Sony SEL55F18Z.AE 55mm f/1.8 ZA Lens - Black

Product Information

Measuring just 64.4mmx70.5mm, the FE 55mm f/1.8 ZA is a very small and lightweight lens which perfectly captures the original intent of compactness of Sony’s mirrorless camera system. In use, the lens makes for a perfect companion to the Sony A7 series of cameras and is a joy to use during extended shooting sessions as you rarely feel you’re even carrying a camera with you. At the front of the lens is a non-rotating 49mm filter thread, surrounded by a bayonet mount for the lens hood supplied with the lens. The petal shaped hood is well made and attaches firmly. It’s quite large and nearly doubles the overall length of the lens but does a great job of protecting the front element. The 55mm f/1.8 has three aspherical elements, but its internal design is otherwise quite simple, helping to make for such a small lens.

Take complete creative control of your images with PIXMA and imagePROGRAF PRO professional photo printers. Vignetting is kept pretty well under control, at 1.6 stops wide open, which is perfectly respectable for a fast prime. The falloff profile is rather gradual too, which tends to make any vignetting less visually objectionable. Enjoy high quality performance, low cost prints and ultimate convenience with the PIXMA G series of refillable ink tank printers. The maximum aperture of f/1.7 makes it the joint-world’s brightest lens with autofocus for medium format mirrorless digital cameras, along with the GF 80mm F1.7. R WR lens. When it comes to handling chromatic aberrations the Sony FE 55mm f/1.8 ZA turns in a mixed result. On one hand, lateral chromatic aberration is very well controlled with very little of it showing at f/1.8 and almost none showing two stops down. Unfortunately, the lens exhibits a significant amount of bokeh fringing (color fringing in front of and behind the focused area) with this especially prominent with the lens used wide open at f/1.8. The fringing remains quite noticeable until the lens is stopped down to f/4 where things improve markedly. By f/5.6 the lens exhibits only a small amount of fringing. This is certainly one of the FE 55mm f/1.8 ZA’s biggest optical weaknesses though it isn’t all that difficult to correct in post-processing. ILCE-7M3 + Zeiss Sonnar T* FE 55mm F1.8 ZA @ 55mm, ISO 125, 1/320, f/1.8 10) Comparisons

It might be a relatively older design (Compared to other FE lenses) but the FE 55mm f/1.8 ZA remains a fantastic lens and one of the best standard prime lens options for Sony’s mirrorless camera system. Optically, it’s excellent with outstanding sharpness in the center of the frame when used at f/1.8 and truly incredible corner to corner sharpness just a couple of stops down. The lens also has a very pleasing bokeh, very good contrast and performs incredibly well against bright sources of light. The one genuine optical flaw is the high amounts of bokeh fringing at f/1.8 and this doesn’t really disappear until the lens is stopped down to f/5.6. The scale of Sony's achievement here becomes clear when comparing the FE 55mm F1.8 directly to the Zeiss Otus 55mm F1.4, which lays a strong claim to being the best lens for which we have test data. The Otus still just about comes out on top - it measures as slightly sharper wide open - but it's unlikely any difference will be particularly visible in real-world photography. The Otus also just about wins out on chromatic aberration and distortion, but overall the Sony can certainly wear its Zeiss badge with pride. With a standard focal length of 44mm (35mm equivalent), we wouldn't expect this lens to have too many problems with distortion. Focusing is usefully internal and manual focusing is possible when set via the camera body. Full-time manual focus override is available at any time simply by rotating the focus ring, if specified in the menu system, or you can set the focusing switch on the camera body to M, C or S. The Fujifilm GF 55mm F1.7 R WR lens has a traditional aperture ring on the lens barrel which allows you to set the aperture in 1/3 steps, complete with full aperture markings. The aperture is also shown in the viewfinder or on the LCD screen as you change it.

As with all of the the other GF lenses that we've previously reviewed, the build quality of the Fujifilm GF 55mm F1.7 R WR is excellent. The lens is dust, freeze and moisture resistant and it features a metal bayonet. And here is an image at f/1.8, followed by center, mid-frame, and corner crops: ILCE-7M3 + Zeiss Sonnar T* FE 55mm F1.8 ZA @ 55mm, ISO 1000, 1/160, f/1.8 f/1.8, center crop f/1.8, mid-frame crop f/1.8, corner crop 5) Vibration Reduction Having four different options isn’t surprising given the broad appeal of the 50mm focal length across a range of different photographic disciplines including portraiture, fashion, documentary, architectural and travel photography. The Sony FE 55mm f/1.8 ZA lens is situated in the middle of the lineup, sitting above the entry-level FE 50mm f/1.8 and below the faster, bigger and more expensive FE 50mm f/1.4 ZA lens. The 55mm focal length gives an angle of view of 52.9° degrees, which is equivalent to a focal length of 44mm on a 35mm full-frame sensor camera. Chromatic Aberrations The FE 55mm F1.8 ZA Carl Zeiss Sonnar T* is one of the first three lenses available for Sony's full-frame E-mount system, having been announced alongside the Alpha 7 and 7R camera bodies. It's a slightly long 'normal' prime designed for everyday photography, and its relatively fast F1.8 aperture makes it a good choice for selective focus work or shooting in low light. Its 7-element, 5-group optical design includes three aspherical elements to minimise aberrations, which is unusual for this type of lens.Thanks to the inclusion of In-body stabilization or IBIS in Sony’s mirrorless camera bodies, their lenses don’t need to have built-in image stabilization to be stabilized. As such, the Sony FE 55mm f/1.8 ZA isn’t optically stabilized but it does benefit from the IBIS system of the Sony camera it’s mounted on and I found that I could achieve consistently sharp shots at shutter speeds of around 1/10 of a second while hand-holding the lens. This number dramatically drops at lower shutter speeds. Still, having image stabilization in such a small lens is a fantastic feature and one of the main selling points of the Sony system. 6) Bokeh

