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Is OSS usable with A7R & FE 24-70?

chrisd

New member
Tim Ashley updated his excellent review on the FE 24-70 to mention that OSS was interfering with the shutter vibrations with the A7R, rendering OSS essentially unusable at lower shutter speeds where OSS is most needed.

Then there is a recent user review at B&H indicating Sony has actually disabled OSS with this lens on the A7R (maybe in the latest firmware?) because of the shutter vibration interference.

So what's the deal on this? If I purchase the FE 24-70 for use with my A7R, should I assume that OSS on this lens is a no-go? If that's the case, I'll skip this lens, given the corners aren't the greatest at 24mm as we'll.
 

philip_pj

New member
Agree it warrants more investigation as the OSS was intended to ameliorate the slow f4 lens speed. This issue may also arise as an issue for Sony with forthcoming lens releases also, especially short to moderate telephotos. It might be quite a mistake to put it on an 85-135mm for example.

I know nothing about 'OSS' and do not even like the 'IBIS' in the Sony DSLR bodies, just more stuff to either overly rely on, and to reduce optical development budget. The 28-70mm 'kit' zoom also has OSS, I wonder if it presents similar problems for the a7r?

I really like the older manual focus zooms, and use the 475 gram Contax 35-70/3.4 for what others would use the FE 24-70 for; there are plenty of others if you are inclined to turn a ring rather than press a button.

Finally, the a7r needs this feature more than the a7 as its super resolution inclines it to image blurring hence the need for solid technique for hand holding, having said that I am delighted with 1/2xFL for even 200mm lenses, and the hit rate for the traditional 1/FL is pretty good also.
 

tashley

Subscriber Member
Chris, my point was that the OSS wasn't able to help, not that it made things worse. It can deal with motion blur induced by the movement of the camera due to the photographer, but not with the shutter blur when in the 'danger zone' as I described. But I have often, though not always, got away with OSS on and quite slow shutter speeds in the region of 1/20th thru 1/8th second, depending on the focal length and shooting conditions.

I don't discount that the OSS may be interacting negatively with the shutter shock but I do think it's a really hard thing to test for and it wasn't my hypothesis at all.

BTW for anyone who thinks the 24-70 is afflicted with shutter shock, try the 70-200 F4 - I find that I need a 400th before I feel safe. Not good.
 

chrisd

New member
Agree it warrants more investigation as the OSS was intended to ameliorate the slow f4 lens speed. This issue may also arise as an issue for Sony with forthcoming lens releases also, especially short to moderate telephotos. It might be quite a mistake to put it on an 85-135mm for example.

I know nothing about 'OSS' and do not even like the 'IBIS' in the Sony DSLR bodies, just more stuff to either overly rely on, and to reduce optical development budget. The 28-70mm 'kit' zoom also has OSS, I wonder if it presents similar problems for the a7r?

I really like the older manual focus zooms, and use the 475 gram Contax 35-70/3.4 for what others would use the FE 24-70 for; there are plenty of others if you are inclined to turn a ring rather than press a button.

Finally, the a7r needs this feature more than the a7 as its super resolution inclines it to image blurring hence the need for solid technique for hand holding, having said that I am delighted with 1/2xFL for even 200mm lenses, and the hit rate for the traditional 1/FL is pretty good also.
Thanks for reply Philip. I'm getting about the same hit rate as you hand-holding without OSS, but there are times I would like to turn on the OSS and reduce the shutter speed to 2/FL and keep the ISO level down. I'm not a big fan of ISO>800 for anything more than snapshots.

Chris, my point was that the OSS wasn't able to help, not that it made things worse. It can deal with motion blur induced by the movement of the camera due to the photographer, but not with the shutter blur when in the 'danger zone' as I described. But I have often, though not always, got away with OSS on and quite slow shutter speeds in the region of 1/20th thru 1/8th second, depending on the focal length and shooting conditions.

I don't discount that the OSS may be interacting negatively with the shutter shock but I do think it's a really hard thing to test for and it wasn't my hypothesis at all.

