Sony SEL50M28 FE 50mm F2.8 Full Frame E-mount Lens (Black)

I own four macro lenses for my Sony camera (including this one). This is a nice combo of portability and quality. As many reviews have mentioned, the autofocus capability is not that great, especially in low-light conditions. The IQ is pretty good as long as you can nail the focus. What I like about this lens is that: 1) its a 50mm on a full frame 2) flexible meaning I can do typical portrait or landscape shots + macro 3) 1:1 macro on a full frame..more so with a crop sensor..due to the crop sensor factor. 4) IQ is pretty good considering the cost and build. 5) f/2.8. This is nice and it helps with DOF and when shooting in low-light conditions (assuming you want that DOF when shooting in those lighting conditions) What I dont like: 1) autofocus. Its not fast and at times inaccurate. You really need to monitor your subject if doing a macro. In addition, it hunts in poor lighting conditions and a way around this is to learn to use the autofocus limiter switch on the barrel of the camera. It has missed the mark on landscape shots from time to time. This lens probably isnt good for sports or activities unless youre shooting @ or near infinity focus position most of the time and at the right aperture to achieve =>1/500th shutter. 2) Build quality is mostly plastic but at this cost, this is typically what you get for a lense these days. 3) Being a 50mm your focus distance to the subject is less than a 90 or 100mm lens. Not that its the fault of the manufacturer but rather a limitation faced by many lenses of this size. 4) Will it last? Time will tell. Recap: Good lense with limitations. As long as you understand how to compensate for the limitations, this is a nice lens to add to your arsenal of camera gear. If youre a beginner, then this lens will probably frustrate you some. In poor lighting conditions (& handheld), you really need to ensure your shutter is > = 1/60th to limit blur; however, the A7rII does have built-in stabilization which does help with this and would allow you to shoot @ 1/30 (or at times a little less depending on how you handle your camera). Understanding your camera settings like Aperture and ISO settings allow you to get the shutter when it needs to be. With a tripod youre ok. If you read this and think, "well I dont know much about what this guy just wrote", then its time to take your camera skills up a notch and learn how to new level. Its not hard but takes some time to understand. There are good books out there by Bryan Peterson (and classes) found here which will elevate your skills a lot. Price paid new $350

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Wished I could say I bought this lens for its features & quality, but I cant cuz its not true. However, most features of this lens is not compatible with my camera (NEX-6), which Sony does not warn in their descriptions. Features like the focus lock, focus limiter, and phase detection auto focus does NOT work with many cameras. After not being able to get these features to work, I searched the support page of Sonys website, and after you entered your lens, theres a link for the lens compatibility, which was NOT mentioned on Sonys lens page & description. If you have the latest camera, like the A6500, then all the features may work. Note that the lens body is made of plastic so its not as durable. The worst part of this experience is that Amazon shipped a $500 lens in an envelope! Its really surprising Amazon does not have a shipping policy for fragile items like camera lenses! And its really amazing how some workers are so thoughtless such that they put a glass lens in an envelope without any padding to be thrown around by the shippers! Another reviewer also had this experience; if you are like us and received a lens in an envelope, do not tolerate this behavior - return the lens ASAP or else youll regret it later when your lens breaks out of warranty.

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Overall this is a really nice lens. The size and weight are perfect for a Sony Alpha body and doubles as a really nice street photography lens. The real question for me was is it worth the money, and thats where the three stars comes from. Being that its a plastic lens, f2.8 aperture, and autofocus thats noisy compared to other Sony lens, plus slow and misses a lot when really close-up, its hard to say its a $500 lens. Id say its better than half as good as the Sony 90mm FE macro which is twice the price, but in general Id say Sonys lens cost a little more than theyre worth. If this was say $350, or f1.8 (or even f2.0 like the 28mm FE) I might say its more reasonable and a 4-5 star lens. No, you wouldnt ever shoot macro at that aperture, but it would definitely help this lens in the portrait and street photography area. Considering you can get the Sony 50mm f1.8 which seems like it has the same AF motor and extension tubes for around $250, this is a hard sell at $500 regardless of how nice the photos are. BUILD: Its plastic, but feels durable. The real question is how well does the front seal keep out dust and moisture over time. The barrel sticks out quite a ways when fully extended which means a lot of chances for dust and moisture to get in to the lens. Though theres no lens hood, the front element is sunk far enough into the lens that the lens itself acts as a hood. I had no flaring issues when shooting in the sun and back lit photos, so it does its job. FOCUSING: AUTO- When shooting portraits or objects more than a few feet away it actually is quite fast, and locks on almost every time. The closer the object is the longer and harder it is to get a focus, and when it misses it really misses, and the lens needs to fully focus out and then back which feels like an eternity, especially when I just got done trying the FE 90mm for a few days. The motor is pretty noisy compared to all the other Sony lens I have but nothing Id consider unbearable. MANUAL- Now this is probably the biggest plus to this lens in my opinion. Using fast turns it still takes two full turns to go from min to max focus. On a normal lens this would be really annoying, but for macro and trying to achieve tack sharp focus this works really good for me. The focal length also helps with this. That was my biggest complaint in the Sony 90mm macro was that the focus was very sensitive and hard to achieve perfect focus without working hard for it. (but thats macro for you) Note- The closer to the minimum focus you are, the more light fall off you have, that is the darker the photo gets, so the more you need to adjust ISO, aperture, or shutter speed to compensate, so you need really good lighting or a ring light. The additional issue with this is that youre so close to your object at min focus that youre almost touching it with the lens so an on camera or even hotshoe flash is probably going to cause a shadow from the lens, though I didnt test this out. Thankfully I had good lighting at the time. IMAGE QUALITY: I think its great. Bokeh looks smooth and colors and contrast are acceptable. Many of the photos attached have very little editing to them. Just white balance and a small boost in color. For portraits I really like it. I managed to get a lot of good handheld macro photos which would be a lot more difficult with a 90mm or 100mm macro lens. Overall this is a good lens. If youre looking for a cheap Sony native macro lens that doubles as a portrait and street photography lens and are fine with the f2.8 aperture, this could be it. If youre willing to use adapters for non-Sony lens, macro tubes, or want to be as far from your object as possible, this might not be the lens for you. Hopefully this review helps.

