Congratulations Alex Vincent, March 2024 PFRE Photographer of the Month! The theme this month was "Kitchen". Alex Vincent - #906 Yvonne Raaijmakers - #909 Peter Wingfield - #902 Here's what Alex has to say: Thank you for the award of Photographer of th ...
As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.
As a photographer, you will want to pair your A7RII with a sturdy prime or zoom lens that matches its performance. The best lens for A7RII should be able to shoot in low-light, have a broad field of view, and zoom where necessary.
Quick Navigation
The best lens for A7RII depends on your
Here's a quick recap of our top recommended lens for A7RII listed in this article. In this table, I've also included an overview of their top features.
The Sony FE 16-35mm f/2.8 is a flexible and fast wide-angle zoom that is distinguished by its fast aperture of f/2.8. For one, this bright aperture remains constant over the zoom range, which helps maintain a consistent performance when zooming, making it the overall best on our list.
The optical construction consists of three aspherical elements, two XA elements, and two low dispersion elements that reduce chromatic and spherical aberrations. A Nano coating on these elements helps to get rid of the ghosting and flare, enhancing the color fidelity and image contrast.
Like the Sony FE 85mm f/1.4, the 11-blade aperture diaphragm helps produce a smooth and impressive bokeh quality. The advanced autofocus design consists of two direct-drive motors which ensure quiet, fast, and smooth autofocusing.
The physical construction is weather-sealed, making it convenient for use in dusty places such as capturing desert landscapes or shooting wildlife. Although it's lighter than the Sony FE 85mm f/1.4, the 1.5 pounds weight is not convenient for carrying in a camera bag when traveling.
The Sony FE 85mm f/1.4 is a fast aperture lens with an impressive focal length of 85mm, making it ideal for portraiture. Unlike the Sony FE 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6, the aperture makes this lens perform exceptionally well in poorly lit situations.
The optical construction consists of one aspherical element and three low dispersion elements. This combats the chromatic and spherical distortions and aberrations, enhancing the overall image clarity and sharpness.
The elements come with a Nano AR coating, helping reduce the ghosting, surface reflections, and flare, which helps promote the color fidelity and increase contrast even when shooting in bright lighting.
The aperture diaphragm features 11 blades, which helps it produce a high-quality and smooth bokeh. It comes equipped with a linear Super Sonic motor, which facilitates a quiet, fast, and accurate autofocusing experience.
Typically, it makes it convenient when you need a fast focus in action shooting. Also, the internal focus design ensures the lens's barrel retains its overall length, making it ideal for shooting camera-shy subjects with minimal disturbance.
Although it's lighter than the Sony 50mm f/1.4, the 1.81 pounds weight is not ideal for carrying around.
The Sony 55mm f/1.8 is a high-quality normal-length prime with an excellent resolution. With a maximum wide aperture of f/1.8, it performs better in low-light than the Sony FE 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6.
With three aspherical elements in its optical design, it significantly suppresses the aspherical and chromatic aberrations to improve the overall image clarity and sharpness. The Zeiss anti-reflective coating helps to minimize the surface reflections and flare for improved color fidelity and contrast, even when shooting in bright light.
With a linear autofocus motor, the focusing experience is fast and responsive, making it convenient for shooting action. With a minimum focus distance of 1.6 inches, Sony 55mm f/1.8 is ideal for shooting closeup and nearby subjects.
Although the nine-blade aperture diaphragm produces a lower bokeh quality than the Sony FE 85mm f/1.4, it's still smooth and impressive. The lens' physical construction is weather-resistant, making it suitable for use in harsh conditions such as dusty desert situations.
The Sony Distagon 35mm f/1.4 comes loaded with advanced technology, making it sharp and fast. It features a wide-angle focal length which contributes to the outstanding optical performance.
Like the Sony FE 85mm f/1.4, the f/1.4 wide aperture makes it perform well even in low-light. Also, this aperture facilitates the application of the shallow depth of field and the use of selective focus techniques.
