Sony FE 16-35mm f/2.8 GM Review

Focus Speed and Performance

The Sony 16-35mm f/2.8 GM autofocuses quickly and almost silently, with very impressive accuracy both in the viewfinder and in live view. The accuracy was exceptionally high even in a lab environment which magnifies small focusing errors.

Because of the f/2.8 maximum aperture, the Sony 16-35mm f/2.8 focuses quite well even in dark conditions. For example, compared to an f/4 lens, the 16-35mm f/2.8 can autofocus in conditions with half as much ambient light.

In terms of close-focusing capabilities, I don’t think that most photographers are buying 16-35mm f/2.8 zooms to shoot macro photos. That said, the decent maximum magnification of 0.19× actually makes this lens a reasonable choice for close-up photography in a pinch. Zoom into 35mm, shoot at f/2.8, and you can get some nice bokeh, too.

Distortion

The Sony 16-35mm f/2.8 GM has surprisingly low levels of distortion for an ultra-wide zoom. Here’s a full chart of distortion values from 16mm to 35mm:

The Sony 16-35mm f/2.8 GM maxes out at -1.96% barrel distortion at 16mm and 2.02% pincushion distortion at 35mm. Many ultra-wide zooms have substantially more distortion than this, and the performance we see here is a welcome sight.

That said, the distortion profile of this lens is more complex than just barrel or pincushion. It’s a bit wavy, which means that the percentages calculated in the graph above are more like approximations. Here’s a sample photo of a grid to show the lens’s mustache-shaped distortion at 16mm, where it’s at its highest:

Vignetting

In uncorrected images, the Sony FE 16-35mm f/2.8 GM has moderate levels of vignetting wide open, though it depends on your focal length. It’s worst at 16mm, and it gradually improves as you zoom in. Here are two charts of vignetting levels at close focus and infinity focus distances:

There aren’t any major differences between close focus and infinity focus here, although the vignetting is a hair worse at infinity. The maximum of about 2 stops is pretty high, but typical for an ultra-wide zoom like this one, especially given the large maximum aperture of f/2.8. By comparison, Nikon’s Z 14-24mm f/2.8 S maxes out at essentially the same spot, with 2.05 stops of vignetting.

Here’s how the vignetting profile looks in practice with an uncorrected RAW image and a low-contrast tone curve.

Chromatic Aberration

There is a modest amount of chromatic aberration on the Sony FE 16-35mm f/2.8 GM at the wider focal lengths, which improves as you zoom in. Here’s how we measured it in the lab:

Anything under about one pixel is almost impossible to notice in real-world images, even with chromatic aberration corrections turned off. The Sony 16-35mm f/2.8 GM maxes out at 1.78 pixels of chromatic aberration, which isn’t bad, but may require software corrections if there are high-contrast objects in the corner of the frame. Once you zoom into 20mm and especially 24-35mm, this falls to negligible levels and is unlikely to need software correction.

Sharpness

The Sony FE 16-35mm f/2.8 GM is a sharp lens throughout the focal length range, although not as sharp as a top prime lens like the Sony FE 20mm f/1.8 G or the Sony FE 24mm f/1.4 GM. Here’s how it performs in our standardized Imatest test:

As you can see, the lens’s sharpest focal lengths are 16mm and 20mm, especially in the corners. Although the sharpness dips a bit as you zoom in, it’s never bad. The next page of this review has some sharpness comparisons that put this result into context, but it’s quite good overall.

In terms of other sharpness issues, the Sony 16-35mm f/2.8 GM has just a hair of focus shift at 28mm and beyond (none that I can see at the wider focal lengths). Also, some of the corner sharpness loss shown in the charts above is due to a moderate amount of field curvature on this lens.

Coma

Related to sharpness is coma, a lens aberration that can make dots of light in the corner of a photo look like smears. Coma isn’t usually visible in everyday photography, but for something like Milky Way photography, it can be a factor. The Sony 16-35mm f/2.8 GM has the right focal length and maximum aperture for Milky Way photography, so I wanted to put its coma performance to the test.

The imagess shown below are extreme crops from the top right corner of the Sony 16-35mm f/2.8 GM with the a7R V. I cropped the Sony a7R V’s 61-megapixel sensor down to tiny 1000 × 1500 pixel crops and didn’t do any resizing; these are direct excerpts from the image with Lightroom’s default sharpening and noise reduction applied. Click to see full size:

To me, this is an excellent performance at 16mm and still very strong at 20mm and 24mm. There’s a bit more softness as you zoom in, especially at 35mm. This is largely because the corners are slightly out of focus at these focal lengths, due to the lens’s field curvature that I mentioned earlier. (I focused in the center of the frame and took these crops from the corners.)

It’s not specifically coma, but it is a loss in sharpness. While you could improve the corner sharpness at 35mm by re-focusing in the corners, that would lead to out-of-focus stars in the center of the frame, so there’s no perfect solution.

In any case, the result is still good. Here’s how I’d sum it up: The Sony GM 16-35mm f/2.8 makes an excellent Milky Way lens at 16mm, a very good Milky Way lens from 20mm to 24mm, and a good one after that.

Sunstars and Flare

Ultra-wide lenses, especially complex zooms with a high number of lens elements, tend to have objectionable levels of flare and ghosting if the sun is in your frame. While modern lenses keep getting better at minimizing flare, it’s still a common problem.

The Sony FE 16-35mm f/2.8 GM manages to buck the trend – it has pretty impressive flare performance that allows you to shoot into the sun with little concern. You’ll even get a nice sunstar effect if you use a narrow aperture.

These photos are stress tests, especially the last shot. Even so, the Sony 16-35mm f/2.8 GM handles them extremely well. There are only a few dots of flare at most, and each photo retains a high amount of contrast. Well done, Sony! This is unusually good for a wide-angle zoom.

The next page of this review dives into the sharpness numbers a bit more, with some comparisons against other lenses that Sony users may be considering. So, click the menu below to go to “Lens Comparisons”: