Dave B
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.