The construction of Sony Distagon 35mm f/1.4 includes advanced aspherical elements and three standard aspherical elements. These elements help eliminate the optical distortions that are common wide-angle lenses.
Thanks to Zeiss's anti-reflective coating, the surface reflections, ghosting, and flare are significantly reduced even when capturing photos in strong lighting. The utilization of a direct drive supersonic autofocus motor ensures the autofocus is responsive and fast, making it ideal for both stills and videos.
However, the bokeh quality it produces with the nine-blade aperture diaphragm can't match that of the 11 blades in the Sony FE 85mm f/1.4.
The Sony 50mm f/1.4 features a high-end design with a normal perspective and fast aperture of f/1.4, making it ideal for both videographers and photographers. The optical construction comes with one low dispersion element, one aspherical element, and one advanced aspherical element.
The elements significantly suppress the optical distortions to produce an almost distortion-free image. Like the Sony Distagon 35mm f/1.4, the legendary Zeiss anti-reflective coating ensures minimal ghosting and flare, helping to achieve a crisp image.
With a Super Sonic wave Motor, the autofocus performance is smooth, silent, and fast, making Sony 50mm f/1.4 ideal for shooting action or fast-moving subjects. An AF/MF button is used for switching between the autofocus and manual focus, which allows you to swiftly gain manual focusing control.
The eleven-blade aperture diaphragm enhances the production of a smooth and impressive bokeh, similar to that of the Sony FE 85mm f/1.4. To enhance videography, it features a physical aperture ring that you can click or de-click. However, it's the heaviest on my list, limiting its portability.
The Sony 90mm f/2.8-22 is an excellent lens when it comes to macro
Also, being a G series lens, it achieves an appealing balance between bokeh quality and image sharpness, thanks to the wide range of specialized elements used. With minimum optical distortions, the application of the out-of-focus technique is enhanced, helping produce highly detailed photos.
The Nano coating on the elements helps eliminate the ghosting and flare, which improves the color fidelity and contrast. With the use of a speedy direct-drive autofocusing motor, it's possible to achieve the focusing accuracy needed in macro
Unlike the Sony 50mm f/1.4, it's equipped with a focus range limiter which helps to minimize the focus hunting, further enhancing the autofocus performance in a variety of shooting conditions.
However, without zoom capabilities, it's impossible to zoom in and take shots of a distant subject. It weighs 1.33 pounds, which is the second most lightweight on my list and convenient for carrying.
The Sony FE 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6 is a versatile zoom lens that boasts telephoto focal lengths. With two low dispersion elements and four aspherical elements in its optical construction, the spherical and chromatic aberrations are effectively eliminated over the zooming range.
Typically, it helps maintain consistently high image quality and sharpness when zooming. A Nano coating on the lens elements helps to suppress the flares, ghosting, and surface reflections, improving the overall color fidelity and image contrast.
The Sony FE 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6 uses a SteadyShot image stabilization functionality to minimize the camera shake effect when shooting at longer focal lengths or when shooting handheld.
With a weight of 1.88 pounds, it's the second heaviest on my list, which may exhaust you or hurt your wrists if you shoot for an extended period.
The dust and moisture-resistant construction make it ideal for use in virtually all environments such as snow and desert, making it a great walk-around lens. However, the low-light performance is not as impressive as the Sony 50mm f/1.4.
Typically, real estate
The following features explain the varying specifications of lenses, which you can use to identify a lens that works best for you. Moreover, the following table elaborates on the most important specifications.
| Lenses | Image stabilization | Aperture | Weight (Pounds) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sony FE GM | No | f/1.4 | 1.81 |
| Sony Distagon SEL35F14Z | No | f/1.4 | 1.39 |
| Sony Planar SEL50F14Z | No | f/1.4 | 2.41 |
| Sony Sonnar FE | No | f/1.8 | 0.62 |
| Sony SEL90M28G | No | f/2.8-22 | 1.33 |
| Sony FE SEL70300G | Yes | f/4.5-5.6 | 1.88 |
| Sony FE SEL1635GM | No | f/2.8 | 1.5 |
When purchasing the most advanced lens, it is important to ensure that the device is sturdy to serve you for a prolonged period. This is because some real estate
Although a lens' physical damages and construction defects might make your lens fail, moisture and dust that get into your lens through the lens mount are the main culprits since they make your images blurry, damage the lens electronics, or affect your camera's ability to communicate with the lens.
