should be able to put together a better run of test shots from what must be a $2000 combination. The choice of shallow depth of field on many shots is ill adivsed if they are tyring to show the sharpness of the lens. It also would appear from exposure and contrast that sony have put their bucks on pixels over dynamic range.

Hmmm, I must be the only one who is disappointed a bit.

This lens and the camera are good. The sharpness is good in F1.8, and in F2.8 it is excellent. And the boken and colour is nice.

Don't know why there are always complaints about the lens. See the sample picture of the lizard. It is shoot with F1.8, and the lizard iis full of detail when you view the full size of the image. Can "any other modern compact camera" do this? Don't make nonsense statement here please.

"At the press launch we've had a chance to shoot with Sony's latest E-mount prime lens". They didn't say they can take away the camera, so fewer low light sample is understandable.

In my experience with over 45 years as a photographer THE best lens manufacturers are Carl Zeiss, Leica and Fujinon. For years I used Zeiss lenses on Hasselblad and was never disappointed, only impressed. The build quality is unsurpassed and yes you pay for quality. Twenty years ago I always paid over $1,000 dollars and more for the Zeiss lenses. In todays value of the US dollar a $1,000 for this 24 mm f1.8 is a very fair price. I have found that to evaluate any images on DPReview I download the image and bring it into Photoshop to do critical analysis. What is not stated is whether any in-camera sharpening was set. When DPReview gives us some RAW images from the Sony NEX-7 is when the real fun begins. Everyone should take serious note that the NEX-7 is a "preproduction" unit. Sony innovation with the NEX-7 has caused a paradigm shift in camera design and I'm sure shock waves in the industry.

Sony please lower the automatic noise reduction in the final release. Many of the samples here and in the NEX-7 gallery suffer from that plastic, gradation-less look that noise reduction produces. A more natural look can be attained replacing plastic noiseless gradations with more noisy but more natural gradations which also happen to preserve detail...

Am I ill-informed to think that the only reason to sacrifice big wampum for a F1.8 lens is to improve low light results? If so, then why are the test shots almost entirely taken in sunlight bright enough for F8.0 or even a ND filter? Only the lizard and stout photos come any where close to low light. Hand-held shots, taken at night or in a dim indoor setting, would be the relevant measures. True or false?

This has to be the most over hyped lens to date.

Too P&S-ish in my opinion. Can not see any difference from any other modern compact camera (other than the image size of course). I was expecting more DSLR-like quality.

good and useful shots dprev, thank you ….
… and dare i say, the pictures are looking good ….
…. and, the shower of commentators above …. well, seems a fairly normal dp comedy show ...

Fantastic lens! Would like to have one, but can't use it on a Nikon.

Well, as expected 24Mpixel is too much. I tried resizing some of the samples to 12Mpixel and then back to 24Mpixel, comparing side to side to the original image... and guess what? No difference.
24Mpixel is ridiculous on a crop sensor.

why are the horizons crooked in so many of the photos?

I would expect some night shots when we are talking about a fast prime lens. For the shiny day photos I actually am not impressed. It just does not give you the feeling when a 600 euro D5100 attached to 35/1.8 with a total amount of 800 euros, but its just my amateur photographer idea.

I see purple fringing in #690 top center column of metal bread stand - not very good for such an expensive fixed focus lens