Sony FE 14mm 1.8 GM

The Sony FE 14mm f1.8 G Master is a unique lens: their widest prime to date and sharing the honour of joint-brightest 14mm with the similarly-priced Sigma 14 1.8 Art. But unlike the Sigma, the Sony is a native mirrorless design that’s not only smaller, but less than half the weight, making it not just more portable but much more practical for shooting from a gimbal, drone or star tracker. The optical quality is excellent with sharp details across the frame and attractive rendering in blurred areas, while focusing is fast, smooth and silent. Geometric distortion and vignetting were both kept to a minimum even on uncorrected RAW files, and I saw little to no evidence of chromatic aberrations. You can boost the far corner sharpness by closing the aperture a stop or ideally two, and some focus breathing is visible as you rack from near to far, but otherwise this is a very well-corrected and high-performing lens. If you’re happy to sacrifice the bright aperture and light weight for the flexibility of a zoom, consider Sony’s FE 12-24mm f2.8 G Master (double the price), Sony’s FE 12-24mm f4G (a little pricier) or Sigma’s 14-24mm f2.8 DG DN (a little cheaper). Ultimately the Sony 14 1.8 will greatly appeal for traditional landscape, architecture and astro as well as low light and video work. Not only does it deliver the goods across the board, it’s considerably more portable than its only rival and roughly the same price too.