![]() ![]() ![]() The Sony 18-55mm ƒ/3.5-5.6 E-mount lens is small on its own, but when mounted to the NEX-3 or NEX-5 bodies it actually looks fairly large by comparison. Macro performance is above average, with a 0.3x magnification rating and a minimum close-focusing distance of 25 cm (just under 10 inches). It makes the camera very easy to use for manual focusing with this lens. When using manual focus as you turn the ring the central section of the LCD displays an enlarged (7X or 14X) view of the image. The ring will turn all the way around with no stops. Small changes in focus are conducted extremely quickly. The Sony 18-55mm ƒ/3.5-5.6 E is fairly quick to autofocus - the lens takes a bit more than a second to slew through the entire range of focus. The 18-55mm E-mount lens produces some complicated results for distortion some fairly strong barrel distortion less than 24mm, moving to fairly strong pincushion distortion at 28mm and longer. At this setting, you find around 1/3 of a stop of shading when the lens is used at ƒ/3.5, or at ƒ/11 or smaller. It's an interesting picture for light falloff with the 18-55mm E-mount the only focal length that will produce any corner shading of note is 18mm. At 55mm the lens provides actually quite good tolerance to CA. It's mitigated somewhat by stopping down, and you'll only really notice the CA in the corner areas, in areas of high contrast. At 28mm, performance is actually better as the lens is stopped down at 35mm, maximum CA is off the chart, suggesting a deficiency of the lens at that focal length setting. At 18mm there's some slight CA when used wide open, and getting slightly worse as the lens is stopped down. Results for chromatic aberration testing were an interesting mixed bag: typical of what you'd see at the wide end for a zoom lens. However when the lens is stopped down to its smallest aperture (ƒ/22-32) at any focal length, the resulting images become quite soft indeed. The lens holds its own when stopped down to an aperture smaller than ƒ/11, with diffraction limiting being apparent but not overly impairing the image sharpness. Fully zoomed in to 55mm, there's a bit of a spike of corner softness when shot wide-open at ƒ/5.6, which can be tamed by stopping down to ƒ/11. ![]() Again, stopping down to ƒ/5.6 offers an improvement, but it doesn't get that much better than what we noted at 18mm - moderately sharp images. Between 24-35mm the lens produces images which are sharper in the corners than what we noted at 18mm. ![]() Zooming in a bit offers a bit better performance for sharpness - it seems the lens is optimized for the mid-range. Stopping down offers light improvement, but the best results at this focal length are only obtained at ƒ/5.6 where it's still only somewhat sharp. Used wide open at wide angle (18mm ƒ/3.5), there's a small sweet spot of sharpness in the center, which is quickly surrounded by moderate softness out to the edges. The Sony 18-55mm E-mount lens produces images of average sharpness. The lens is available as part of a NEX camera kit. The lens takes 49mm filters, and ships with the AL C SH112 petal-shaped hood. The following table reflects the change in aperture with focal length: Focal Length The 18-55mm isn't a ''constant'' lens, in that as you increase the focal length, both the maximum and minimum aperture sizes decrease. ![]()
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