SHUTTER JOURNEY SINGAPORE

 

Our 4th Sony Alpha Lens came in the form of DT 16-105mm F3.5-5.6 SAM. I remembered we picked up this lens from Changi Airport’s Duty-Free shop while transiting for a holiday. We want something wider for landscape photos and a better range for general walkabout so this focal range of 16mm (wider than most usual lenses) to a useful range of 105mm (24mm-158mm on Full Frame bodies) are just perfect! Getting it from Duty-Free also means slightly cheaper than usual street price too! So we bought it there and then.

*Picture: Sony SAL (DT) 16-105mm F/3.5-5.6 SAM

This DT 16-105mm was designed & manufactured as a premium and upmarket "kit lens" for the A700. This is no ordinary kit lens indeed, look at the lens group you will find the presence of 1 ED glass and 2 aspherical glass – not common for most kit lenses – which already explains the RRP which this lens is commanding. At wide open (F3.5), the circular apeture gives a background blur almost similar to a F2.8 while increasing contrast and cuts abberation which makes this lens sweeter to use.

Lens construction is excellent, the lens feels solid and expensive (well, it is!) and very well put-together. I personally like the zoom ring, very smooth and the gear ratio was designed for faster zoom, very nice feature.

Using it, this lens produce excellent picture quality and the range is great for practically any form of photography! Size and weight is travel-friendly and if you can ONLY bring one lens with you on a trip? This is that One lens you will need.

*Picture: Sony SAL (DT) 16-105mm F/3.5-5.6 SAM

 

While exploring with Sony lenses, we itched to try portrait shots one day and we started to look at the various options available to us. This purchase is to be our 3rd Sony Alpha lens so all specifications are considered and factored before deciding on which lens to acquire. Due to my Canon’s influence, I was looking at the 50mm F1.8 and the 50mm F1.4, which after some serious comparisons and reserching online, we picked the latter. It was a wise move. The F1.4 cost 2 times of the F1.8 (based on Sony Style’s RRP), but the quality of the F1.4 is 2 times better too! I am not going to touch on the F1.8 here since I bought the F1.4, so I will share more on this lens.

*Picture: Sony SAL 50mm F/1.4 SAM

The 50mm F1.4 is a re-incarnation of the Minolta AF 50mm 1:1.4 RS that’s been around since 1990. The Sony version (July 2006) came about from the acquisition of the (then) bleeding Konica-Minolta. Cosmetically the design is tweaked to bring it closer to the Alpha line, but the lens and technology behind this lens is still essentially KM. This 7 apeture blades lens is a super medium range lens. Not exactly cheap or expensive, we picked the 50mm was due to the cropped factor on our A230 that gave us 75mm – a super effective working range for portraiture work and F1.4 for the win. (lolz) Lens build is solid, usually expected from a medium range Sony standard (prime) lens and it feels good when handled. The sales for this lens was slightly threatened when Sigma launched its 50mm F1.4 EX DG HSM for Sony Alpha mount. But soon users was dumping the Sigma and coming back to Sony’s version. (google yourself why this is so.)
(Don’t get me wrong, I love my Sigma lenses. But apparently, Sigma 50mm F1.4 EX DG HSM works very well for Canon & Nikon bodies, but not exactly well on Sony Alpha & Pentax Mount – answers and reasonings can be found all over the internet, so read up yourself. :)~ )

At F1.4, the background blur (Bokeh) is out of this world. Extremely "creamy" and consistent, the blur can sometimes be mistaken or pass off as soft focus which made this lens an ace for portraiture work. The picture quality is comparable to Nikon & Canon’s equivalents which is of high quality. So if you are looking around and considering a lens for portrait or multi-purpose use, look no further, get the Sony SAL 50mm F 1.4 SAM.

