Leaked image of Sony 18-110mm f/4 G E-mount lens to be announced Sep. 9th 2016

Kind of surprised that it costs $1000 more than the Sony 28-135mm PZ full frame lens. I would have expected them to be closer to the same price.
 
This price is totally 'demand driven'. Lot's of people want this lens as a standard lens for video and the Sony marketeers know that.
Not surprising but I'll keep the 18-105 for a while.
Better materials and better coating, expensive glass and a new design doesn't explain nine times higher price in my opinion.
 
I dunno... up in that range, it's not a guarantee. If it's a great lens, it will probably sell. If it's middling (like a lot of Sony G stuff seems to be), it may not.

It's a great idea, it's just not worth 90% of the cost of another FS5 to me.
 
I have a hunch - based on inferences from the various interviews given by the Sony executives and the company's history as of late - that soon there will be a camera tailor made for this lens and perhaps even offered as a package.
 
It's a loaded cine servo zoom lens and the price reflects that. No free lunch here. It can do a lot. Has built in image stabilization. The zoom rocker on the FS7 and FS5 controls the zoom plus on the a7 cams you can use the zoom switch on the lens. You can go full manual with the zoom. Pretty compact. Parfocal. Only downside for me the focus by wire but if Sony can improve the performance then that could be a nonissue. I'm looking forward to trying it out. Ticks a lot of boxes.
 
Erik Naso said:
It's a loaded cine servo zoom lens and the price reflects that. No free lunch here. It can do a lot. Has built in image stabilization. The zoom rocker on the FS7 and FS5 controls the zoom plus on the a7 cams you can use the zoom switch on the lens. You can go full manual with the zoom. Pretty compact. Parfocal. Only downside for me the focus by wire but if Sony can improve the performance then that could be a nonissue. I'm looking forward to trying it out. Ticks a lot of boxes.
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i see it has a manual switch by pulling back the focus ring so it wont be focus by wire and i see focus markings
check out hte video at newsshooter.
 
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I get the sense the prime lens religion is losing some ground ;)
I like the pseudo zoom prime feature of the LS300. Did they patent that?
 
Gweilo66 said:
I get the sense the prime lens religion is losing some ground ;)
I like the pseudo zoom prime feature of the LS300. Did they patent that?
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To me, primes are for narrative, carefully choreographed filmmaking or low light interviews. Everyone else needs zooms.
 
I get the sense the prime lens religion is losing some ground ;)
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The cycle repeats itself. In 16mm, we started with primes, then zooms came along and the convenience was undeniable, but primes held the advantage in quality, but they were so inconvenient to use, so they invented the "turret" so you could have two or three prime lenses at all times and swap easily... and then zooms took over.

In 8mm, we started with all primes; by the time we got to Super 8, zooms were nigh unto ubiquitous.

In video, we've pretty much always had zooms. There's a few instances of c-mount primes, but not many. Those are mainly for like security cameras. In professional video, the zoom lens has always been king, whether 1/3", 1/4", 1/2", 2/3", whatever -- it's always been dominated by zooms.

I've got more primes than I'll ever be able to use; should put my set of Compact Primes up for sale at some point. The advantages of primes are generally that they are faster, and smaller/lighter than an equivalent zoom would be. But for convenience and flexibility, zooms will pretty much always win out. In 35mm cinema the problem has been that zooms have to be so gigantic that they don't generally end up being actually more convenient than primes in many circumstances. My Cooke 20-100 was a 5x zoom, and it was absurdly huge, and even then it only opened up to T3.3. I had a Zeiss of comparable size, can't remember the exact focal range, but it was awful. You had to stop down to f/5.6 before the image was even close to acceptably sharp. It was massive. I eventually gave it away to the local community college's film program.

I think that if it were possible to make an f/1.8 zoom lens for S35-sized sensors or FF, that's all anyone would use, and primes would be rare exceptions. Just like it happened with 1/3" and 1/2" and 2/3" video, and with 16mm/S16 film, and S8 film. But because it hasn't proven practical to make a lens like that for a large-sensor camera, primes are still a vital component of the large-sensor market and probably always will be.

