Sony A7s Lens Planning

L

Luke Bacich

Active member
Hey everyone,

With the A7s around the corner I wanted to pick the forum's brain on what would be a good lens strategy for this camera. I'm not going to preorder but if the early reviews are positive re rolling shutter etc, I will definitely be on board and want to plan my lens purchases accordingly.

I have the A7r and 55 and 35 primes. For shooting video I'm used to shooting with my APSC VG-20 and shared lenses between that camera and my NEX-6. I would love to upgrade the VG-20 as I have always disliked the look of the video, mainly due to moire. The APSC Sony system is so easy to work with for video lens wise though; 10-18, 35, 50, 16-70, 18-200, 18-105 all with OSS. I particularly love the fast OSS primes.

On the FE system life is clearly very different, with the 24-70 and 70-200 being the stabilised lenses. A lot of the reports on the 24-70 haven't been amazing (for stills) so I was wondering how that lens would fair as a video lens? I have shot with the 70-200 and did really like the lens. I was hence wondering what people would recommend looking at lens wise? Perhaps I'm placing too much emphasis on stabilisation as the primes are fantastic for the camera but OSS made life really easy say on the 35 E-mount compared to the Zeiss 24mm for video.

For those pre-ordering or thinking of doing so what will be your go to lenses?

Thanks
 
You only need one lens, a Nikon 28-85 AIS and use the full frame/35mm crop to give you wider and longer focal lengths respectively. You might need a decent wide prime for wider coverage.

I have the new version of the lens and the IQ is pretty darn good, according to Sam Morgan Moore the AIS version is the doggy's doo-dahs, I keep meaning to get one myself. I can certainly vouch for other AIS lenses having owned several primes and zooms before inexplicably selling most, (twat!).

A good shoulder rig is preferable to OSS IMO but that's a question of preference.
 
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I really can't stand shaky hand held footage. Especially from lighter DSLRs. You need a heavy camera to ease out the micro shakes. So for any sort of hand held or shoulder use with a small camera as a A7s, I'd say OSS is absolutely essential.
 
dmitrizigany said:
I really can't stand shaky hand held footage. Especially from lighter DSLRs. You need a heavy camera to ease out the micro shakes. So for any sort of hand held or shoulder use with a small camera as a A7s, I'd say OSS is absolutely essential.
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The shoulder rig mass isn't dependent on the camera. If you're serious about using the using A7s to shoot then you're going to be piling on the equipment to make it usable so it's going to be far from light. Of course I assume the user has the gumption to know how to balance and use a shoulder rig, if you want to run around with a telephoto lens on the camera it might not be your bag.
 
IS would be nice but I don't think it's essential. Any kind of rig, however minimal, will help a lot for sucha a small camera (I currently use a NEX-5N and a MagicRig).
 
You could also consider Sony's own 24-70 OSS , since it has built in image stabilization and the nasty effects of the lens at the corners shouldn't be as noticeable on 12 MP as on the 24 and 36 MP A7 and A7R
 
I too am interested in this cam and trying to figure out lens options. Watching the couple sony preview video's I noticed a bunch of A mount lenses mentioned, like the 16-35 F2.8 etc. Not sure if it's worth bothering with sony glass and using an adapter, or just get an Emount nikon/canon adapter and go with known canikon glass? Seems a bunch of reviews on sony lenses aren't so good.
Can you use regular Emount lenses on this cam, or do they have to full frame Emount?
 
mickee13 said:
I too am interested in this cam and trying to figure out lens options. Watching the couple sony preview video's I noticed a bunch of A mount lenses mentioned, like the 16-35 F2.8 etc. Not sure if it's worth bothering with sony glass and using an adapter, or just get an Emount nikon/canon adapter and go with known canikon glass? Seems a bunch of reviews on sony lenses aren't so good.
Can you use regular Emount lenses on this cam, or do they have to full frame Emount?
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I guess it depends on whether you have a lot of glass already and whether you want to add a decent VF or monitor to be able to use manual glass.

