Sony - E PZ 18-105mm f/4.0 G OSS Power Zoom Lens for Select E-Mount Cameras - Black

This lens is fast. Smooth! And sharp! It’s meant to be mounted on a Sony E Mount camera, it is a super quick focusing lens! It is! I combine this lens with the options for focusing you get with a Sony A7 r ii or a Sony A9. And it opens up huge possibilities for landscape, portrait, action. It’s almost a challenge to slow down the focus speed. It seems to want to be fast! Slow down focus speed you can do in the settings of the camera. Also choose which type of focal area like flexible spot or zone focus. Continuous or single shot. This lens is my most frequently used. I’ve filmed and photographed swimmers racing, wedding couples walking, their friends dancing in the evening light, tennis teams hammering each other, portraits of dogs and kids, it’s walked with me through the 4th July Parade. Gotten wet and survived...but I don’t recommend the getting wet. It’s widest aperture is F4 so not as wide as I love but perfect for most situations. It is great in low light. The zoom slider combined with Optical Steady Shoot allows you to smoothly focus from close up to distance. You’ll need a tripod or gimbal for steadiness when you use the zoom slider on the left for extreme zooming. The further away you send the focal point and the closer you zoom into to your subject the steadier the hand needs to be for film and steady photos. I want a lens that closes in on its subject slowly and smoothly and this lens does it a little faster than I’d like. So remember the zoom is available both manually and automatically. I think there are gadgets out there that you can use to adjust the speed of the zoom manually. With the auto zoom: touching the zoom slider is tough sometimes because it’s hard to feel when you are framing the shot. Once you find it, you have to learn the level of pressure to gently (slowly) or fully (fast) control the zoom speed. I find it very hard to tell how fast it will go, if I was to add one feature it would be something like zoom slow, zoom medium, zoom fast on the zoom slider. Add a few notches..feel with finger tip? The steady shot is really effective. I was filming a dark wine bar. Rack of wine with labels in the foreground reaching off into the distance. The lense handled it so well. Pulling focus from the label closest to me to the wine bottles furthest away. It was a lovely shot. Even in the dark. Five out of five for it’s infinite usability. I DIDNT KNOW THAT (IDKT) : recently I mounted it on the camera saw a tube!!! Panicked and realized you must use it with the APS-C/Super 35mm setting ON. Also I heard it rattling when it wasn’t mounted and was worried about the lens. Apparently that is normal!? It doesn’t rattle once mounted. Googled the oddity and found it wasn’t an oddity. I’m a second year photographer. No school training. Just learning on the way through life.

Got mines for my YouTube channel Tokers Notes, check it out to see lens quality.

Bought this lens for my a6400 and it is super sharp!

Ideal lens for general photography. Way better than the kit lens. Not so heavy.

Great lens!! So smooth. I was going to buy the 28-70 Lens by Sony thanks god I didn’t. Great range!!

This is my all around go to lens for everyday stuff. Most reliable and very sharp.

The good things about this lens are that it's well built, it has an electronic zoom, so that you can zoom much more smoothly during a video clip, it has a nice zoom range up to 105 mm that gives quite a bit more zoom than a standard zoom. And it's priced reasonably. Contrary to some measurement site reports, in my experience, this lens is not as sharp as the Sony Zeiss F4 16-70., and not quite as sharp as the Sony 18-200 3.5 to 6.3(the silver one). But check out the fish pix I took with it while at the aquarium with my daughter, using this lens on an A6300. And keep in mind, that for video, you are not looking for 24 megapixels of photographic sharpness. 1929x 1080 (high definition) is closer to 2 megapixels, and even 4 k is only 8 mp. so, if using with an NEX or A6000 series primarily for video it's a great choice.

The Size and weight are perfect for APS-C if you are looking for a single-lens solution for travel. It's fast at f4 throughout and super sharp!