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With your Sony A6000 camera, you may want to capture different features of a property, from small details to wide views. This means lugging around plenty of lenses and frequently swapping them. One way to save space and money is to equip yourself with the best all in one lens for Sony A6000, so you can achieve high-quality images without changing lenses.
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As a photographer, your goal may be to capture sharp images that do not look grainy when you zoom in. In this review, I focus on the best all-in-one lens for Sony A6000 that you can use in any circumstance and get outstanding results.
Characterized by its versatile zoom range and moisture-resistant construction, the Tamron 17-70mm f/2.8 is my overall best all-in-one lens for Sony A6000. Featuring a fast and constant wide aperture of f/2.8, this wide to short-telephoto range is excellent for shooting in poor lighting conditions.
Besides, this lens comes with enhanced control over the depth of field, making it suitable for both interior and exterior capturing. You can therefore comfortably use it as you shoot different property interior and exterior designs. It comes with specialized optics, including low dispersion and aspherical elements, that help enhance the image clarity, sharpness, and color accuracy.
The parts come coated with Tamron's BBAR coating, reducing ghosting and flare for better contrast, something you won’t see in other models like the Sony 18-105mm f/4. Typically, this allows you to shoot in backlit.
Also, it comes with Vibration Compensation for stabilizing the image, reducing the camera shaking effect, ensuring steadier video and photo shooting in poor lighting circumstances.
It features an RDX autofocus functionality with a full-time manual override for a better focusing experience. It features a nine-blade aperture diaphragm, producing an appealing bokeh quality. It weighs 1.2 pounds, the heaviest on my list, making it less convenient to carry around, which is its biggest downside.
The Sony 18-35mm f/3.5-5.6 is a great choice, considering its wide-angle to medium telephoto range. It features an image stabilization function that helps reduce the shaking camera effect, ensuring sharper handheld shot images.
You can combine this stabilization feature with the camera's sensor shift for more effective stabilization and image blur reduction. It comes with a linear autofocus motor, ensuring optimum subject focus for sharp images.
Compared to the Tamron 17-70mm f/2.8, the aperture is less appealing for landscape and architectural
The elements enhance image clarity and sharpness throughout the zoom range by controlling distortion. Although the aperture diaphragm has two fewer blades than the Tamron 17-70mm f/2.8, the seven rounded blades come with good quality bokeh, especially when using selective focus techniques.
It weighs 0.7 pounds, which is the most lightweight on my list, making it suitable for carrying around and shooting for an extended period without risking exhaustion or hurting your wrists.
The Sony 18-105mm f/4 is exceptionally versatile, with a 27-157.5mm zoom range, allowing you to use it almost anywhere. It comes with a constant aperture, which will enable you to maintain the aperture through the zoom range.
Using the Handycam technology, it implements the power zoom, enhancing both video and still shooting. The power zoom provides quiet and smooth zooming and focusing. It features three aspherical elements and two extra-low dispersion elements to reduce chromatic aberrations and color fringing, enhancing the image quality.
Like the Sony 18-35mm f/3.5-5.6, it's equipped with image stabilization functionality to combat the camera shaking effect, especially at longer focal lengths. The image stabilization function ensures that the images are steady, significantly reducing blurring.
It features an internal focus design which helps maintain the overall size of the lens during focusing. It comes with seven aperture diaphragm blades, allowing it to produce smooth bokeh, although of lower quality than the Tamron 17-70mm f/2.8.
It’s 0.2 pounds lighter than Sony 18-35mm f/3.5-5.6, weighing 1 pound, which is lightweight enough to carry around and use for extended periods without your wrists hurting.
Once you decide to equip your Sony A6000 with an all-in-one lens, you may find choosing the suitable one challenging. Bearing in mind their varying attributes and qualities, below are the features you need to consider.
Lenses | Diaphragm Blades | Low light performance | Focal Length |
---|---|---|---|
Tamron 17-70mm f/2.8 | 9 | Good | 17-70mm |
Sony 18-35mm f/3.5-5.6 | 7 | Poor | 18-35mm |
Sony 18-105mm f/4.0 | 7 | Poor | 18-105mm |
The lens focal length is what determines its type, whether a wide-angle lens or telephoto. In my case, you will need a combination of telephoto and wide-angle, as you can get the subject close and capture a high-quality landscape or architectural image.
The ability of telephotos to take shots from anywhere is their most impressive feature. The wide-angle lenses provide the best performance in poor lighting conditions and the proper depth of field.
However, wide-angle lenses are not the best performers in portrait photography. Typically, they have a higher distortion level than their subjects. Therefore, all in one lens combines all these focal length attributes to enable you to make quality shots in any circumstance.
However, consider all in one lens with an excellent aperture for better image sharpness, such as the Tamron 17-70mm f/2.8.
The aperture allows you to regulate the amount of light entering the camera, mainly depending on the lighting conditions. The letter f is used to represent the aperture and corresponding numbers, known as f-stops.
For instance, an aperture like f/2.8 indicates more light entering the camera, as it's wide open. Generally, the telephotos feature large f-stops. Some lenses, such as Sony 18-105mm f/4, come with constant apertures throughout their zoom range, allowing you to maintain the same aperture respectively of the shooting circumstance.
However, you need to be careful when using them to shoot scenes in poor lighting conditions.
On the other hand, zoom lenses come with an f-stop as a range rather than fixed. This technique ensures the ability to determine the maximum telephoto and the wide-angle effect you can achieve.
For instance, the all-in-one Sony 18-35mm f/3.5-5.6 comes with a range of f-stops from f/3.5 to f/5.6. Lenses with a bigger range are more versatile, as you can adjust and shoot in varying photographing circumstances.
The best all-in-one lens comes with a wide range of adjustments from telephoto to wide-angle and back, depending on the circumstances.
Normally, the size of the filter thread that is usually indicated on the barrel of the lens will help you determine the size of the filter so that you can fit its front. Knowing the size of the filter thread is important because it will help you know the filters that are compatible with it, saving you from buying more rings when you are using new lenses.
Although all-in-one lenses are designed to shoot high-quality images in any circumstance, they are not created equal, and some will perform better than others. The variation mainly depends on the lens aperture and focal length range. For instance, the Tamron 17-70mm f/2.8 performs better than Sony 18-105mm f/4.
Most all-in-one lenses are relatively compact and lightweight, especially when you compare them with telephoto lenses. Even if the all-in-one lens is large, it still takes less space than all the lenses you may have been required to carry in the camera bag.
Pairing your Sony A6000 with the right all-in-one lens will make all the difference in your