If you're buying the A7s with the intention of building a rig around it then some good glass like the NIK 28-85 AIS might be a good option. The beauty of the E mount system is that it gives you maximum lens choice via the myriad of adapters. You pays your money and takes your choice. I'm planning to backpack round the world again in the coming year and I have been thinking the A7s might be a nice small footprint with the 24-70 and 70-200. I'll need reliable autofocus as I won't be taking a monitor etc and the LCD seems to low res to rely upon for manual focus.

Some lenses that have been given poor reviews by photographers can be perfectly acceptable at HD resolution. A bit of softness at the corners at photo resolutions is often no problem at HD or on APS-C format, 4K and FF might be a different story.

E mount lenses will work on the A7s but they'll obviously only cover APS-C mode and will vignette like crazy in FF mode.
 
Samuel H said:
This is old and doesn't talk about the new versions, but it's a very short list, I would guess they are not.
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Thank you Samuel, I thought it would be highly unlikely but ya never know.

I'm pretty sure the Sony SAM 28-75 f2.8 is parfocal and maybe even the 16-50 too. There's a number of 70-200 lenses that are parfocal and was hoping that the Sony one was too.

If Sony are committed to developing cameras that straddle the stills and video markets it would be nice to have parfocal lenses in the product line too.
 
And if you think about it, any lens with focus-by-wire could be parfocal very easily. Like: give an engineer one day to tweak the firmware and it should be done.
 
Samuel H said:
And if you think about it, any lens with focus-by-wire could be parfocal very easily. Like: give an engineer one day to tweak the firmware and it should be done.
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Yes indeed, should be quite simple.

I think there's an awful lot more to come from auto focus systems in general with all the advances in computer vision. It seems senseless to make the jump to 4K and not have reliable feature and motion tracking for focus that can be semi automatic to assist critical focus while the operator manually control the focus point.
 
Nirv said:
I'm pretty sure the Sony SAM 28-75 f2.8 is parfocal and maybe even the 16-50 too.
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I have a 16-50 and while it is supposed to be parfocal the focus definitely changes while zooming. Does anyone apart from ENG pros really still zoom in to focus then zoom out to reframe?

My plan with lenses for the A7S is the Sony Zeiss zooms, they will give phase detect autofocus and very good image quality.

Unfortunately the group of focus points on the LA-EA4 is laughably small on a full frame camera so the object being tracked must be in the middle of the shot.

The FE E-Mount lenses are nice, but have a lot of distortion. That is no problem with photos but I am not sure if the A7S can correct distortion in video mode. I should be able to try one this weekend so I will hopefully know soon.

It's an exciting time to be a filmmaker!
 
JanusCC said:
The FE E-Mount lenses are nice, but have a lot of distortion. That is no problem with photos but I am not sure if the A7S can correct distortion in video mode. I should be able to try one this weekend so I will hopefully know soon.
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Janus, Are you talking about the FE 24-70mm F4, and the FE 70-200 F4 as well? I hadn't heard that and had high hopes for them.

 
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Nirv said:
I guess it depends on whether you have a lot of glass already and whether you want to add a decent VF or monitor to be able to use manual glass.

If you're buying the A7s with the intention of building a rig around it then some good glass like the NIK 28-85 AIS might be a good option. The beauty of the E mount system is that it gives you maximum lens choice via the myriad of adapters. You pays your money and takes your choice. I'm planning to backpack round the world again in the coming year and I have been thinking the A7s might be a nice small footprint with the 24-70 and 70-200. I'll need reliable autofocus as I won't be taking a monitor etc and the LCD seems to low res to rely upon for manual focus.

Some lenses that have been given poor reviews by photographers can be perfectly acceptable at HD resolution. A bit of softness at the corners at photo resolutions is often no problem at HD or on APS-C format, 4K and FF might be a different story.

