Sony E 16mm f/2.8 (Sony NEX) - Review / Lens Test Report - Sample Images & Verdict
Lens Reviews - Sony Alpha/NEX (APS-C)

Sample Images

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Make SONY
Model NEX-5
ISO Speed 200
Focal Length 16.0mm
Aperture: f/2.8
Exposure 1/3200s
Make SONY
Model NEX-5
ISO Speed 200
Focal Length 16.0mm
Aperture: f/9.0
Exposure 1/400s
Make SONY
Model NEX-5
ISO Speed 800
Focal Length 16.0mm
Aperture: f/4.0
Exposure 1/125s
Make SONY
Model NEX-5
ISO Speed 200
Focal Length 16.0mm
Aperture: f/9.0
Exposure 1/400s
Make SONY
Model NEX-5
ISO Speed 200
Focal Length 16.0mm
Aperture: f/5.0
Exposure 1/250s
Make SONY
Model NEX-5
ISO Speed 200
Focal Length 16.0mm
Aperture: f/9.0
Exposure 1/800s
Make SONY
Model NEX-5
ISO Speed 200
Focal Length 16.0mm
Aperture: f/9.0
Exposure 1/320s
Make SONY
Model NEX-5
ISO Speed 200
Focal Length 16.0mm
Aperture: f/9.0
Exposure 1/320s
Make SONY
Model NEX-5
ISO Speed 200
Focal Length 16.0mm
Aperture: f/9.0
Exposure 1/250s
Make SONY
Model NEX-5
ISO Speed 200
Focal Length 16.0mm
Aperture: f/2.8
Exposure 1/4000s
Make SONY
Model NEX-5
ISO Speed 200
Focal Length 16.0mm
Aperture: f/9.0
Exposure 1/500s
Make SONY
Model NEX-5
ISO Speed 200
Focal Length 16.0mm
Aperture: f/9.0
Exposure 1/640s

Verdict

The Sony E 16mm f/2.8 is a controversial lens. Upon first contact you're probably positively surprised - it's stylish, dwarfish, very well built and the AF performance is also pretty good. It doesn't even cost a fortune. Unfortunately that's where most of the glory ends. The lens delivers very sharp images in the inner image field but the corner performance is rather poor especially at f/2.8 and f/4. The fairly heavy amount of lateral CAs isn't helpful here either. However, to be fair - if you use the lens at f/8, the sweet spot, it is actually capable of delivering good results across the image field and the corners are usually not all that important when taking images at f/2.8 anyway. The bokeh (quality of the out-of-focus blur) can be quite rough in critical scenes although that's typical for most wide-angle lenses. The amount of vignetting is class-average at f/2.8 but it could be somewhat lower at smaller apertures - this applies to auto-corrected vignetting. The native vignetting is much higher! Distortions are well controlled and not overly relevant from a field perspective. So technically it isn't really an impressive lens but it can give you quite good results if you're aware of its limitations and maneuver around them.

Optical Quality:
Field Quality:
Mechanical Quality:
Price/Performance:
      
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