Sony FE 35mm f/1.8 Review

Focusing Characteristics

The Sony FE 35mm f/1.8 autofocuses quickly, quietly, and accurately. Because of the f/1.8 maximum aperture, the lens can autofocus in conditions with low levels of ambient light. I didn’t notice any significant issues in this department at all.

With a maximum magnification of 1:4.2 (0.24x), the Sony FE 35mm f/1.8 is capable of good close-up photos, though not true macro. On a full-frame camera, you can fill the composition with something that is approximately 15 cm (5.9 inches) wide. This is better than a lot of fast prime lenses, although true close-up aficionados may have hoped for something like Canon’s 35mm f/1.8 Macro, which can reach 1:2 magnification.

Distortion

The Sony FE 35mm f/1.8 has relatively low levels of distortion, not a surprise for a normal prime lens like this one. We measure 0.94% pincushion distortion in the lab.

Here’s a simulation of 0.94% pincushion distortion for context:

This amount is low enough that you may not need to correct it in your photos, even when shooting a subject with some straight lines. Dedicated cityscape and architectural photographers will find it worth correcting, however.

Vignetting

In uncorrected images, the Sony FE 35mm f/1.8 has modest vignetting as measured in a lab, maxing out around 2 stops of vignetting. However, you may notice that the chart below is a little unusual:

Unlike most lenses, where vignetting rapidly improves after you stop down by a stop or two, the Sony FE 35mm f/1.8 only gradually improves at the narrower aperture values. So, while the maximum of 2.05 stops is about as expected for a fast 35mm prime, the fact that this lens still has about 1.5 stops of vignetting at f/8 is not typical.

Looking into it further, the culprit is the unusual, “sharp” vignetting profile of the Sony FE 35mm f/1.8. Rather than a gradual falloff from center to corner, a pretty sudden darkening takes place only in the far corners of the image. It’s similar to what happens when you use too thick of a filter in front of your lens – the edges get clipped into the corners of your photo. Except in this case, it’s a property of the lens itself. Here’s how it looks at f/8 on a flat field:

And here’s a real-world example photo where vignetting was left uncorrected. I took the following image at f/13, where you normally would not expect to see much vignetting at all:

This type of vignetting can be difficult to fully correct without leaving artifacts behind. And the fact that it still occurs at narrow apertures (like f/13 above) means that you’ll see it in a lot of your photos – making it more of a pain to deal with, compared to most lenses out there.

Lateral Chromatic Aberration

The Sony FE 35mm f1.8 has one of the more unusual lateral chromatic aberration profiles that I’ve seen before. It is quite mild at wide aperture values of f/1.8 and f/2, but stopping down to f/2.8 and further increases it to some rather high levels. Here’s the chart:

This is not a good result overall – yes, we’ve seen worse, but usually not in basic 35mm primes. I think that Sony went with an unorthodox optical design for this lens in order to keep it as small as possible, which is both good and bad. It’s nice that the lens is so small, but the vignetting and chromatic aberration performances we measured have plenty of room for improvement.

By comparison, the Canon RF 35mm f/1.8 Macro maxes out at 1.10 pixels of lateral chromatic aberration, and the Nikon Z 35mm f/1.8 S maxes out at 0.70 pixels. Anything in that range is what I expected for this Sony lens – not a maximum of 2.25 pixels of CA. At that point, correcting it in post-processing is still possible, but it might leave some unwanted haloing or color artifacts behind.

Sharpness

The Sony FE 35mm f/1.8 is a sharp lens even wide open, reaching its maximum performance throughout the frame around f/4 through f/5.6. Here’s how it performs in our lab tests:

While nothing record-setting, this is still a very sharp lens that I would have no issue using for any type of photography. You’ll see a little more on the next page of this review, Sharpness Comparisons, for context.

In terms of other sharpness issues, there is just a little bit of focus shift that kicks in as you stop down. We measured it as being the most significant as you go from f/4 to f/5.6 – a little unusual, since focus shift typically applies to wider apertures the most. In any case, you’ll want to change aperture first, focus second with this lens, not the other way around.

There is also a bit of traditionally-shaped field curvature on this lens. The corner sharpness numbers in the graph above, particularly the corners at f/5.6, are a little weaker as a result. Traditionally shaped field curvature can have the effect of robbing corner sharpness if all of your subject is at the same focusing distance (such as an overlook), but has less of an impact on sharpness when your subject is three-dimensional in appearance.

Bokeh

Bokeh is another word for the qualities of the background blur in a photo. “Good” bokeh is completely subjective, since different photographers have their own preferences for how the background blur looks. That said, photographers commonly want their background blur to be soft, not distracting. Out-of-focus highlights that are round, uniform, and soft-edged are usually considered favorable.

I tested the Sony FE 35mm f/1.8 for its bokeh and felt that the result was a mixed bag. While it is possible to get nice out-of-focus backgrounds at f/1.8, there is a bit of color fringing and sharp edges of out-of-focus specular highlights. Here’s an example followed by a crop:

This is getting close to what’s known as “bubble bokeh.” When I discussed that bokeh is subjective, I have to say, I personally like bubble bokeh! To me, this result is not objectionable at all and would qualify as a nice background blur (apart from the color fringing).

However, it’s down to personal taste. Photographers who want soft-edged bokeh may not be as happy with the out-of-focus backgrounds produced by the Sony FE 35mm f/1.8.

Flare and Sunstars

The Sony FE 35mm f/1.8 is well-corrected for flare and still retains a very high level of contrast in backlit conditions. Even when the sun itself was in the frame, I felt that it was easy to take nice photos with no distracting ghosts or dots of flare.

Here’s a very typical example at f/16:

While you can see a small amount of flare in the photo above (in between the archway of columns), this is hardly a bad result at all. The contrast is great, with just a little bit of veiling flare near the bottom right of the image. And the sunstar looks good, too – sharp and 18-bladed. Not bad at all!

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”: