Sony 16mm F1.8G - thoughts?

[glospete]

I have an A7RV with a bunch of lenses. But I also have an A7CR and I am building a small collection of lenses suitable for the small body - I have the Sony 40mm F2.5 and the 24mm F2.8. I am tempted by the Sony 16mm F1.8 as it is also lightweight and small and I like extreme wide angle lenses for landscape photography. The only real negative I have read about is that it has terrible distortion (pin cushion I think) but presumably that can be corrected in software? Does anyone have any personal experience of this lens as it is on offer until 6 July in the UK.

 

[Richard A]

A lot of people seem to prefer the Viltrox 16mm f1.8 which is also about half the price. I am looking for an f1.4 or f1.8 wide angle at the moment for astro photography. I am also looking at the Sony 14mm f1.8 which is more expensive of course. They are on backorder here at the moment. I have a Sigma 16-28 f2.8 already which is a nice lens and is pretty compact. That may be worth looking at also but you seem to prefer primes.

DxO PureRaw and PhotoLab are unbeatable for correcting lens distortion and other defects.

 

[glospete]

The weight of the Viltrox puts me off that model. The 14mm rules itself out because of the inability to use a filter. Thanks for your comment re PureRaw and PhotoLab - I’ll investigate.
Appreciate your thoughts. Still mulling it over what to get.

 

[glospete]

I finally decided to buy the 18mm F1.8G lens but traded in my 16-35mm Zeiss F4.0 lens as after doing some tests I realised that as I already have a 24-105mm F4.0 lens I really didn't need to carry the weight of the 16-35mm around when I can either a) crop from 16mm to the equivalent of 35mm (I have a 61MP 7RV camera) or b) walk forward a few steps!

 

[Richard A]

I had a try out of the Sony 14mm f1.8 lens on the city night walk I did last week. It’s a nice lens with great results. I was surprised how much wider it actually is than 16mm.

 

[glospete]

I had a try out of the Sony 14mm f1.8 lens on the city night walk I did last week. It’s a nice lens with great results. I was surprised how much wider it actually is than 16mm.

I'd still be concerned about the exposed front element But for me the size/weight combination of the 16mm F1.8 was the deciding factor. I have a non-AF TT Artisan 11mm F2.8 fisheye which was cheap and is fun for certain shots. The lens profile in Lightroom eliminates the fisheye aspect but of course reduces the effective FOV.

 

[Richard A]

I don’t put a filter on the front of any of my lenses unless it is for creative reasons such as a polariser or ND filter.

Also, as far as fisheye lenses go, in DxO PhotLab, you can turn de-fisheye on or off.

 

[glospete]

I guess that's what great about us all - we're all different and do things differently
Same with Lightroom - I can switch fish-eye on or off under Lens Corrections > Enable Profile Corrections. Funnily enough TT Artisan say that they don't have a lens profile for use with Apple Macs but of course the lens profile file is platform agnostic so works on either Windows or Macs. I've told TT Artisan but they keep saying Not Compatible with Macs! I guess the phase "horses and water" comes to mind