Sony Unveils the 16-35mm f/4 PZ G Power Zoom Lens for E-Mount Cameras
Sony has announced the PZ 16–35mm F4 lens, a power zoom lens designed for hybrid creators who capture both stills and video, but with a heavy emphasis on video usability.
“The needs of our community are our top priority. As the content creation landscape continues to evolve and the worlds of still imaging and video continue to merge, we are constantly developing new products to meet this growing demand for hybrid content creators,” said Yang Cheng, Vice President, Imaging Solutions, Sony Electronics Inc. “With an advanced feature set and unmatched portability and flexibility, The FE PZ 16-35MM F4 G is perfectly designed to meet these evolving needs and ensure that today’s creators can realize their full vision.”
Sony’s latest lens weighs 353 grams, making it the world’s lightest f/4 wide zoom lens. The 16-35mm f/4 is constructed of 13 elements in 12 groups and features two AA lenses, one aspherical lens, one ED aspherical lens, one super ED lens, and one ED lens. This means that nearly half of the elements are of some specialized nature to control its rendering, aberrations, and distortion, and only two of them are paired to a group. Thanks to the use of AA elements, Sony says its advanced optical design ensures excellent close-up performance through the zoom range: a minimum focusing distance of 0.28 and 0.24 meters at both ends respectively, and a 0.23x max magnification ratio. Additionally, an optimized coating effectively suppresses flare and ghosting for clear, well-defined images.
It’s the company’s sixth consumer power zoom lens, it’s the second for full-frame cameras, and the first to drive both autofocus and zoom using linear motors.
There are six Extreme Dynamic (XD) linear motors, two driving focus, four powering the zoom, and it is the first Alpha lens to feature electronic power zoom using them. The lens has both a zoom ring and control lever for zooming, which will zoom in/out faster or slower depending on how far you’re moving the lever in either direction. The lens also offers both a physical zoom and focus ring, as well as an aperture ring which can be de-clicked using a dedicated switch. On compatible camera bodies, the zoom ring rotation direction can be swapped to fit your shooting style.
On compatible cameras, such as the FX3, the T/W lever around the shutter button can also be used to zoom in and out. You can independently set the zoom speeds for standby and shooting modes so quick movements can be made while composing and slower movements while recording. There’s also the option to use Sony’s physical remote or mobile app for zooming in both stills and video mode. The company says its minimized focus breathing on the lens and that on compatible cameras – the a7 IV and FX6 as of publishing this article – this can be further reduced with their Breathing Compensation function, which crops and adjusts resolution to help keep the composition the same while focusing.
Here are some sample pictures:
The Sony 16-35mm f/4 Power Zoom lens will be available in July for $1,200.
More info on Sony’s website.
