Sony 16-35 PZ First Impressions
In this week’s video, I will be talking about my first impressions of the Sony 16-35 PZ f4, with the PZ standing for Power Zoom. The lens came out last summer, making it a pretty new release from Sony. I recently got this lens actually, to replace my 16-35 GM f2.8, which may make some of you raise your eyebrows at me, asking me why would I do such a thing. But I have my reasons and I’ll definitely explain them in the video. First, I’ll go over the lens, just some positive and negatives I’ve noticed over the short period of time I’ve had with this lens.
Positives
There are 3 big selling points of this lens for me: the weight, the internal zoom, and the image quality. Starting off with weight, when we think of zoom lens, we often think they are these big bulky long lens that take up a lot of space in your bag or are tiring to carry around, or for me personally, something that stands out when walking around with it. But with this lens, it comes in only at 353 g. To put that into perspective, that’s quite lighter than the Sony 24 mm f1.4 and the Zeiss 85 mm f1.8 which were already pretty light lens. But not only is it light, but its so compact. It doesn’t even take much space in my bag when going out, so I have no doubt it’ll be effortless to travel with to different locations and countries. When it comes to build quality, the lens isn’t as “high quality” compared to the GM version which definitely felt more sturdy and tougher, but that’s to be expected to get the lens to the listed weight it has at 353 g. I wouldn’t doubt it’d be able to take some hits or falls, but I’d rather not test that. The next positive is the internal zoom. For photography, it’s not too much of a positive or negative as I never had any issues when using my 16-35 GM for photography and that lens has an external zoom. But for video, it’s a pretty big deal, specifically for when using a gimbal. When using a zoom lens that zooms externally, you’d have to rebalance the gimbal if going from the wide to telephoto or vice versa due to the weight imbalance of the camera. So when that happens, you have to put down the gimbal, rebalance, then put your camera back on. It may not sound like a big deal, but like changing lens constantly, it gets annoying and can cause many headaches. There are ways around it with external zooming lens so don’t feel like you need to buy lens that zoom internally only if you want to do video work. But that is the perk of getting a lens that zooms internally. You’ll never have to worry about having to rebalance your gimbal. You balance once and you’re good to go. With one of the main selling points of this lens being lightweight and small, some may think image quality may suffer. But from the short time I’ve used it, I’ve been pretty happy with my pictures. If you were to put pictures taken with the Sony 16-35 PZ versus the 16-35 GM, taken with similar settings, most probably wouldn’t be able to see the difference. The key difference is really whether you need the f2.8 or not.
Negatives
In my short time I’ve had with this lens, there really haven’t been many negatives, well, except one. My main problem I have with this lens isn’t anything serious, it’s just a bit annoying That would be the zooming mechanism on the side. With this lens, you can either zoom with the zoom ring, or with this side mechanism. When I first saw it, I thought that was a pretty cool feature, in case you ever need to use it. And it is a useful feature, especially for video. It’s touch sensitive so the more you push it in one direction, the more it’ll zoom in or out, depending on the direction you push it in. More ways to control zooming so what could go wrong? Well, let’s just say that became a bit of an annoyance for me with this lens. It’s pretty easy to hit this when handling this lens that I find myself zooming in or out accidentally then I have to readjust the lens and go back to the focal length I was at originally. Again, this isn’t a big deal, but when walking around with this lens and having this happen 6-8 times throughout the walk, it can be quite an annoying thing.
Update: After using this lens out on the streets a couple more times, I actually came to the conclusion that it wasn’t the side mechanism that was the problem. It was actually the very sensitive zoom ring. Whenever I ended up holding the camera in my left hand when needing to take out my phone, I would end up accidentally moving the zoom ring. It’s very sensitive so even the smallest movement will change my focal length, which can be pretty annoying. To add to that problem, when trying to vlog, my hand would sometimes move the zoom ring as well, messing up my frame and requiring me to reset and go back to the original focal length. Again, it’s not a big deal, but it is quite annoying.
Why I chose the 16-35 PZ over the 16-35 GM?
For me, there were a number of reasons why I chose the 16-35 PZ over the 16-35 GM. It simply came down to this: I wanted to travel lighter and I really didn’t need the f2.8. As mentioned earlier, this lens weighs 353 g. 353 GRAMS! That is so light and you may not ever really appreciate that until you carry this around on a walk or in your bag. It’s ridiculous how light this lens is, and for the quality it gives you, there really is no sacrifice except for it being f4 and not f2.8, which brings me to my next point. For how I used the 16-35 GM, I never really used the f2.8 much. I’d only ever used the 16-35 GM at f2.8 when indoors or when doing street at 35 mm, which I already have the very small Zeiss 35 mm f2.8 so that was covered already. The majority of my time spent using the 16-35 GM was when doing long exposures on the street or getting shots of buildings/architecture. Whatever the case was, probably only 5-10% of my time with the lens was actually using f2.8. So why not save the money and get the lighter lens? It was really a no brainer for me. Now maybe in the future, I’ll end up needing the f2.8. You never know. But for right now, I do not need the f2.8 so what’s the point of dragging the heavy GM everywhere with me?
Since this is a first impressions, I definitely do not know all the ins and outs of this lens so after a year or so after I can get a better idea of what this lens is fully capable of. I’ll make a follow up review video so if you’d like to see that, let me know in the comment section below. Please leave this a like and I’ll see you all next week. Later.