Sony E PZ 10-20mm F4 G Overview

Introduction

Ease of Use

The Sony E PZ 10-20mm F4 G is a totally weather-sealed, ultra-wide-angle zoom lens with a devoted Sony E mount that’s manufactured from steel. Communication between lens and digital camera physique is supplied by way of 10 electrical contacts.

Observe nonetheless that with a purpose to take full benefit of the weatherproofing, you will have to mount it on a equally weather-sealed physique, in contrast to the Sony ZV-E10 digital camera that we examined it with.

The weather-proofing evokes confidence that the lens will survive all types of inclement situations.

Contemplating how small and light-weight it’s, the E PZ 10-20mm F4 G lens is effectively constructed, actually on a par with the corporate’s different G-branded lenses.

Tipping the scales at simply 178g (6.3oz.) and measuring 69.8 x 55.0 mm (2-3/4 x 2-1/4 in.) in diameter and size, the Sony E PZ 10-20mm F4 G is an extremely compact and light-weight ultra-wide-angle zoom lens you could carry round all day with out noticing.

The Sony ZV-E10 used for this take a look at proved to be a superb match for the lens, providing very pleasing stability and quick and near-silent auto-focusing.

Though the zoom ring seems to function the lens parts instantly as you’d anticipate from a typical zoom lens, it would not right here. As a substitute the ring merely actuates the 2 inner Linear focusing motors, instantly responding with just about no delay in any respect.

The facility zoom may be be remotely managed through appropriate digital camera our bodies, a distant commander or accent grip, and even whereas the digital camera is mounted on a gimbal utilizing the Imaging Edge Cellular utility.

In contrast to most zoom rings on ultra-wide-angle lenses, the FE PZ 16-35mm F4 G is just not marked with totally different focal lengths so you possibly can rapidly soar to the focal size you’d like to make use of.

As a substitute it’s a must to depend on the horizontal scale and focal size which might be displayed within the viewfinder and LCD display screen, which reasonably slows down the operation of the lens.

Along with the guide zoom ring, there’s additionally a rocker lever for full energy zooming. Push the lever as much as zoom in and all the way down to zoom out.

It’s a management system a lot as you’d discover on the lens barrel of many superzoom bridge cameras and works very effectively right here, offering regular and utterly silent zooming that’s good for video work.

Importantly the zooming is totally inner so the lens barrel would not prolong, making this lens ideally suited to make use of with a gimbal.

The E PZ 10-20mm F4 G zoom’s different most important exterior management is the adequately sized focus ring.

You’ll be able to rapidly and simply use the main target mode change to toggle the operate of the lens between AF and MF.

Guide focusing is completed in a conventional style, with the main target ring electronically coupled to the transferring lens parts and working with linear-response, though there aren’t any laborious stops at both finish. Focusing is totally inner and the 62mm filter thread doesn’t rotate on focus.

With the E PZ 10-20mm F4 G lens hooked up to a Sony ZV-E10 physique, focusing proved to be satisfyingly fast in most conditions because of the Linear Motor system which makes use of two separate motors.

This mix is able to locking deal with a topic nearly immediately, even when alternating between shut and faraway topics, and it is just about silent too.

In excessive low-light conditions chances are you’ll expertise slightly focus looking on the lengthy finish, not helped by the sluggish F4 most aperture.

Regardless of being instantly adjoining to one another, the main target and zoom rings are simple to differentitate as a result of there’s a slight however noticeable “step” between the 2, with the main target ring protruding ever so barely greater than the zoom ring. This makes it simpler to function them by really feel alone whereas viewing a monitor.

This lens doesn’t function built-in picture stabilisation, as an alternative counting on the digital camera physique to provide it, which is able to show irritating for homeowners of Alpha digital camera our bodies with out IBIS, once more just like the ZV-E10 that Sony despatched us for testing.

The lens has a customisable focus maintain button which retains the lens locked to the present focusing distance, helpful should you’re auto-focusing and don’t need the lens to try to discover focus once more. It could additionally, amongst different issues, be usefully set to Eye AF.

Included within the field is a slim petal-shaped lens hood (ALC-SH169), which is simple to connect to the lens – merely line up the purple line with the purple marking on the lens and twist into place till it clicks. You may as well reverse the lens hood for decreasing the general dimension when transporting the lens. This lens accepts 62mm entrance filters.

Focal Vary

The 10mm focal size offers an angle of view of 109 levels.

10mm

The 20mm focal size offers an angle of view of 70 levels.

20mm

Chromatic Aberrations

Chromatic aberrations, usually seen as purple or blue fringes alongside contrasty edges, will not be an excessive amount of of an issue with the Sony E PZ 10-20mm F4 G lens, besides in areas of very excessive distinction.

Vignetting

With the lens set to its most aperture of f/4, there may be some mild fall-off within the corners, requiring you to cease down by a minimum of 3 f-stops to utterly stop it.

10mm

20mm

Distortion

The Sony E PZ 10-20mm F4 G would not exhibit very a lot barrel distortion in JPEG information, as you possibly can see within the pictures under, because of in-camera lens distortion controls which might be mechanically utilized (and which might’t truly be turned off).

It is a totally different story for the Uncooked file, although, which displays tons of barrel distortion which you will must both right in post-processing or apply a lens profile.

10mm – JPEG

10mm – RAW

20mm – JPEG

20mm – RAW

Sunstars and Flare

The Sony E PZ 10-20mm F4 G is able to producing good sunstars when stopped-down to f/16 and f/22, as proven under, though the lens is considerably vulnerable to flare when taking pictures instantly into the solar even with the equipped lens hood fitted.

10mm

20mm

Macro

The Sony E PZ 10-20mm F4 G is just not actually a macro lens, nevertheless it does provide a usefully shut focus level of 20cm when auto-focusing and even nearer 13cm at 10mm and 17cm at 20mm when guide focusing, with a most magnification of 0.14x for AF and 0.18x for MF.

10mm

20mm

Bokeh

Bokeh is a phrase used for the out-of-focus areas of {a photograph}, and is often described in qualitative phrases, corresponding to clean / creamy / harsh and many others.

Sony have paid shut consideration to this facet of lens use, using a 7-segment diaphragm with rounded blades, which permits for extra pleasing bokeh.

In our view, their efforts have been pretty profitable for an ultra-wide-angle zoom lens – see the examples under to guage for your self.

10mm

20mm

10mm

20mm

10mm

20mm

10mm

20mm

Sharpness

In an effort to present you the way sharp the Sony E PZ 10-20mm F4 G lens is, we’re offering 100% crops on the next pages.