Sony E-Mount 16-50mm F3.5-5.6 OSS Zoom Lens

1. Buy it used. You can easily find one for less than $150.2. Use it between 16-24mm. This is the sweet range.For the money, size, and weight you can't beat the quality you will get out of it. Sure, the longer end of it is a bit soft but the lower end will deliver comparable results to much more expensive lens. The distortion can be easily corrected in camera or via software.

This lens came with my expensive Sony CX6700 alpha. Very disappointed as i really cannot take a clear picture inside or outside. Ive followed youtube tutorials on camera and still basic pictures. Seems like phones take way better pics than this starter lens. Such a disappointment for an expensive camera. I need a lense that can take good quality family portraits.

I am using the Sony 16-50mm f/3.5 on a Sony a7 iii.I came across this lens used for $ and took a chance on it. I wanted a small lens for traveling. What a gem this lens has proven to be!Image sharpness is excellent all the down to f/16 before diffraction sets in. This lens even performs well under overcast skies and when my subject is in shadows. I get great sharpness at throughout the focal range. Similarly, exposure, contrast, and color saturation are also excellent with little or no post production editing needed. In fact, colors are truer to reality than my other, more expensive Sony lenses that often need a boost in saturation.There’s no obvious chromatic shift. I had to blow my images up by 7X to see bluing on dead tree limbs, an increase so large I ... MoreI am using the Sony 16-50mm f/3.5 on a Sony a7 iii.I came across this lens used for $ and took a chance on it. I wanted a small lens for traveling. What a gem this lens has proven to be!Image sharpness is excellent all the down to f/16 before diffraction sets in. This lens even performs well under overcast skies and when my subject is in shadows. I get great sharpness at throughout the focal range. Similarly, exposure, contrast, and color saturation are also excellent with little or no post production editing needed. In fact, colors are truer to reality than my other, more expensive Sony lenses that often need a boost in saturation.There’s no obvious chromatic shift. I had to blow my images up by 7X to see bluing on dead tree limbs, an increase so large I would never do so otherwise. If you’re so inclined to point your camera at the sun, you’ll produce small but intense streaks or circles of colorBarrel distortion and vignetting in JEP’s are brilliantly adjusted by the in-camera software.Nighttime photography is especially important to me. Images are sharp, with good definition on illuminated objects. Lettering and other edges are sharp. At f/11, I got nice starbursts on single bulb lights and brilliant starbursts at f/16. As expected, other sources of light, such as double bulb lights and neon lights tend to “blow out” a bit with long exposures, but this is true of all lenses.Zooming - I prefer using the lens barrel to zoom in and out. The power zoom is good but the lever is at on the side of the barrel. I wish that it was higher up on the lens barrel, at 12:00 o’clock, where my index finger naturally falls. At least a few times, I have accidently changed the focal length.Someone pointed out that there’s a question of quality control with this lens. If so, I was a lucky one to get a good copy. It’s the only lens that I have been using for the past four months to do street photography, parades, general photography, and night photography.Every so often I bump into a lens that may not be in the mainstream, but which punches well above its price point. I add the Sony 16-50mm lens to this special group.