 

We bought this SAL 75-300mm as the 2nd Sony lens. We needed the range and the price for this lens is good, very cheap to be exact, so we bought it. For those considering this lens, I would like to stress that this is a pure outdoor lens. It performed well outdoor but usability drop when used indoor. I supposed the focal range has very little use indoors anyway. This lens sits on the lower end range of the Sony Alpha Lens family, but definitely not a "cheapo" when performance is concerned. this lens produce sharp and crisp images which we ourselves were quite surprised with the end result. This 7 apeture blades lens is well built, feels solid enough to take mild abuse and it is compact enough to bring it anywhere with you. For those who are not familiar with Sony Alpha Lenses, this Lens SAL75-300 is a face-lifted and improved version of the Minolta 75-300mm F4.5-5.6 II which used to rule the compact zoom segment amongst the rest of the medium to telephoto lenses in the Minolta family.

*Picture: Sony SAL 75-300mm F/4.5-5.6 SAM

When used on our A230 (1.5X Cropped), this lens gives us an impressionable 113mm to 450mm range that allows us to do wildlife & outdoor portraiture work. And among the competition, I can safely say the Sony unit is well designed and constructed which is on par to Nikon’s equivalent which is deemed as the best built lens for this focal range. (Try your hands on these 2 lenses and you will know what I meant). Far superior than Canon’s EF 75-300mm F4-5.6 III (or even the USM version which I used to owned), this lens is screaming value-for-money! The zoom capabilty is x 04 zoom and the magnification ratio is 1:4, which made this lens a possible macro at 100mm stop – but not without a tripod though (and a tad silly as the minimum focusing distance is 1.5 meter – hahaha!).

Apart from the focusing that seems to take forever, I love this lens.

I will recommend this lens to any Sony Alpha user looking to buy a cheap compact zoom lens and to at least own it once. At least. 

*Picture: Sony SAL 75-300mm F/4.5-5.6 SAM

This Sony Alpha DT 18-55mm F3.5-5.6 came as a kit lens for the Sony Alpha A230 DSLR which we use as an alternate to the main Canon EOS System that we are using. This also happens to be our first Sony DSLR and our first Sony lens. Will not touch on too much on the body and performance of the A230 here, it will be featured separately when we start to review camera bodies. Back to the lens, this is the new version (Mark II) version that we gotten. On direct comparison, the newer version has a rubber grip that is more refined as compared the more rugged older version. But both lenses are a pleasure to use and handling are fine. The 18-55mm range is to replace the 1st generation 18-70mm kit lens after Sony bought over the tech-know-hows from Konica Minolta which first made its appearance as a kit lens on the "direct copy" Alpha 100.

*Picture: Sony SAL (DT) 18-55mm F/3.5-5.6 SAM

This kit lens is no push-over when compared with direct similars like the Canon EF-S 18-55mm F3.5-5.6 IS or Nikkor 18-55mm (DX) VR. This Kit lens incorporates aspherical and Extra-low Dispersion (ED) elements to this all-purpose lens with outstanding image quality. Well, if you are wondering why Canon has Image Stabilizer (IS) & Nikon has Vibration Control (VC) built into their lenses but not Sony, well, Sony’s SteadyShot (SS) is built into the body instead. And it works well with this configuration too. Do not expect Carl Zesis quality with this lens but when compared with the competition, this 7 apeture blades lens produces great image with super quality that will likely to shame photos taken with other brands’ equivalent. Powered by Sony’s Smooth Autofocus Motor (SAM), the focusing is reasonably fast and precised, but a tad noisy when the motors works a little hard in low light conditions. (Don’t expect Sony to put SuperSonic Motor (SSM) in kit lens if you are wondering).

 

Like all kit lenses available in the market, these are consumer lenses which is designed to sell to the masses. Construction of the lenses are usually fuss-free designs to keep manufacturing costs low. Expectably, this Sony lens feels a little plasticky on my hands but perfectly acceptable for general use. A great beginners’ lens to try, learn and exploit it’s full capabilities before shopping for the next upgrade. Lastly, the macro capabilities (x0.34) of this lens are commendably good and respectable. We have produced stunning macro photos with this lens too! 

 

Some Quick User Facts/ Information:
(If you are looking for the specs, please google yourself, it’s all over the internet.)
– Filter Size 55mm
– Lens Hood ALC-SH0006 (Sold separately).