Welcome to the first episode of the On Lens Dairy! From the last blog post about “ What’s the best lens for traveling, “ I get so much interested in doing a review and showing you the results of how the photo looks like on lenses. I was thinking about why not deep dive into a lens to tells you my thoughts on them, also giving me a chance to have a challenge to only shooting on the lens. Thus, it brings me to make this series called “One Lens Dairy” to show you my thoughts and experience of the lens!

Today, we are going to deep dive into the most popular, versatile, and my most favorite lenses, “16-35mm f4,” to be our star today. I’m a Sony full-frame user, so the lens we talk about today is “Sony 16-35mm Vario-Tessar T FE F4 ZA OSS E-Mount Lens,” but you still can find the same focal length on any other brands. Okay, let's start!

After finally upgrading the full-frame camera in 2018, I started to find my first full-frame camera lenses. Side note, I was switching brand as well, from Canon to Sony and all the lens I have was for the APSC camera as well, it was expensive to switch brand, lol. From the past few years of the experiences, I know what I shoot the most and what I need for a future purchase. Scenery and portrait are the most I shoot, and I know I will continue to do it in the future.

Before I decided to purchase this lens, I actually have an exhilarating road trip coming up in California, which is also why I finally upgraded to a full-frame camera. I thought it was a perfect time to have my hand fully touched on a new camera, getting familiar, and push myself to create in a short period. I have a tight budget, and I am also not a gear head to bring lots of gears in my backpack during traveling; otherwise, my shoulder will die from carrying too much. I need a lens that is very versatile for any type of photography, and after most of the YouTuber’s reviews, I decided this lens can be my long-term favorite.

Scenery

We all know, well, if you don't know that 16 mm is the most famous focal length for the wild angle. The thing that comes to wild angle is, it is a king for traveling, why? Because we shoot a lot of scenery on the road! From my experience, most of the scenery can be captured by this lens, such as a huge bridge, skyscraper, city skyline, and of course, group photo with a fascinating view in the background. Let me show you some of the photos!

***Bixby Creek Bridge. 16-35mm f4 | 16mm f/11 1/200 sec ISO100***

***Big Sur. 16-35mm f4 | 16mm f/11 1/200 sec ISO100***

***Forest in Mt. Ali, Taiwan. 16-35mm f4 | 16mm f/4 1/30 sec ISO100***

Most of my experience with the wild angle is super impressive, in the 16mm or under 35mm the image look super sharp, and I love how you can choose lots of different focal length with it. Yes, it does get the distortion and dark edge in the corner because it is a wild angle lens, but I actually prefer the look since my editing style is moody. Just be careful while shooting the people because if you are not putting them into the center, it definitely will get the distortion effect to make the people look weird. However, taking the disadvantage into the advantage is you can make your legs super long, with is great for the shorter peoples, lol.

Portrait

Suppose you have a tight budget for having another lens for the wild aperture. In that case, this lens can still do a beautiful portrait for you, even though it is not going to compare the look with the wild aperture lenses such as a classic 35mm f1.4, 55mm f1.4, or the 85mm f1.4, the f4 on the 16-35mm f4 is still not too bad! It may be a bit tricky for shooting in the low light environment, but because we got a classic 35mm on this lens, the portrait will still look good and professional.

The only thing I want to complain about is when I am using the 35mm, the image will looking a little bit soft. Even though it is not a big problem, for shooting a lot of scenery and portrait during the trips, it just a bit soft for the sceneries (I’m being a bit picky, don’t mind me here). If you shoot the close-up portrait, you will notice the softness on the 35mm, the eyes tend to be a bit out of focus and less detail than not using the 35mm, which is still not a big problem but just need to be mentioned.

Low Light

Thoughts

Even though this lens was not made for low light, it is still interesting to talk about. It is a bit challenging to shoot in the low light because if we don’t get the shutter speed fast enough, we will get the motion blur, and if we boost the ISO up, it will starting to get the noises to make the low-quality image look. Luckily, Sony cameras do a great job of not getting too much noise when you boost the ISO up because it has such a wide dynamic range.

I don’t have too much hard time doing low light with this lens, but I definitely missed some of the important moments while setting up my ISO and Shutter Speed.

Bokeh

F4 lenses bokeh doesn't look that tasty, to be honest. If we do the portrait, you really want to focus on people as the most important photo subject, but you can really tell the background still has much information. Bokeh looks a bit weird on this lens. We say it onions rings effect that we can see some texture going on on the bokeh. It is because of how they made this lens to make it, and it tends to happen on the f4 lenses. Long story short, it's not fair to mention the bokeh because this lens was not made to be a low-light performance lens in the first place.

Conclusion

Overall, this is still my favorite lenses because of how versatile, high-quality performance this lens can be. This lens has an extraordinary place in my heart because it has been with me to many places, countries, events, and projects, and I have all done with this lens I only have by the time. Even though it might be tricky to shoot in a low light environment but still enough for creating a great photo.

16-35mm f4 | One Lens Dairy

Scenery

Portrait

Low Light

Conclusion

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