It's a pleasure to work with this lens

[ondrejbobek]

The lens is very small, lightweight, and a pleasure to work with on the Sony A7RIII.
Sharpness is excellent at any aperture I normally use (1.4-5.6), open aperture can be used at long distances. At minimum focus distance and f1.4 aperture it is softer, the very extreme corners of the image are also weaker.

Aberration is less visible than on the Sony 50 ZA, but it can be found in photos.
The long distance refocus is very fast, AF is not audible. What I notice most is the silence and a kind of stillness (I don't notice the movement of the lenses during focusing at all). The focusing ring has a fairly loose movement. Contrast in the backlight holds up better the GM than the 50 ZA.

 

[DP13Photo]

The lens is very small, lightweight, and a pleasure to work with on the Sony A7RIII.
Sharpness is excellent at any aperture I normally use (1.4-5.6), open aperture can be used at long distances. At minimum focus distance and f1.4 aperture it is softer, the very extreme corners of the image are also weaker.

Aberration is less visible than on the Sony 50 ZA, but it can be found in photos.
The long distance refocus is very fast, AF is not audible. What I notice most is the silence and a kind of stillness (I don't notice the movement of the lenses during focusing at all). The focusing ring has a fairly loose movement. Contrast in the backlight holds up better the GM than the 50 ZA.

Thanks much for sharing your experience with this lens. I am very tempted by it, especially for its dedicated aperture ring, but due to your comments, I may stay with my Samyang 50/1.4 ii which is sharp wide open at minimum focus distance and f1.4.

 

[ondrejbobek]

Gallery from Sony 50mm f/1.4 GM

Sony 50 1.4 GM jpeg & DNG Gallery

 

[Manc91]

The lens is very small, lightweight, and a pleasure to work with on the Sony A7RIII.
Sharpness is excellent at any aperture I normally use (1.4-5.6), open aperture can be used at long distances. At minimum focus distance and f1.4 aperture it is softer, the very extreme corners of the image are also weaker.

Aberration is less visible than on the Sony 50 ZA, but it can be found in photos.
The long distance refocus is very fast, AF is not audible. What I notice most is the silence and a kind of stillness (I don't notice the movement of the lenses during focusing at all). The focusing ring has a fairly loose movement. Contrast in the backlight holds up better the GM than the 50 ZA.

How do you find the focusing is at its minimum focusing distance at 1.4? I saw the reviews mentioning that it was softer but I didn’t expect it to be as soft as it is. I also find that the focus is always slightly off (on my a7c) at 1.4 but I feel like that’s just down to my initial usage and not being used to shooting at such a fast aperture (didn’t have any problems with my 35mm GM)

 

[ondrejbobek]

When I shoot at the minimum focusing distance, I usually use a slightly higher aperture number, because of too shallow DOF. I shoot wide open from maybe 60-70cm and it's not a problem there anymore.

For example, the 50 ZA closes slightly when shooting at shorter distances than about 2m, even with the aperture set to f1.4.

Focusing works with the A7RIII similarly to other modern Sony lenses. I believe it would be even better with a newer body, but I don't need it yet, both bodies have just over 200,000 photos and work great.

 

[Martin_99]

The lens is very small, lightweight, and a pleasure to work with on the Sony A7RIII.
Sharpness is excellent at any aperture I normally use (1.4-5.6), open aperture can be used at long distances. At minimum focus distance and f1.4 aperture it is softer, the very extreme corners of the image are also weaker.

Aberration is less visible than on the Sony 50 ZA, but it can be found in photos.
The long distance refocus is very fast, AF is not audible. What I notice most is the silence and a kind of stillness (I don't notice the movement of the lenses during focusing at all). The focusing ring has a fairly loose movement. Contrast in the backlight holds up better the GM than the 50 ZA.

How do you find the focusing is at its minimum focusing distance at 1.4? I saw the reviews mentioning that it was softer but I didn’t expect it to be as soft as it is. I also find that the focus is always slightly off (on my a7c) at 1.4 but I feel like that’s just down to my initial usage and not being used to shooting at such a fast aperture (didn’t have any problems with my 35mm GM)

There is maybe a question if it's really matter at f1.4. At roughly 40-50cm on 50mm lens is DoF almost unusable, so I would stop down to at least f2.8 anyway.

 

[Eric Hensel]

Gallery from Sony 50mm f/1.4 GM

Sony 50 1.4 GM jpeg & DNG Gallery

Thanks. This is a great comparison. The ZA is only slightly less corrected for CA.
Are you going to keep yours?

 

[ondrejbobek]

I will sell the Sony 50/1.4 ZA. It's still a great lens and has served me really well, but I wanted something smaller and lighter. I'll take the fact that the new GM is a little brighter (0.2EV in Lightroom) and optically a bit better as a nice bonus.