E mount lenses will work on the A7s but they'll obviously only cover APS-C mode and will vignette like crazy in FF mode.
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Thanks, I'm starting to think the 24-70 Zeiss might be just fine for video. May also go with the 55mm prime, supposed to be quite good.
I've been close to getting a GH4, but something is holding me back, ....like something is just missing from the image. I think it's seeing what a full frame can do, and especially this new sony sensor. Might just turn the A7s into a great B cam when the replacement for the FS700/100 comes along. I really hope Sony gets this sensor into a FS100 type body with better monitor and decent ergonomics, oh and 4K to an SD card.......come on Sony.
 
djangosan said:
Janus, Are you talking about the FE 24-70mm F4, and the FE 70-200 F4 as well? I hadn't heard that and had high hopes for them
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Yeah the 24-70F4, but I would still be happy to use it for almost anything but slider shots of brick walls at 24mm. It is nowhere near as bad as the 18-105F4 and the in-camera distortion correction seems to do a good job fixing it up on stills but I don't know if it can correct video. The 70-200 seemed fine to me for distortion.

Nirv said:
Anyone here know if the 24-70 and 70-200 are parfocal?
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I just tried out the 24-70F4 and 70-200F4 on an A7R and they appear to be parfocal, possibly electronically.
I am 99.9% sure I was not in AF mode, but I am not very familiar with the A7 cameras (yet) so I may have done something wrong.

I also tried the Zeiss 70-200F2.8 on an A99 and that was basically parfocal. There was a small shift in focus which made the 6K still a little softer at 100% but I would be surprised if it would make any difference for 1080P footage.

Samuel H said:
And if you think about it, any lens with focus-by-wire could be parfocal very easily. Like: give an engineer one day to tweak the firmware and it should be done.
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From the test I did today it seems like they did give that engineer that one day!
 
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mickee13 said:
Thanks, I'm starting to think the 24-70 Zeiss might be just fine for video. May also go with the 55mm prime, supposed to be quite good.
I've been close to getting a GH4, but something is holding me back, ....like something is just missing from the image. I think it's seeing what a full frame can do, and especially this new sony sensor. Might just turn the A7s into a great B cam when the replacement for the FS700/100 comes along. I really hope Sony gets this sensor into a FS100 type body with better monitor and decent ergonomics, oh and 4K to an SD card.......come on Sony.
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My excitement over the GH4 was very short lived and the limitations of the small sensor were too much for me. I fully expect this sensor is the first one in a family for FF E Mount products and maybe even F level cameras.

Yes, even if you're buying the A7s as an A cam today it'll certainly be a great B cam once the FS100/700 replacement arrives, I'd buy that tomorrow if I could.

The miserable 16mm pancake lens which was rightly given poor reviews in the photo world was acceptable at HD resolutions, but only just.

@JanusCC

"Does anyone apart from ENG pros really still zoom in to focus then zoom out to reframe?" - I resemble that remark!

Old habits die hard... Given I'll be travelling without much paraphernalia and having to focus on the low-res LCD on the A7s zooming in and focussing up is really the only option to absolutely know you've got focus. Even if the A7s has a focus zoom it's still not as good as finding focus like the good ol' days with a parfocal lens. I guess a lot will depend on how good the AF is. It's probably my age...

I'll be interested to see if the distortion correction works for video.
 
Nirv said:
@JanusCC

"Does anyone apart from ENG pros really still zoom in to focus then zoom out to reframe?" - I resemble that remark!

Old habits die hard... Given I'll be travelling without much paraphernalia and having to focus on the low-res LCD on the A7s zooming in and focussing up is really the only option to absolutely know you've got focus. Even if the A7s has a focus zoom it's still not as good as finding focus like the good ol' days with a parfocal lens. I guess a lot will depend on how good the AF is. It's probably my age...
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From my testing today it looks like your old habit can live a little longer! :beer:
 
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