Image courtesy: CameraSize.

The new Zeiss 16-35mm FE is now shipping almost everywhere and I keep receiving more and more tests. First of all see the picture on top to see how much smaller the A7+Zeiss combo is compared to equivalent Canon and Nikon kits. Also note that DxOmark ranked the Zeiss as best here (although it beats the Nikon only by a hair). And here the new tests:

Verdict FE16-35mm vs. SEL10-18mm (alphafotograf.de).
Sony FE 16-35mm F4 Testing (ProImagenz).
Quick look by Steve Huff.
SONY A7R + Carl Zeiss Vario-Tessar T* FE 4/16-35 ZA OSS (SEL1635Z) Timelapse TEST (Youtube).

Check the 16-35mm Zeiss lens price and in Stock status here:
USA/Canada  at Amazon, Adorama, BHphoto, Sony Store US, Sony Canada.
Europe at Sony DE, UK, ES, IT, FR, CH, AT, NL, BE, FI, SE, NO, PT.
Australia and Asia at Sony AUS, Amazon Japan and Digitalrev.

You can download the A7 with 16-35mm versus A6000 with 10-18mm comparison images at Jörg Haag’s website.

In contrary to what I did in the hands-on review of the FE 16-35mm F4 ZA OSS I will not give any comments or a verdict on the images and will leave that fully to the readers.

So what do you think of that comparison?

Preorder the 16-35mm Zeiss lens here:
USA/Canada  at Amazon, Adorama, BHphoto, Sony Store US, Sony Canada.
Europe at Sony DE, UK, ES, IT, FR, CH, AT, NL, BE, FI, SE, NO, PT.
Australia and Asia at Sony AUS, Amazon Japan and Digitalrev.

Zeiss 16-35mm FE shipping early next week! Yesterday many US SAR reader got notified that their 16-35mm preorder at Amazon US will ship next week November 18!

Photographyblog (Click here) posted the extensive 16-35mm Zeiss FE f/4.0 lens review. The lens gets Highly Recommended for the following reason:

It delivers outstanding sharpness in the centre of the frame almost throughout its aperture and zoom range, and also performs very well at the edges of the frame too. The Sony Vario-Tessar T* FE 16-35 mm F4 ZA OSS lens does suffer from both distortion and vignetting at either end of the zoom range, requiring some post-processing to remove it, but chromatic aberrations are well-controlled and it can even create some nice bokeh effects when shooting wide-open at 35mm. The relatively compact Sony Vario-Tessar T* FE 16-35 mm F4 ZA OSS offers an effective image stabilisation system, quite fast, quiet and reliable auto-focusing on the A7R that we tested it with, intuitive manual focusing and an excellent level of build quality, plus it’s usefully weather-tight too. All in all, we’d definitely recommend buying this lens if you can stomach the price of admission – it makes an excellent addition to the already released Zeiss FE 24-70mm F4 and FE 70-200mm F4 lenses.

Preorder the 16-35mm Zeiss lens here:
USA/Canada  at Amazon, Adorama, BHphoto, Sony Store US, Sony Canada.
Europe at Sony DE, UK, ES, IT, FR, CH, AT, NL, BE, FI, SE, NO, PT.
Australia and Asia at Sony AUS, Amazon Japan and Digitalrev.

SAR reader Isidor Taylor sent me his last A7s video shot with Top model Lise Olsen. Doesn’t tell a lot about the A7s quality but she is a beauty!
And here some more A7s news:
Behind the Scenes with the Sony A7 & A7s (Joshmcleodphotography).
Dirty slow motion video test between a Sony FS700 at 240 frames per second, a7s at 120 and a NEX7 at 60 (Dave Tameling).
Sony A7S Image Quality Analysis (Imaging Resource).
Sony A7s Compared To Sony A7r At High ISO Settings + Full Size Resolution Jpgs (Soundimagesplus).
A7s CINOFLEX (Vimeo).
Stills from 4K: How Many Megapixels Does it Take to Make a Great Wedding Album? (Planet5d).
German High ISO test (Sony Germany Forum).
Drifting From Shore shot on the A7s on Vimeo.

Zach: “Commercial video for TxBands.com shot entirely on the A7s. The camera performed very well in an incredibly fast paced environment. Only had a few hours to shoot the event and publish the video before the event ended. The camera never got in the way and just allowed me to focus on shooting. https://vimeo.com/110933800”

Laszlo: “here two links to clips shot using Sony a7s in one voigtlander 35mm lens and in the other Loxia 35 mm lens. enjoy. https://vimeo.com/106631345 and https://vimeo.com/110671055″

Ashley: “We recently filmed a black friday advertisement for our store using the Sony A7s with only available light.  Most of the night shots are at ISO’s of 8000 or more, we would love to hear what you think of the video and if you think it is something the SAR community would like to see.  Really shows how the A7s works in such low light conditions and still can deliver an image with great contrast and saturation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULy-dQuhu4I”

What I never noticed before is that the Sony A7s is the leader of the Professiona Grade sales ranking at Amazon (Click here to see the full ranking).