Gweilo66 said:
I like the pseudo zoom prime feature of the LS300. Did they patent that?
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I'm sure they didn't, because Panasonic was doing it before the LS300 came out. They had the "i.zoom" feature on multiple cameras, which is a way of scaling in on the chip to tighten the field of view. The DVX200 has it, the AC90 had it, the HC-X1000 had it. Heck, even the GH2 had a version of it, called "ETC" (Extended Tele Conversion), but it was a couple of fixed focal length crops, rather than variable zooming. JVC didn't invent it, they nearly certainly couldn't patent it, I think they just managed to market it better, or it caught more attention because it was being used on an interchangeable-lens camera, where the aforementioned zoom implementations were zoom-lens cameras.
 
Yes, quite obviously it will be the kit lens for the next S35 camera in the FS-series... I'm still expecting a full frame camera in the FS series though... Which obviously could come as a kit with the 28-135...
What I want most though is a reasonably affordable S35 24-70/2.8 with OSS... Not necessarily a cine version... The FS5 especially would benefit enormously from a lens like that. (As would A6000/6300 users etc).
 
dcloud said:
i see it has a manual switch by pulling back the focus ring so it wont be focus by wire and i see focus markings
check out hte video at newsshooter.
Click to expand...

The 18-110mm costs $1000 more than the 28-135mm because the lens cap on the 18-110mm actually fits well and stays in place. :happy:
 
LOL. The new lens hood is a big improvement over the disposable cup lid that Sony shipped with the 28-135mm.

Sony will probably start shipping this new lens with the FS7 and FS5 in the near future. I don't see many new cameras on the horizon from Sony. I believe Sony are too busy working on new firmware and codecs for the cameras they have out now. These cameras are selling well so while spoil a good thing. I noticed Sony have even released another new paid update for the PXW-X70 which is a good thing.
 
JPNola said:
The 18-110mm costs $1000 more than the 28-135mm because the lens cap on the 18-110mm actually fits well and stays in place. :happy:
Click to expand...

That was what dawned on me seeing the apparent price, and looks like it is a clutch on the photos. Finally Sony might have addressed the gaping hole the 28-135mm has. This looks like a huge deal for me, as I would be a complete fool not take a serious look at this to pair with a future s35 fs camera. I am still pretty sure the pz is going to be too slow, obviously not to be over-used, but for some of the things I'd be shooting would love an option to whip zoom.

As long as the optical properties hold up, this looks like a winner for me.
 
JackCarter said:
...I don't see many new cameras on the horizon from Sony. I believe Sony are too busy working on new firmware and codecs for the cameras they have out now. These cameras are selling well so while spoil a good thing.
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But it wouldn't be Sony if there weren't 85 models shooting 27 different formats and codecs with new models introduced weekly!! Back in the day, I used to walk around NAB and go to the Sony display and laugh at the amount of variants they would have every year. Remember then they were selling UVW Beta SP, BVW Beta SP, U-Matic SP, D1, D2, Beta SX, Beta MPEG, Mini DV, DVCam, all in one model year? We used to literally make fun of them, it was such a convoluted, dumb-sounding strategy but it worked for them back in the day. We have so many cameras and formats to choose from now, I think the market should slow down with the resolution wars and concentrate on creating BETTER images like Arri has. More dynamic range, better color and contrast. Arri, according to the Japanese/RED mindset, is way behind the curve since they barely have any 4K (whoops 3.2k) technology, yet almost every episodic and feature film set I am on is shooting with "outdated" Arris, not with Sonys. You'd think the Japanese/RED marketing/engineers would get a clue.
 
Since the transition to 4K hasn't happened everywhere yet, it makes perfect sense to shoot with the various iterations of Alexa and rely on the existing 1080p infrastructure. With under 20 million 4K sets in the US as of now, the majority of TV viewers only have a 1080p set at best and upscaled 2.8K doesn't look all that different from a "pure" 4K. There are also many reasons to go with what's known. This is especially true for those big time DP's and directors who still shoot on film.

As to primes vs. zooms - Sigma's 24-35 may become a new style lens, where six to ten primes are replaced by fewer but still fast enough under -3'ish zooms of ~ 16-24; 24-50; 50-85; 85-135.
 
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