It didn’t take long did it, for the Gear Acquisition Syndrome to happen again, though this time it’s something I had been conspiring to do for a while. The Sony 40mm F2.5 G was a fantastic lightweight lens for the Sony A7CR, but I could never quite get used to the diminished field of view compared to a 35mm lens. The 40mm is about 15% zoomed in, not far off a 50mm.

I personally see “photographically” in 35mm. From my viewpoint somewhere in the world, the feeling of a 35mm field of view is so natural to me that I found myself having to back up when I raised the 40mm lens to my eye to fit in what I was hoping to, so I decided to investigate for some months which was the best 35mm option for my use case.

And for a brief moment I owned the incredible Sony 35mm F1.4 G Master prime, a hulking great piece of glass capable of perfectly resolving far distant black holes deep in the cosmos (I jest), but it was heavy, large and not at a pleasant lens to carry on a strap while hiking with a backpack on, especially as it made the whole camera tilt forward. I sold it within two weeks and went back to the 40mm.

Ultimately, as I often wear my camera when I hike and also on multi-day backpacking treks a handful of times a year, size and weight are the restricting factor for me, the options become very limited. The autofocusing lens options came down to these few:

Sony Sonnar T* 35mm F/2.8 ZA (Zeiss) - Reviewed Below

Very small and lightweight
Optics sharp but not perfect (minor CA/edge smearing)
Not as wide an aperture

Sony FE 35mm F/1.8

Wide aperture
Poor optics and chromatic aberration
Lens barrel a bit too long for my preference

Sigma 35mm F/2 DG DN Contemporary

Larger and heavier than I’d prefer
Sharp and modern optics
Durable metallic build

The Compromise Of The Compact

In the end, I chose to suck it up and purchase a used Sony Sonnar T* 35mm ZA lens for only $475 AUD ($300 USD) and sold the trusty 40mm F2.5 G. Each of these lenses is roughly on par with each other in terms of optical quality, though I would place the Sony 40mm in front by a small margin.

In my testing of the Zeiss 35mm, chromatic aberration is noticeable with sharply lit edges and it suffers from some subtle optical smearing around the outer edges even at F/8 where most issues should generally disappear.

For such an expensive lens (RRP), this is somewhat disappointing, but in the grand scheme of things, both of these problems are not that much of an issue for the compromise of sheer weight and size reduction this lens offers.

The moderate chromatic aberration and vignetting can be worked around using lens corrections in Lightroom. With the Sony A7CR, you get an incredibly detailed image to play with and for landscape photography, the results from the lens are otherwise very sharp and detailed. There’s no doubt this lens is perfectly capable of resolving enough detail for the 61 megapixel BSI-CMOS sensor to play with.

Vignetting & Distortion @ f/6.3

Below is a comparison video showing before and after vignette and distortion lens corrections are applied using Lightroom Classic. Even at F6.3 (an interesting halfway mark between F2.8 and F11), the vignetting and distortion are very noticeable, but easily corrected.

This video was created in 4K HDR (10-bit Dolby Vision HLG) using Final Cut Pro 11.

Sharpness & Detail

Despite all of the vignetting and distortion even at small apertures, the sharpness is still impressive, especially for landscape photography on a high-resolution sensor like the A7CR’s 61mp. You can see the lens resolves down to the pixel level on an image that is 9504x6336 pixels. With Lightroom’s ML-based Denoise enhancement feature, this detail becomes very impressive.

Full 61 megapixel image on the Sony A7CR.

You can see the impressive resolving power of the Sony 35mm F2.8 ZA despite its other optical limitations.

Chromatic Aberration & Lightroom Corrections

Unfortunately, the Zeiss 35mm experiences noticeable chromatic aberration, though it is not a big deal for me personally as it’s easily corrected with the Defringe settings. It’s on-par with the Sony 40mm F2.5 G lens though perhaps slightly worse. The 35mm F1.4 GM is so large because it adds a lot of additional optical corrections into the lens design, and there’s little you can do about it with small lenses. I found the following settings to correct for this particular example. You may need to adjust the hues depending on the photo itself.

Uncorrected

Bokeh

The f/2.8 maximum aperture limits how out-of-focus the bokeh can become, but it' is smooth and well controlled doesn’t exhibit many unpleasant characteristics. It’s certainly not as immaculate and smooth as the F1.4 GM but it’s great for the size of the optics. Some edges on bokeh circles can be seen as well as minor distortion around the outer edges.

Chromatic aberration can be found fairly often, but can be corrected in your editing software.

Conclusion

The Sony 35mm Sonnar T* F2.8 ZA is an older lens and still remains rather expensive at retail cost for the issues it shows, but what you do get is a very sharp, extremely lightweight and compact lens that will be an amazing travel and hiking lens that can be used for a wide variety of subject matter, from landscapes to environmental portraits and street photography.

At the end of the day, if size and weight is your constraint, I would recommend this lens as an option in your journey to find a great 35mm lens. If size isn’t such a limitation however, I would probably prefer opt for the cheaper but newer Sigma 35mm F2 DG DN lens.

If you want the absolute shining beacon of optical hope, go for the Sony 35mm F1.4 G Master lens. It is absolutely phenomenal.

Happy shooting!