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Mid- range zooms

Guy Mancuso

Administrator, Instructor
I still have this need for a mid range zoom. I bought the Sony 24-70 and nice lens but the distortion and 24 and 70 focal lengths quality just did not cut the mustard for me. I have 3 big gigs coming and one to NY next week to shoot the city and I'm searching for something good. Interestingly enough I have a metabones III adapter for canon and the 24-70 F4 looks quite interesting and according to reports very little distortion at 24 and very good at most focal lengths and 24 and 70 look very good. Much better MTFs as the Sony. I may just rent it or sell my Epson 7900 and just buy something. Like to have AF here and need to see if the canon would actually focus with AF with the metabones. Don't need to be extremely fast. I also thought of the Sigma 24-105 in canon since the Sony mount is not out yet. Anyone try these on the A7r . Or any other suggestions.
 

psy501

New member
..maybe some minolta af ..with the la-ea4..35-70 f3.5-4 or something like that..?..i get it that these are also rather cheap to get..dont know if the maximum aperture fits your needs, but i am thinking about going the same route..
 

jfirneno

Member
Guy:
If you have the LAEA4 adapter you can get the Tamron 28-75 2.8 in Sony A mount for about $500. It's a pretty decent zoom. If you rent the Tamron 24-70 2.8 in A-mount you'll get what's supposed to be a really excellent zoom. I think to buy it is about $1,300. With either one you'll have pretty good autofocus.
Regards,
John
 

Guy Mancuso

Administrator, Instructor
Thanks I do have the Sony LAEA3 and 4 adapters on hand. I had the Tammy 24-70 at one time and indeed a good lens.
 

Guy Mancuso

Administrator, Instructor
I can get it in Canon mount but not sure it would auto focus with my metabones III . I may go to a camera shop today and ask to try several lenses and see if they AF.

I'm starting to get passed at Sigma for lack of Sony mounts available. I do have the Sigma 35mm in Sony mount and it AFs really nice.

My issue is shooting in NY for 4 days walking around shooting the city with my bigger lenses Zeiss 25, sigma 35, 55 and my 85 1.4. That's a little bit of a load. The Sigma 24-105 would eliminate almost all of them. I could just take it maybe my 14 and the 55 for nighttime stuff and call it a day. Be nice to have just 3 lenses

I'm hoping Tempe Camera has it to try. I like the Art series glass
 

pophoto

New member
The Canon 24-70L II is amazing, despite having all the L primes in that range, the zoom lens is a mainstay! Problem is, the A7/R and metabones III adapter will not auto-focus quickly enough and I will be more inclined to stick with the FE 24-70.

Yes, I am too waiting for the Sigma zoom lens to release, online tests have proven it to be second only to the Canon 24-70L II, but offer more range, only problem is chromatic abberations on the lens. Definitely a useful lens in many regards!

Sigma please release FE mount lenses :)
 

Guy Mancuso

Administrator, Instructor
Okay I got to play with some Canon lenses the 24-70 F4 which I kind of liked also the 24-105 F4 which was just okay. On the 24-70 it would AF more on the wide side more accurately than the tele side and I was also indoors which may not have helped much. Regardless it did manual focus really easy as well so it might be in the cards. Its light and small which is nice big plus very little distortion and good quality through the range. Price is not great though 1500 new. I tried the Sony A 28075 and that will not work in manual mode at all without flipping switches and generally not what I wanted. They had no Sigmas glass to speak of but I may just rent the Canon mount Sigma 24-105 and for this I can manual focus pretty easy. Its more the changing lenses issue than the AF for now. I can when it comes out switch out for the Sony mount. So thats a thought or just rent the 24-70 Canon and wait it out. Was hoping someone would buy my printer so i can make some moves here
 

Guy Mancuso

Administrator, Instructor
Well I rented the Sony 24-70 FE and give it another chance. I will just shoot raw and jpeg and see how the jpegs look for my stock shots of NY. In C1 if I use the lens correction for the 16-50 lens it cleaned up the 24-70 shots that I tested.let me show you here in a minute see what you folks think of this work around.PLus PS does have a lens correction for the 24-70. Lets compare
 

Guy Mancuso

Administrator, Instructor
Interesting








Man that is some distortion going on. Now lets be clear this building is far from level square. LOL
 

Guy Mancuso

Administrator, Instructor
Darn the second image was the correction in C1 with the 16-50 profile

The 3rd image was unaltered but corrected in PS with the correct 24-70 lens profile.


Seriously the 16-50 in C1 does a excellent job and for me as a C1 user this is so easy to apply to all my images before I process.
 

Guy Mancuso

Administrator, Instructor
So given that I will travel with the 14mm, 24-70 and 55 1.8. Ill bring the 135 just in case but may not walk around with it every day. Ill see

That should be a nice walk around package in NY

The 14mm is a Sony mount so I can share the adapter with the 135 but Ill bring the adapter 3 with manual focus only. The Sony 4 adapter Im trying to protect for my real gigs with that transparent mirror inside. Makes me nervous. LOL

I also rented the lens long enough to do a BIG PR gig for 4 days as soon as I get back. There I will be using both bodies and bolt the 24-70 to the A7
 

kapil Syal

New member
i wonder, Guy Mancuso - if a Nikon D610+24-120 hiding in the bag .. would give us the Freedom to match-up our fav lenses with the A7/r - and not worry about 'covering all the bases' ..
 

Guy Mancuso

Administrator, Instructor
Well a 24-105 is what I will probably buy for this travel stuff and some PR work. My issue right now is there is nothing directly in the Sony mount out yet. The Sigma 24-105 F4 in a Sony mount would be the one I would buy but just not out on the street yet. I have a wonderful set of Primes that I use but with travel and shooting stock and walking all day its just not fun to haul that around. Also in those cases ultimate image quality is not usually needed either. So these 24-105 lenses are pretty nice tools for this type of photography. The 55mm 1.8 will be used mostly for night stuff
 

hcubell

Well-known member
It's too bad that, when the owners of Phase One brought in a new investor and pulled over $100M in cash out of the company, they didn't leave in a few crumbs to hire a software engineer to produce some up-to-date lens profiles.
 

kapil Syal

New member
completely agree - and understand.
The A7/r etc were not yet meant to have native solutions for all weathers ..
personally, i'm looking to the D610 + 24-120 to go "walk-abouts" .. and absolutely no compromise on the A7r ..
 

dwood

Well-known member
It's too bad that, when the owners of Phase One brought in a new investor and pulled over $100M in cash out of the company, they didn't leave in a few crumbs to hire a software engineer to produce some up-to-date lens profiles.
I suspect they have bigger fish to fry but yeah, I'm a little surprised that they haven't put together FE profiles. Maybe they have and just haven't done the FE 24-70 yet: don't know, as I use LR.

Guy, you're right, there's some epic distortion happening with the FE 24-70, but it cleans up nicely for me in LR and so far, I've pulled some nice images out of this lens. Since you're a C1 user, have you tried the ZA 24-70/2.8 profile? I wonder if that might also be interesting to look at.
 

Guy Mancuso

Administrator, Instructor
It's too bad that, when the owners of Phase One brought in a new investor and pulled over $100M in cash out of the company, they didn't leave in a few crumbs to hire a software engineer to produce some up-to-date lens profiles.
LOL

Could not agree more. :wtf:
 
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