Sony FE28mm f2 lens.

Small and capable lens.

This post is about the Sony FE 28mm f2 lens. I have been using this lens for a while and it is really quite good on both the Sony a7S and a7RmkII as it is small enough so that it is nicely balanced on the front of the cameras. Optically it is a good performer.

The thing that 28mm lens force you to do, is get closer to your subject, especially if you want objects to be a reasonable size within your frame. An advantage of a 28mm lens is that the depth of field increases so that when you are working it becomes much easier to zone focus with this focal length. The down side of the lens is that there is no subject to distance scale on the lens, I get around this my focusing on a object about 2.5 meters away and turning the camera to manual focus. then I have a good depth of field especially as I like to work at apertures of f8 or f11. I like to have the world in focus, I am not a fan of shallow depth of field images, some of you will like this look it is something that I have not consciously wanted within my work.

I find that 28mm lens, are about the limit of how wide I generally want to go for documentary photography, as any wider and the world starts to distort building edges start to learn more and perspectives start to distort. I want my images to look like how you could have seen the things I am photographing and not overly photographic in nature, which is what I feel when looking at documentary images made with wider wide-angle lens. If I was a landscape photographer, I would most likely think differently. A 28mm lens also separates objects within the frame nicely, forcing apart the objects, whereas a 50mm lens compresses objects within the frame a bit more, than I would like. Personally, I like how a 35mm lens is in between these two effects, which is why I use a 35mm lens so often. It partially depends on how comfortable I am with my subjects and how close I can get to them. Remember that the closer you get to your subject, the shallower your depth of field will be, which is why the increase of depth of field that a 28mm lens gives you can be very helpful.

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