$1K "G" Lens vs. $100 "Kit" lens (Don't laugh...)

Sony offers two lenses considered to be “general purpose” or “walkaround” lenses for their APS-C E-mount cameras like the A6000 series:

• The 16-50 f3.5 – 5.6 power zoom lens which is tiny and compact and offers a motorized zoom ideal for shooting video.  This lens sells for $100 when purchased as a bundle.

• A high-end 16-55 constant f/2.8 “G” lens that sells for over $1000 USD.

So one lens is 10x the cost of the other.  Is the expensive one 10x better?  Let’s do a quick test: I took two pictures of the really cute subject under ideal conditions; one with each lens.  100% crops from both appear below (click on image to view larger and sharper):

Close-up of the test shots from the portrait above.  The $1000 “G” lens (right) is demonstrably better, but you probably wouldn't know unless you pixel peeped.

Now you're probably going to want to download the originals so you can pixel peep for yourself.  Here they are, but keep in mind that it was impossible to get an identical pose from my subject. :-)

16-55 f/2.8 $1K lens
16-50 f/3.5-5.6 $100 lens

Of course there's much more to a lens than just being able to count eyelashes.  Is it sharp in the corners?  At all f/stops?  Is there vignetting?  How are out-of-focus artifacts rendered?  Is there distortion?  (I'll answer that last one below: Yes.  And, surprisingly, the $1K lens had it just as much:)

One trick to designing affordable lenses is to not even try to correct distortion; as that can easily be corrected either in-camera or in-Lightroom.  Same thing with vignetting.  My goal in this test was to show how the cheaper lens had much more distortion than the expensive lens.  Turns out the $1K lens had similar distortion to the $100 lens.  Silly me.

From this informal test I conclude that you should not look down on the cheaper lens – like those small and cheap 50mm lenses that used to come standard on SLRs back in the 60’s, they are better than people give them credit for, and are smaller and lighter than their more expensive brethren.  Conversely, don't believe that a $1K lens is not going to have any faults!

Usually this is the time in my blog post when I take my test images, blow them up to poster size, hang them on the wall, and ask participants in a recent seminar if they can tell which lens took which picture.  That's not going to happen this time because I had to cancel all seminars through May 2020 (maybe more depending on how the pandemic pans out).  I will point out only that differences that are apparent when pixel peeping are often imperceptible when enlarged and viewed at a reasonable distance.

This is an example of enlarging and not viewing them at a reasonable distance.  Not a meaningful way to evaluate image quality!

Seminars

Seminars in Seattle, Portland (Oregon), Kansas City, and St. Louis have all been indefinitely postponed.  New Zealand is still scheduled for November but let's see what happens before I secure a venue.

In the meantime, let me make everyone in the world this offer to help put your downtime to good use: There is a streaming version of the seminar, which you can enjoy in the comfort of your home.  I'm offering 20% discount on this course for the month of April - just use discount code april2020 when checking out.  You can get it here: https://gumroad.com/l/FriedmanArchivesSeminars

In the Pipeline

Tony Phillips is busy working on the following books.  You can pre-order them now at a discount but you won't be charged until we start delivering content:

Fujifilm X-T4
Fujifilm X100V
Olympus E-M1 III

Time to re-think the books?

I need your help.  I'm using some of my downtime to re-think my approach to the books.  My latest one about the Sony A6600 and A6100 (both mid-range cameras) is a whopping 757 pages!  Although a great value, I'm sure beginners will find the sheer volume of it intimidating (especially if they order the printed version).  What started out as a friendly, well-explained guide to every single feature has ballooned into a well-explained guide to a whole lot of features.  Many have mentioned that my explanations seem long-winded, yet I've received no shortage of emails from users thankful for this explanation style.  And each time I work on a new book, I re-evaluate each section, asking if I can explain this in fewer words, or clear up lingering confusion based on the constant stream of email questions.  (The section on Format, for example, has finally been reduced from 3 pages to 3 paragraphs.)  Entire sections were cut out and referred to by external reference to try to keep the page count down (which matters for printed books, where there is an upper limit on the number of pages that can be included).

So my question is this:  What would you suggest to improve the value of my books?  Do you think they are too large?  Which sections can you do without?  Is the chapter on video completely overexplained?  If I could start a new series from scratch, what should the guiding methodology be?

I have considered re-writing everything as a tweet so every idea fits within 144 characters (that would take a LOT of work!), but that would get spiritually closer to the Sony manuals, whose mantra is "use as few words as possible but still be accurate".  I had always striven (that's a word!) to be the opposite of that: "Use as many words as you need to make things clear".

Ideas on what you'd like to see in the blog are welcome too.  Are they too long?  Shall I publish shorter blogs more often (thus adding potentially even more noise to your life)?  Are the topics I present relevant to your photography?  Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section.

Best of the Blog Trilogy - FREE!

You always wondered why I was charging for content you can still find online for free.  To help you get through isolation, here is a FREE (limited time) hand-curated collection of my best articles from both my blog and Cameracraft magazine.  Download your free 3-pdf collection here!  (Oh, and you're welcome! :-) )

Next time in Cameracraft

Mr. & Mrs. Steve Winnie and his modest collection of Minolta cameras. He has friends who collect motorcycles like this.

I investigate the worldwide resurgence of film, which, along with vinyl LPs, typewriters, and vacuum tube amplifiers, would never have been predicted 20 years ago.  You won't believe what's become popular or why!

I also work with Topaz' image editing tools like DeNoise AI, JPEG to RAW AI, and Gigapixel AI to see if their marketing hype is too good to be true.  (Translation: I bang my head against the wall so you don't have to.)  Subscribe today and support the last high-quality photo magazine with unmatched technical insights!

How I'm Spending my Time

I'm between books right now, and because of this worldwide pandemic nobody's hiring photographers.  So other than catching up on my reading (and working on some more Cameracraft articles), I've been working on various things:

Playing internet chess with the grandkids

I finally had time to actualize my pre-visualized shot of the Antelope Canyon.  (See this blog post for the importance of pre-visualizing your images.)

And why not use the time to also make some Xaphoon promotional videos?  Here's one: :-)

Hope you're all able to stay inside and stay safe!

Until next time,

Yours Truly, Gary Friedman