Sony A7s store links:
Sony A7s in USA/CA at Amazon, Adorama, BHphoto, Sony USA, Sony Canada.
Sony A7s in Eu at Sony DE, UK, ES, FR, IT, NL, BE, AT, CH, SE, NO, FI, PL. And Wex UK.
A7s Gariz leather case in [shoplink 27569 ebay]Black (Click here)[/shoplink], [shoplink 27570 ebay]Brown (Click here)[/shoplink], [shoplink 27571 ebay]Red (Click here)[/shoplink] and [shoplink 27572 ebay]Orange (Click here)[/shoplink].

Image courtesy: Jörg Haag.

The 16-35mm FE is shipping in Asia (Amazon Japan and Digitalrev) and Europe ([shoplink 30495 ebay]eBay UK[/shoplink]). And it will ship soon in USA too (check dates at Amazon, Adorama, BHphoto, Sony Store US, Sony Canada). SAR readers are getting their lenses and this is a review published by Jörg Haag (Click here):

The FE 16-35mm is an adequate replacement of the A-Mount, at least from the perspective of image quality. An aperture stop less light is something to get over, because this is easily compensated by the better ISO performance of the α7 in comparison to the α99. I am looking forward to many hours of photography with this lens and I think this lens will not be inferior to the A-Mount counterpart in the field of architectural photography.

You can discuss with Joerg directly on SonyAlphaForum. More image samples have been posted on Photographyblog.

Check the full shipment date info here:
USA/Canada  at Amazon, Adorama, BHphoto, Sony Store US, Sony Canada.
Europe at Sony DE, UK, ES, IT, FR, CH, AT, NL, BE, FI, SE, NO, PT.
Australia and Asia at Sony AUS, Amazon Japan and Digitalrev.

Image courtesy: Photozone

Zeiss Touit 12mm at Photozone:

Ultra-wide angle lenses are never really perfect. However, within its scope the Zeiss Touit 12mm f/2.8 delivers decent results. The center quality is great and the border and corner quality are good to very good at mainstream settings. The low lateral CAs contribute to the high sharpness perception. The distortions are fine at 2% – this is a normal value for such a prime lens and lower than on most conventional zoom lenses for sure. However, the vignetting is very high especially at max. aperture.

Photozone also reviewed the 32mm Zeiss Touit and writes:

The Zeiss Touit 32mm f/1.8 didn’t really convince us – at least on the NEX 7. The image center is sharp straight from the max. aperture and even stunning when stopping down. However, the borders aren’t all that hot at large apertures although at least very decent beyond f/4. Lateral CAs may be just visible without being disturbing. Distortions are usually auto-corrected either by the camera or your favorite RAW converter. However, when looking behind the scenes, you can spot higher than expected issues here – which is a bit disappointing for a pricey Zeiss lens.

DSLRmagazine (translation here) compared the new Zeiss Loxia vs the Leica Summicron:

The Leica Summicron-M shows its classical analog in nature, being the center pointer on the corners, while the Zeiss Loxia shows a more “docile” nature’s own “flat curve” of digital optics with corrections computer support.

Sony FS7 E-mount and A-mount with LA-EA4 and Speedbooster lens tests from Dan Chung on Vimeo.

Dan Chung from Newsshooter is reviewing the new E-mount FS7 4K camera. He is not happy with the E-mount lenses for many reasons while A-mount lenses do work much better than expected on the FS/:

What makes Sony’s A-mount lenses different to Canon’s is that the aperture is still controlled from the body (or LA-EA adapter) via a mechanical level. Canon EOS lenses are all electronic and so without power there is no way to adjust iris. This means the A lens aperture can be controlled by a simple ‘dumb’ mechanical adapter in the same way that most Nikon lenses can. This makes them about the most suitable AF lens out there for adaptation to video.

Read the full article at Newsshooter!

Camcorder preorders:
Sony PXW-FS7 body only at BHphoto (Click here).
Sony PXW-FS7 with 28-135mm lens at BHphoto (Click here).
Sony VCT-FS7 Lightweight Rod Support System for PXW-FS7 at BHphoto (Click here).
28-135mm at Amazon (Click here), Adorama (Click here), BHphoto (Click here).
28-135mm powerzoom in Europe at Sony DE, UK, ES, IT, FR, CH, AT, NL, BE, FI, SE, NO, PT.
Sony 128GB XQD Memory Card G Series 400MB/s at Adorama (Click here) and BHphoto (Click here).
Sony 64GB XQD Memory Card G Series 400MB/s at Adorama (Click here) and BHphoto (Click here).
Sony 32GB XQD Memory Card G Series 400MB/s at Adorama (Click here) and BHphoto (Click here).