SonySEL16F28 16mm f/2.8 Wide-Angle Lens for NEX Series Cameras

I bought this lens after watching a think media review over it! Great lens. This works super good for my youtube videos. It's wide angle so i can get the camera super close to product with it looking great. This lens works great for a desk setup pr a top down view! Auto focus works great! Image stabilization and picture quality is perfect! Just buy it already, stop hesitating. I bought mine used and works great!

I have the 18-55 kit lens for the Sony NEX-5 and wanted a good wide angle lens for it. This lens is quality built and produces tack sharp pictures. This is a great low light lens and really reduces the size of the NEX-5 to pocket size (big pocket). I'll use this for family photo's and backyard type photo's, its not well suited for vista shots although your not limited by this lens. Bottom line, well built solid steel construction and very good in low light, produces clear colorful photo's. Works well in tandem with the 18-55mm kit lens.

This Sony 16mm is a nice lens if you accept it for what it is. When I want to shoot wide, I almost always go with my Sony 10-18mm. The 10-18mm is a near flawless piece of glass when paired with my Sony a6000. The problem is that is a big and heavy lens, which makes it difficult to carry around while on longer hikes. I picked up the Sony 16mm pancake for taking photos while hiking. To start, the size is perfect. I can fit this lens in the side pocket of my running vest, and its much lighter than the 10-18mm. The 16mm on the cropped APS-C sensor is equivalent to 24mm on a full frame. This allows me to capture the wide landscapes I see while hiking. There is also a wide angle attachment that can be paired with the 16mm to get even wider.As others have noted, the 16mm can be a big soft at the corners at 2.8-5.6, but looks better as. Once you've stopped down to 5.6, things look a bit sharper. For hiking, I'm almost always in the 5.6-15 range, so the soft corners don't bother me. There is no stabilization in this lens, but it's a wide angle, so not that big of a deal. The one issue I have is that the autofocus isn't as accurate as when I'm using the 10-18mm.At <$250, this lens is a great value. Some of the other reviewers are complaining about this lens as if it cost $1000. Be realistic about you're going to get at this price point. In my opinion, the value per dollar is quite high. If you want a lens that is super sharp, you're going to have to pay a bit more.

The positive reviews of this lens are accurate. I bought a used one through Amazon and couldn't be happier with the service I received from the reseller or with the performance of this product. It significantly reduces the form factor of the NEX-3/5 making it the perfect lens to have on the camera when you want to travel light and don't need a zoom. It performs well in low light situation for its glass configuration and performed perfectly shooting video the night of the 4th. I've found it's perfect for shooting where flash photography is not permitted. It won't be replacing any of my Canon or Nikon DSLR lenses but it is a great lens for the application it was designed for.

EDIT: TL;DR - It's OK if you want it as "vacation shot" lens and it outperforms phone cameras by a long shot, but below average when compared to a "real" prime lens on DSLRs or mirrorless. I don't need snarky people dismissing my review because I actually went to the effort of providing test examples. This review is meant for people to decide if THEY would be fine with the test shots for decent everyday photos (family, events, etc....not studio work).I was really disappointed with this lens. My review is based on comparing to my NEX-5R and my Canon 7D with a Sigma 17-50mm 2.8 EX (I've uploaded photos to compare).Let's set a few things straight: The NEX's use an APS-C sensor like many entry/mid DSLR (same one in some Nikons), so leave the sensor out of the MAJOR equation. Also, sharpness is not the whole of a lens, but a big sum of what it is (I did not do comparisons of color accuracy and contrast).I'll briefly mention (since most have already stated in other reviews) the 16mm is metal and not plastic (probably aluminum). It's still extremely light (compared to my metal FD and other manual lenses from Yore). The focus ring is narrow and maybe "too smooth" when manual focusing. I say too smooth because being so light, I found it hard to know if I even moved the ring (since often times I was trying to move the barrel instead of the focus ring). Manual focus (MF) lenses tend to have rubber or a knurled texture to know if you were on the focus ring. Also, older manual lenses tend to have a "tighter" pull when rotating the ring than the Sony 16mm since it feels "loose". The focus ring also spins around infinitely in either direction unlike most old MF lenses that stop completely."But I have no intention of using crusty, 30+ yr old manual lenses!".OK...that's fine. But a lot of current lenses have a "slow-down" or heavier friction when you reach the limit of each end of the focus (they still spin around infinitely, but you can tell when you're at the end). With this lens, You have no idea if you are at the extreme end of focus close to you (very critical when trying to figure out how close you can get to your subject). Compound the fact that the ring focuses in the OPPOSITE direction that my Canon lenses do (so I was trying to focus behind the subjects when I was trying to get as close to them as possible).Enough about the cosmetics and ergonomics of the lens...how does it perform? Let's keep in mind the price, because that's the biggest advantage (actually it isn't as I found out). I bought it for about $170 used. That's a lot less than the $600 I paid for my Sigma 17mm-50 2.8. I found the Sony 16mm was soft around the edges wide open (f/2.8) and lots of "halo-ing". These anomalies are to be expected from most cheaper lenses. But even stopped down to f/4, the Sony doesn't fix these issues. The Sigma at [email protected] had a little bit of soft corners, but still better than the Sony even at f/2.8 (photos above). The Sigma fixes all the soft/halos by f/3.5. I didn't even want to use the Sony 16mm even stopped down because it defeats the whole purpose of shooting wide-open or near that with faster lenses compared to kit lenses.Speaking of kit lenses, I've seen better performance from other kit lenses than this prime lens. Let me re-iterate the PRIME lens part. You BUY a prime lens for it's faster speed (from f/1.4 - 2.8) and ability to create smooth/blurred backgrounds. A kit lens should in no way shape or form, outclass a PRIME lens! Yes, I spent $600 on my Sigma wide-angle. Yes, I spent $170 on this USED prime Sony16mm lens...but brand new, they want $275+ for this! I only used this two times (one to make these comparison photos) before it went back to the seller (47th Street has great customer service!).For those photographers serious about getting a good, quality lens...this isn't it. Save your money for something else (I'll find a MF wide-angle). For those that want a pocket NEX with a pancake lens, this definitely fits the bill. It's super light and fits anywhere. If you don't demand mission-critical focus and want something that's far superior to a "camera phone", get this lens. Yes, I said the Sony 16mm is FAR superior to a camera phone because it still DOES show quite a bit of detail that is lost amongst typical cell phones, but not near the lines of a proper prime lens.