In part V of my series examining Sony APS-C standard “walk-around” zooms we wrap things up with a quick look at performance at far focus distances as well as at long focal lengths for the 18-200 lenses, and a summary of the findings.
Far Focus
I wanted to make at least a cursory examination of far focus performance to see if any conclusions were radically altered. In my short evening to shoot with these lenses I ran up the hill shot this scene at 70mm.
Here are some crops from the area of the bottom right corner. The surprise is that the 18-105G is actually quite sharp in this instance. But I don’t know what’s going on with the geometric distortion. Lightroom is automatically applying corrections to the images for all of these lenses, so I don’t know if this is a software glitch or what.
As expected, the Zeiss is hanging right in there.
The original 18-200 is a bit softer out here towards the corner.
And the 18-200LE brings up the rear, a little softer yet.
200mm
Finally a quick shot at 200mm test the 18-200’s at the long end.
Again, the original Sony 18-200 has a small advantage over the 18-200LE.
Conclusions
Since these were pretty quick and dirty field tests, I’m pretty pleased that the data is pretty consistent making the conclusions pretty straightforward. The Zeiss 16-70 is among the top performers in all cases and has the most consistent image quality. It’s not that much more expensive than the 18-200 options, has a constant max aperture and fits naturally on an a6000 or similarly sized body. I agree with people who want more from it, but it has a lot going for it considering the options available for E mount. If you need more reach and can live with the variable max aperture, you don’t lose that much peak sharpness going with the original 18-200. When you see the results of the compromises that must have been required for Sony to reduce the size and weight for the LE, you realize that the original is a pretty successful design. The LE looks more at home on the a6000, but that’s about the only rationalization to pick the LE over the original, it clearly is an inferior lens in almost every situation that I looked at. Finally, the 18-105G was a disappointment for me, given it’s pretty good reputation. Maybe it’s decent for the price; it performs pretty well at 18mm, but at the longer lengths it really suffers, particularly in the corners.
The choices, thus, are pretty obvious; go for the Zeiss 16-70 if compactness, constant max aperture and image quality are most important, and go for the original 18-200 if long reach takes precedence. The a6000 fills two needs for me: a small camera to run around town and with the family, hoping that I can squeak out professional image quality in a pinch, and a compact and light system for outdoor adventures. The Zeiss fits the first use well while the reach of the 18-200 is really desirable for action shots in the mountains. At least I’ve narrowed down the choices and understand the compromises now. Decisions, decisions.
Thanks for the effort you put into these reviews. I have the 16-70 and thinks that it preforms well but the naysayers critic have been nagging in the back of my mind, now im pretty certain that the zeiss is the best lens for me. (I normally put a lot of trust in photozone as well, i normally dont buy lenses that have less than tree stars optically there.)
This was a great series of posts! I really appreciate the effort and I think the best way to compare or even review lenses is by testing them side. Testing like this is really difficult, what to do if the lens does not focus consistently on the camera for example, or if the behavior is different at different distances to the target? But you have done a serious effort and that is great! I have been considering the 18-105 before, but I think I will go for the 18-200 after having seen this comparison.