Luckily, you can get a lens that features a weather-sealing design around the mount, such as the Sony 55mm f/1.8, preventing moisture and dust from making their way in.
Capturing images without a tripod can be flexible, particularly when the interiors of the home are cramped up and difficult to set up a tripod. However, human hands may introduce some shakes, which increases the chances of taking unstable videos and blurry images.
Also, keeping in mind that the lighting in most real estate interiors is poor, you may want to minimize the shutter speed so that the lens collects sufficient light. This again results in blurry photos since the camera picks up the tiny movements of the hands when using slow shutter speeds.
Fortunately, you can invest in a lens with image stabilization, such as the Sony FE 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6, to avoid these issues. This mechanism helps compensate for the unwanted camera shake effect for enhanced image sharpness and video stability when shooting handheld.
Typically, real estate interiors lack quality lighting and setting up studio-quality lighting to capture a few photos in a room can be illogical. Although the Sony A7RII contains some configurations, such as shutter speed or ISO, that you can adjust to improve the quality of the images, they also come with their drawbacks.
For example, reducing the shutter speeds makes your images blurry if capturing handheld while increasing the ISO introduces a random variation of brightness in your images, which reduces the overall quality of the photo.
The amount of light that reaches the camera sensor depends on the aperture of the lens, which is specified in f-stops. Since you are looking for a lens with the smallest denominator, you can go for a lens such as Sony Distagon 35mm f/1.4 as it has the widest aperture, ideal for use in poorly lit interiors.
The zooming capability of a lens is determined by whether your lens focal length is fixed or variable. Unlike fixed lenses, zoom lenses have variable focal lengths, relieving you of the hassles of adjusting the entire setup if the distance of the subject changes.
Focal length regulates the angle of view, and changing the focal length enables your lens to zoom in or out. However, the zoom capability in lenses varies depending on how wide the focal length difference is.
For instance, a lens with a bigger zoom range, such as Sony FE 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6, has a focal range of 300mm which is bigger than that of Sony FE 16-35mm f/2.8. The 300mm focal range increases your flexibility to capture nearby and distant subjects.
Generally, using the manual focus might be tiresome to expert photographers, particularly when capturing fast-moving subjects. Fortunately, since technology is advancing, most lenses for Sony A7RII come equipped with autofocus systems that help in detecting and focusing your main subject.
Although these autofocus systems use some artificial intelligence to recognize the subject, they can help trace a fast-moving subject. Keep in mind that focusing requires a motor to move the lens elements, and the accuracy and quality of the motor vary across lenses.
Typically, A7RII lenses use supersonic motors for their autofocus systems. If you want to follow a moving subject, you can consider a unit with two direct-drive supersonic motors rather than one, such as Sony FE 16-35mm f/2.8 lens.
Yes, the thickness of a lens affects the field of view. Normally, when the lens is thicker, it will interfere with the path of light, which results in the bending of light, decreasing the focal length. A short focal length results in a wider field of view, while a longer focal length results in a narrow angle of view.
Yes, the numerical aperture affects the resolution of the lens by determining the resolving power of an objective. The total resolution of the lens is dependent on the numerical aperture of the whole system. Usually. A wide-open aperture results in brighter and high-quality images.
You can use lenses with a shorter focal length when you want to capture broader scenes. For instance, when you want to capture exterior photos of a larger real estate property, you can use lenses with a short focal length, such as Sony Distagon SEL35F14Z, to take wide-angle photos.
You can maximize your A7RII's potential by pairing it with the best flash and lenses for its model. The many options of A7RII lens in the market may be confusing when it comes to identifying one that will suit your shooting condition and style. However, the list above contains lenses that excel in a variety of shooting situations, and any option won't disappoint.
