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2024-03-28 08:12:48
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Sony FE 20-70mm f/4G: Fun-House-Mirror Distortion, as Expected

As I expected, and confirming my intense dislike of wide-range kit-style zooms, the Sony FE 20-70mm f/4G lives up to its design decisions. Its 3.5X zoom range spanning that 20mm to 70mm range inherently defies rational expectations with regards to distortion. Software distortion correction is mandatory, either by shooting JPEGs (enforced, no choice) or in RAW (Adobe Camera Raw as yet has no profile available so cannot be corrected easily).

CLICK TO VIEW: Mid-range zooms for Sony mirrorless

I’ll be showing how the 20-70mm compares to the Sony FE 12-24mm f/2.8 GM and also various reference lenses. Readers can decide for themselves how much sharpness they are willing to give up in exchange for convenience.

Clearly this is a “vlogger” lens and with distortion correction it will be well loved for its extremely convenient zoom range, and for JPEG snapshots and similar. But the 20-70mm is wholly unsuitable for landscape photography unless your quality standards for sharpness are low. At least over a good part of the zoom range, where distortion correction must be used.

Correcting this level of barrel distortion will result is major loss of sharpness in the outer zones.

At the long end, pincushion distortion is similarly unappealing, and correcting it will damage sharpness everywhere in the frame, making high micro contrast impossible.

In this example, distortion correction at the edges involves a pixel-stretch factor up to 1.27X linearly. Which means you are reducing the potential sharpness from 60 to 37 megapixels in those outer zones.

Toggle to compare uncorrected to corrected. The corrected version is an in-camera JPEG.


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