Sony announced today that it’s FE mount lens offering will be growing by two. First, the 50mm f/1.8 prime ($250) will be available May 2016.
This non-stabilized standard offering comes in at about one quarter the price of it’s big brother, the Carl Zeiss co-branded FE 55mm f1.8. While I wouldn’t go calling it a thrifty-fifty (it’s about twice the price of the Canon 50mm f/1.8), it’s price should go down a bit more smoothly than some of the other 1st party offerings in the Sony catalog.
Fans of the system will no doubt be very curious about the resolving power of the new 50mm; we’ll test it as soon as we get our hands on it. We’ve been happy with our Sony-Zeiss 55mm f1.8, but at 1/4 the price, this new lens will certainly not be as sharp.
Next up is the new 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6 G OSS. This stabilized zoom comes in at about $1,200 USD and is also slated for a May release. This is Sony’s longest reaching telephoto lens, and it features class leading close-up performance with a minimum focusing distance (MFD) of less than 3 ft. That kind of MFD makes the FE 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6 a nice option for tele-macro shooting. The new zoom is also dust and moisture resistant.
Lastly, the torrent of ever fresh Sony cameras continues with the latest revision of the RX10, the RX10 III. The RX10 III features an optically stabilized 35mm equivalent 24-600mm f/6.5-f/11 super-zoom lens with optics branded and co-designed by Carl Zeiss. Sony’s marketing the lens as a 24-600mm f/2.4-f/4, but that’s because they’re converting the focal lengths to 35mm equivalent without converting the f/stops.
The RX10 III uses one of Sony’s acclaimed 1-inch sensors paired with a BIONZ X image processor. The pair is capable of blazing stills burst rates of 14 fps with minimal blackout as well as super slow-motion video at up to a blistering 960 fps. As with other recent Sony offerings 4k video is on tap and just to make the competition nervous the RX10 III does it with full pixel readout and no pixel binning. In fact, Sony states that the RX10 III captures approximately 1.7x more information than is required for 4K footage. Showoff.
The new RX10 III is slated for a May release with U.S. pricing looking to come in at $1,500.