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Lens is very sharp and is great for general purpose landscapes and still lifes. Maybe a little too contrasty for portraits, but shoot those wide open, and it could be OK... First thing on this lens for my A7R2, is use Single AF mode and TURN OFF the "PRE-AF" in menu settings. Otherwise, the AF thing will NOT stop grinding. Auto focus is a slightly noisy and slower for normal distance subjects, but OK as long as they dont move much. Switch to manual focus for movies. For macros, just auto focus til the barrel extends to the reproduction size you want, or quickly roughly auto focus on the subject. Then switch to manual focus, and turn on the focus magnifier, and move camera slightly back and forth til you get the focus exactly you want before shooting. Ideally done with some bean bag or tripod support, if possible... Macro focus is never easy as far as I know, so its not a huge deal. Only wish there was a quick way to manually set to 1:1 or 1:2 or other size before manual focusing ... More updates. Turn OFF "Live View Display" and that speeds up AF tremendously in lower light, at least for single AF modes. Im actually not sure why thats camera setting is not documented well. But from playing with it, if you turn ON "Live View Display", the camera will always stop down the aperture ahead of time before doing anything, so it will be trying to focus at the smaller apertures lower light level and greater depth of view and hence slower. Otherwise if you turn that feature OFF, it will focus first at FULL wide open aperture (much faster and accurate and snappier) when the shutter button is partially depressed, before stopping down to the set aperture. For general distance moving targets, AF speed is best set to SCN "Sports" Mode.

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A couple of weeks ago, I attended a local Photography Day event and Sony had a booth there. Attendees were able to try out lenses so I tried out the new Sony FE 50mm F2.8 Macro lens and fell it love with it -- so much so that I pre-ordered it and it came in yesterday. Today, a dark, cloudy day, I grabbed my tripod and set it up in front of a few flowers in my backyard. Along came a few bees and after fiddling around with my aperture, ISO, and shutter speed settings and taking a few dozen photos ... all I can say is ... wow! I was about 7-8 inches from the bee and the clarity of the images was amazing! While I have taken classes off and on and played around with photography over the years, I consider myself a newbie. Even so, this lens was easy to use both in auto focus and manual focus modes. In manual focus mode, it took me awhile to focus, as I had to turn the focus ring quite a bit (but I attribute that to user inexperience). In auto focus mode, it seems to take a little while to focus. But Im comparing the focus speed to the E 3.5-5.6/PZ 16-50 OSS lens that came with my Sony A6000 camera, so Im guessing slower focusing time for a Macro lens is to be expected. At any rate, I have no complaints. Its a great lens at an affordable price (comparatively speaking) and, so far, I love it!

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Fantastic image quality. It is a full frame lens and not designed for the Alpha so the focus is a little slower and no image stabilization. But that is the trade off for the price. If you need the stabilization, macro, and faster focus you will need to double what you pay and get the 90mm macro. The other nice thing is the size. Attached to my Alpha 6500 it is small enough to fit in a very small camera bag and light enough to carry every where.

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Of the 3 macro lenses I own (the Samyang 100mm F2.8 macro, the Sony E 30mm F3.5 macro and this product, which I purchased in October), the Sony FE 50mm F2.8 macro produces the sharpest images of crystals--my main subject--and with better color depth than either. My only complaint so far is with the autofocus: the motor is slow and noisy, and keeps hunting. Once, the motor froze and refused to focus. Powering my A6000 camera off and on again didnt work, so I removed the battery put it back in. Only then did the autofocus work. Thankfully, it happened only once. Because of this little scare, minus one star.

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Look this lens is beyond sharp. Keep the AF on, on your camera body. Turn the Bodys focus to Manual focus. Use the switch on your body to spot AF, let the af get generally close. Then come in for the finishing touch in MF. Its really so quick and so sharp with these settings!

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This lens is very sharp. It is a great lens for macro photography because it has a very short minimum focus. It is also good for just general use. The only reason I did not give it five stars is because it is a bit slow autofocusing. It will work for anything that doesnt require really fast focusing like fast moving sports or zig zagging children but for the price you cant beat it.

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I received this lens and its pretty cheaply made. First, the seller who sent it with no protective wrapping and the box had clearly been opened. Pretty typical of camera stores to send lenses w/o decent protection. That being said, I put this on my a7ii and it failed to impress me. The picture quality was "meh" at best and not something Ive come to love about my Macros lens. Save the money and by the 90mm.

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