Sony FE2470z, the second time around: Is it any better?
I reviewed the Sony FE2470z f/4 earlier this year and didn’t like it. Seemed like none of the images I took with it had any magic, and often had the focus just not where I wanted it to be. I like the 24-70mm a lot, it is an ideal zoom to take with you when travelling. I remember coming home from the Azores and realising all my images needed a lot of work in post to make anything decent out of them. I resolved to use my A-mount f/2.8 with the LAE4 after that
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This Sony FE2470z is a full frame Carl Zeiss design at came with a hefty price tag, adding to my rather negative feelings. It has terrible barrel distortion at 24mm, where you naturally go to on a zoom like this for wide angle shots, and at f/4, the in-focus area is very narrow to name just a few problems. Because of this, I found it best never to use it in iAuto. Instead, I go for P, at least f/5.6, or go to full manual mode.
Anyway, the Sony FE2470z has dropped in price recently and found a good deal on it, so I decided to give it another try. Carrying around the heavy SAL2470z with LAEA4 is not always an option, and I’ve had the converter fail on me twice now, so at least it’s a convenient and lightweight alternative. I started using DXO Optics Pro a few months ago and realised it has superior lens profiles that can fix a lot of these problems, so I went for it.
I’ve been using it again for a couple of weeks now, and my second impression is a bit better, thanks to DXO mainly. The only problem that I still have is this feeling that it could have been some much better than it is. It still takes a lot of work to make something decent out of my captured images. Let’s hope Sony learned something here and have done a better job with the new FE 1635z.
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