BTW for anyone who thinks the 24-70 is afflicted with shutter shock, try the 70-200 F4 - I find that I need a 400th before I feel safe. Not good.
Thanks for clarifying that Tim. I guess I was mistakenly under the impression that having the OSS somehow exacerbated the limited shutter vibration that might start to show up at the long end of the 24-70 focal range.

Since the return period on my new EF 16-35/4 ends tomorrow, I spent a couple of hours today doing some pretty extensive handheld comparison shots with IS on and off (on the A7R), at a variety of shutter speeds (all shot at 35mm from 1/160 down to 1 sec). I got equal sharpness (very good viewed at 200%) down to about 1/2xFL (1/80), and the IS images remained very good right down to 2/FL (1/20), while the non-IS shots degraded rapidly in that range. At low shutter speeds I was consistently getting about 3 stops of improvement with IS on. I was hoping the FE 24-70 might offer similar OSS performance as the Canon, but I guess not.
 

biglouis

Well-known member
Can I ask a more general question?

There was a lot of negative comments about the 24-70 when it first came out about IQ, especially in the corners at f4.

I've seen many fine photographs posted on the web. I actually handled one in person the other day for the first time and I really liked the handling and build quality.

What is the final verdict on this lens: good or bad?

LouisB
 

iiiNelson

Well-known member
Can I ask a more general question?

There was a lot of negative comments about the 24-70 when it first came out about IQ, especially in the corners at f4.

I've seen many fine photographs posted on the web. I actually handled one in person the other day for the first time and I really liked the handling and build quality.

What is the final verdict on this lens: good or bad?

LouisB
My opinion is that it's a good but not great lens for the price they're asking. Value is 100% subjective though. If starting from scratch I'd probably stick with the kit lessor wait for the 16-35/4 results on the wide in then fill in the gaps with the FE35 and FE55. The 70-200 should round out the kit.
 

tashley

Subscriber Member
Louis, if you have time you can read the review linked to in Chris's post #3 in this thread. In summary, I don't get the negative response that has been so widespread: I think it was based on wishful thinking. Comparing the lens to the Nikkor 'Trinity' 24-70 F2.8 I think the Sony Zeiss lens is overall better because it has distinct strong spots (35 thru 60mm) at which point is effectively pretty hard to tell from a very good prime, and at its weaker spots (full wide and full zoom) it is not at all bad and particularly at the wider end, it is better than the Nikkor. Overall, I think it's a pretty good piece of glass and fairly priced, and I still count it as the most useful lens I own.

BUT you have to make sure you get a good one. It took me three tries. I think possibly that a lot of the negative responses, quite fairly. have been based on experience with a poorly quality controlled copy...
 

chrisd

New member
BTW for anyone who thinks the 24-70 is afflicted with shutter shock, try the 70-200 F4 - I find that I need a 400th before I feel safe. Not good.
This is exactly the reason I am holding off on getting the FE 70-200 f4. My Minolta 70-210 f4 (beer can) is non-image stabilized, so I'm shooting it at around 1/400 anyway. Plus it has shorter MFD, so the Sony-Zeiss version is not a compelling buy for me. Unless Sony came out with an EFC firmware fix for the A7r, but pigs will fly before then.
 

Bill Caulfeild-Browne

Well-known member
BTW for anyone who thinks the 24-70 is afflicted with shutter shock, try the 70-200 F4 - I find that I need a 400th before I feel safe. Not good.
I really hadn't thought of this in connection with the 70-200 FE, although I've used the lens a lot in the last month or so. I went back to look at my files and find that the vast majority were in fact shot at 1/200 or faster, so the shutter shock may simply not have manifested itself.

So today I did a controlled test and found that there is indeed evidence of blurring at 1/125th but not at 1/250th. This was handheld with OSS on. Of course I can't tell if it's just shutter shock or an interaction with the OSS.

As a by-product of my test I found F4 to be a tad soft though perfectly usable, while F5.6 seemed to be the sharpest aperture followed closely by F8.

As for the 24-70 FE, I love the lens but don't use it in the range 1/5 to 1/50th. It's nice and crisp and as you say, very good if you avoid the extremes. I find 28 mm perfectly acceptable, all the way to roughly 65 mm.