A minimum focus distance of 50cm / 1.6' and a maximum magnification ratio of 0.17x doesn't make the lens particularly useful for shooting close subjects, although the fast maximum aperture does at least make it easy to isolate the subject. Bokeh Note that there is no built-in optical image stabilisation in this lens, so make sure to choose a suitably fast shutter speed when hand-holding the camera/lens. This lens has a dust-, freeze- and weather-sealed physical construction that's sealed in nine different places and is capable of operating in environments as cold as -10°C. The front element features a fluorine coating to help repel dust, dirt, and moisture. Light fall-off is quite noticeable wide open at f/1.7, though this can easily be corrected in Photoshop. Stop down to f/4 and the vignetting is already much less prominent, but it is still visible when shooting pale scenes that fill the frame. Distortion For those who are more budget conscious there is a direct competitor in the Sony FE 50mm f/1.8 lens. The FE 50mm f/1.8 costs just one-fourth of the FE 55mm f/1.8 ZA and shares the same max aperture. While they are both f/1.8 lenses, the Zeiss branded lens is considerably sharper than the Sony FE 50 f/1.8 when they are both used wide open. This is especially noticeable in the periphery of the frame where the FE 55mm f/1.8 ZA is much better. The gap between the two closes at f/2.8 but the edge clearly remains with the more expensive lens. The FE 55mm f/1.8 ZA is also much better built and features a much better focusing system. Overall, the two lenses aren’t genuinely comparable, with the Sony FE 50mm f/1.8 providing a solid budget-oriented performance while the FE 55mm f/1.8 remains a professional grade option. ILCE-7M3 + Zeiss Sonnar T* FE 55mm F1.8 ZA @ 55mm, ISO 250, 1/2000, f/1.8The FE 55mm F1.8 can also be used on Sony's APS-C E-mount bodies, on which it will behave like a classic short telephoto 'portrait' lens. However most users of these cameras will probably find the Sony E 50mm F1.8 OSS to be a better choice, as it's much cheaper and includes optical image stabilisation, while offering decent optical quality too. Headline features It is comprised of 14 elements in 10 groups including including two ED elements and two aspherical elements and it's the first ever GF lens to have 11 rounded aperture blades for ultra-smooth bokeh. The focal length of 55mm is the same as the diagonal measurement of the large-format sensor used in GFX cameras, which has dimensions of 43.8mm x 32.9mm, providing a field of view which is close to that of human vision, thereby creating a more natural perspective.

Here is the kind of sharpness you can expect at f/1.8: ILCE-7M3 + Zeiss Sonnar T* FE 55mm F1.8 ZA (SEL55F18Z) @ 55mm, ISO 250, 1/1600, f/2.2 f/1.8, center crop f/1.8, corner crop Introduced alongside Sony’s first full-frame mirrorless cameras in 2013, the Sony Sonnar T* FE 55mm f/1.8 ZA lens was the first fast-aperture, “standard” focal length prime lens available for the FE mount. The 50mm prime lens has seen a resurgence in popularity in recent years, with many new lenses in this focal range introduced by lens manufacturers over the last half-decade. Sony themselves now offer four different 50mm prime lens options for the FE mount. Beyond the FE 55mm f/1.8 ZA lens, there is the entry-level Sony FE 50mm f/1.8, the premium Sony FE 50mm f/1.4 ZA and the Sony FE 50mm f/2.8 Macro lens. It doesn't feel particularly unwieldy when mounted on the equally new Fuji GFX 100 II camera that we tested it with, with even one-handed use not completely out of the question!The FE 55mm f/1.8 ZA lens features a linear autofocus motor that focuses internally and makes very little noise. Overall, focus speeds are good but an important aspect to consider when judging a lens focusing ability is that the camera body plays an integral role in the quality of the autofocus and because of this, it is essential to match your lenses with high-quality bodies that can deliver good focusing performance. I was able to test the FE 55mm f/1.8 ZA lens alongside the very good Sony Alpha A7III body whose focusing capabilities make the most of the lens. ILCE-7M3 + Zeiss Sonnar T* FE 55mm F1.8 ZA @ 55mm, ISO 400, 1/3200, f/1.8 Distortion is extremely low, with just a little barrel-type visible if you look closely. This will also be corrected automatically by the camera when shooting JPEG. Sharpness is simply spectacular. At F1.8 the 55mm is impressively sharp, outperforming the 50mm F1.8s for Canon and Nikon SLRs by a substantial margin (and the 50mm F1.4s for that matter, too). It just gets better on stopping down; at F4 and F5.6, central sharpness is literally off the charts (helped here by being tested on the 36MP, AA filterless A7R). Diffraction takes the edge off sharpness at F22, as usual, but this setting should still be perfectly usable when depth of field is a priority.