Sony FE 24-240mm f/3.5-6.3 OSS Lens Lab Tests – SonyAlphaLab Guest Post
This post originally ran in SonyAlphaLab.com, which is now a guest contributor to SonyMirrorlessPro.com. SonyAlphaLab is an incredible blog with incredible content. We highly recommend adding SonyAlphaLab to your regular reading list. These Sony FE 24-240mm f/3.5-6.3 OSS Lens Lab Tests take a look at the lens in a controlled environment.
I wanted to show you all what the new FE 24-240mm f/3.5-6.3 OSS Lens is capable of in the Lab, so this morning I got up before everybody else and took some test photos in both Raw and Jpeg Quality. I wanted to show you the SEL24240 lens distortion in particular when shooting raw and how well the camera corrects for it when shooting in Jpeg mode. I also wanted to show you the huge focal range in the lab, and how it renders the lab scene throughout.
I used my Sony A7r and a rock solid tripod, plus remote for these test photos and was shooting raw+Jpeg quality. Lightroom 5 was used and I exported files @ 80% jpeg quality, 1200px, and standard sharpening for web…
Lab Testing
Note the heavy distortion on the raw file and the super heavy vignette in the very bottom corners. Overall Sharpness is pretty good, but the lab scene is not the best for testing wide-angle lenses in the corners. I will have to use real world subjects for this, but the rest of the focal lengths work well in the lab scene I think.
100% Crops – Click Thumbnails:
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~35mm
@ 35mm the distortion is reduced by a huge margin and you can see that very clearly below. The vertical and horizontal lines are the easiest way to check for distortion…
~50mm
Some distortion creeps back in @ 50mm as illustrated by the vertical pole on the right side… Background separation is starting to look pretty nice.
~70mm
Some distortion is present here as well and noticeable by the downward angle of the circuit board alone the top.
~100mm
The images are getting a bit darker now due to the average metering mode used and the lights taking up a larger portion of the frame. Exposure comp should have been applied to fix this, but I forgot…
The distortion at ~100mm is not bad at all, and the separation is really starting too look pretty awesome.
~150mm
The lights are starting to turn into glowing orbs now 
240mm
Some softness is noticeable at 240mm and it may be the loud clunky shutter of my A7r causing this possible. I need to try some higher shutter speed test shots to see if the sharpness improves at 240mm, and/or test the lens on my Nex-6 which I have not done just yet. If the sharpness is there at 240mm on the Nex-6, we will know for sure the A7r is the culprit. The 55-210mm lens on the A7r can be an issue of the shutter speed is really slow, so it stands to reason this lens might also be susceptible to the shake cause by the shutter mechanism.
The out of focus lights render well in my opinion for such a versatile lens. Not exactly Zeiss like, but for the money not bad…
Thanks for checking out the lab test photos from the new FE 24-240mm f/3.5-6.3 OSS lens! As you can see, some distortion is clearly part of the deal with this product, but if you shoot Jpeg, the camera will do a great job correcting the lens. If you shoot raw, then you will need to do some work in post for sure to eliminate the distortion at 24mm in particular. Overall sharpness is better than I expected, but not great in the corners when shooting wide open. 240mm is noticeable softer wide open. If you stop down to f/8 things sharpen up quite a bit. Lens vignette is also fairly noticeable across the range when shooting wide open.
The lab can be brutal when showing lens flaws, but it’s very important to remember how the lens actually performs in the real world. A lens for this price point and range will have some flaws for sure, and as you can see it’s mostly on the wide-angle end and extreme telephoto end.
More testing to be done with the crop facto APS-C Nex-6, which will yield an effective 360mm focal length. In addition to that, the smaller sensor will use the better part of the optics and have less distortion noticeable most likely.
Overall so far I would say a solid performer for the money considering incredible range, versatility, full frame coverage, and cost… Full review coming soon!
Questions and comments always welcomed.
Thanks again for checking in and have a great weekend everybody,
Jay