I do hope the next iteration of the a7r will have a shutter as effective as my a99!
 

philip_pj

New member
I often wonder whether anything similar manifests itself in the only other cameras with such a sensor - the D800/800e/810, now with the vaunted fix of EFCS? You can see what I am getting at here, it is difficult to fully ascribe image quality loss with a lot happening, esp for hand held shots. Can D800e users typically use 1/125s or lower for a non-VR 200mm or 70-200mm lens and get reliable trouble-free results hand held? We need a benchmark.

Bill, would you say that the softness at f4 compared with f5.6 in the 70-200 FE was less, more or about the same as the 1/125s blurring you noticed? Just trying to get some scale on the issue.

I found a slight blurring with the 200/2.8 HS at longer durations but then realised I would merely have to use sensible s/speeds, and yes, 1/400s did that very well. A quick turn of the ISO dial or wider aperture does that easily, for my needs.

Finally, we might find the admittedly nice a99 unit works less well if they put the V8 sensor in that body, lol.
 

philip_pj

New member
Dd some looking in a bid to answer my own questions, and found the usual degree of talk WRT the D800 series; and this:

'If you are shooting a D800 hand-held and you want maximum sharpness (either for large prints or for cropping), then you’ll definitely want to use at least 1/2x focal length as your shutter speed.'

Nikon D800: Maximizing Sharpness | Jason P. Odell
 

horshack

New member
I often wonder whether anything similar manifests itself in the only other cameras with such a sensor - the D800/800e/810, now with the vaunted fix of EFCS? You can see what I am getting at here, it is difficult to fully ascribe image quality loss with a lot happening, esp for hand held shots. Can D800e users typically use 1/125s or lower for a non-VR 200mm or 70-200mm lens and get reliable trouble-free results hand held? We need a benchmark.
Here is a gallery of shots taken with the D800 + Tamron 24-70VC, all hand-held and most at 1/13.
 

Bill Caulfeild-Browne

Well-known member
[
I often wonder whether anything similar manifests itself in the only other cameras with such a sensor - the D800/800e/810, now with the vaunted fix of EFCS? You can see what I am getting at here, it is difficult to fully ascribe image quality loss with a lot happening, esp for hand held shots. Can D800e users typically use 1/125s or lower for a non-VR 200mm or 70-200mm lens and get reliable trouble-free results hand held? We need a benchmark.

Bill, would you say that the softness at f4 compared with f5.6 in the 70-200 FE was less, more or about the same as the 1/125s blurring you noticed? Just trying to get some scale on the issue.

I found a slight blurring with the 200/2.8 HS at longer durations but then realised I would merely have to use sensible s/speeds, and yes, 1/400s did that very well. A quick turn of the ISO dial or wider aperture does that easily, for my needs.

Finally, we might find the admittedly nice a99 unit works less well if they put the V8 sensor in that body, lol.
The softness at F4 is very minor and less than the shutter shock at 1/125. Having said that, the shock isn't consistent - there are some 1/125 -1/30 files that are just fine. A bit mystifying!
 

GrahamWelland

Subscriber & Workshop Member
Can I ask a more general question?

There was a lot of negative comments about the 24-70 when it first came out about IQ, especially in the corners at f4.

I've seen many fine photographs posted on the web. I actually handled one in person the other day for the first time and I really liked the handling and build quality.

What is the final verdict on this lens: good or bad?

LouisB
Good. Ignore the measurebators who never actually shoot anything!

Btw, as an ex-D800 shooter the same proviso applies – 36mp will show ANY imperfection with technique or adaption to camera characteristics such as shutter shake. Just ask any a fuji 67 shooter for example. This isn't a new concept people.
 

tashley

Subscriber Member
True Graham, but I could regularly get good shots at 1x focal length with d800 and 70-200 f4 at the longer part of its range, and this is not reliably possible for me at least with the Sony equivalent. I never worried about shutter slap during The Great Panic but now I am shooting longer focal lengths I do find it to be a fairly serious issue...
 
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