Amateur Photographer verdict
For professionals usually reliant on fast primes within its focal range, this lens could be a game-changer. Wedding and event photographers in particular may find its versatility and speed invaluable.- Bright constant f/2 aperture
- Superb image quality
- Fast autofocus
- Expensive
- Can’t use teleconverters
- Uses large 95mm front filters
- Relatively heavy and bulky
With a flexible zoom range and fast constant aperture, the 70-200mm f/2.8 has long been the staple of professional sports, weddings and events photographers. Sony’s latest GM lens, however, is set to offer a whole new option. The Sony FE 50-150mm F2 GM offers the same 3x zoom ratio, but starting from a slightly wider point. Most impressively, though, its maximum aperture is a whole stop brighter. This makes it feel less like a zoom lens and more like several bright primes rolled into one, making it potentially one of Sony’s best lenses.
Sony FE 50-150mm F2 GM at a glance:
- $3,899 / £3,799
- Ultra-large aperture telephoto zoom
- 40-74mm minimum focus
- 95mm filter thread
- 200mm x 102.8mm; 1340g
- Sony E mount
Sony’s cutting-edge f/2 telezoom lens comes after a couple of equally fast standard zooms. Canon’s revolutionary RF 28-70mm F2L USM appeared back in 2018, followed up by Sony’s very own FE 28-70mm F2 GM in 2024. Now it would appear Sony is first to the party with a telephoto option this time around.
While Sony’s new lens and a conventional 70-200mm both have optical zooms of around 3x, the range on the 50-150mm has been shifted a little wider. That’s great if you want a lens to perform more like a 50mm prime, but not as advantageous if you’re looking to get closer to the action. So should you trade in your Sony FE 70-200mm F2.8 GM OSS II lens and large-aperture primes for this first-of-its-kind zoom? Let’s find out.
Features
Clearly the talking point of this lens is its super-fast f/2 constant aperture, which sucks in loads of light and makes it easier to blur backgrounds. At its widest setting it’s not too different from a 50mm f/1.8 prime, although f/2 is a third-stop slower. However, it’s a whole stop slower than f/1.4. Its aperture is made up of 11 rounded blades which can be closed from f/2 down to f/22.
When it comes to close-ups, the lens has minimum focus distances of 40cm at the wide end and 74cm at the long end. That equates to a 0.2x magnification ratio. Other notable features include the tripod foot, which sadly isn’t Arca-Swiss compatible, but which can be removed if needed. There’s also a short lens hood to block out stray light and a soft case comes in the box, too.
One feature that is absent, though, is optical stabilisation, which been left on the cutting room floor. That being said, Sony’s latest cameras offer up to eight stops of in-body stabilisation, and if you’re shooting wide open at f/2, reaching a fast enough shutter speed to counteract camera shake shouldn’t be too difficult with half-decent light.
Another omission worth talking about is teleconverter compatibility. Users of the Sony FE 70-200mm F2.8 GM OSS II can add one of Sony’s 1.4x or 2x teleconverters to extend the reach whilst sacrificing a stop or two of light. But the construction of the new Sony 50-150mm F2 GM doesn’t allow these to be used, which is worth bearing in mind if you want to get close to faraway subjects.
Build and handling
The Sony FE 50-150mm F2 GM feels rock-solid and is built like a tank. As you might expect, it has a metal rear mount and weather-sealing. It’s actually the same length as the FE 70-200mm F2.8 GM OSS II, at 200mm, but it’s 17% larger in diameter so it does handle a little differently, and those with smaller hands may struggle. This also means it takes larger and more expensive 95mm filters, compared to the 77mm filters on the 70-200mm.
The weight was a pleasant surprise! Tipping the scales at 1340g, it’s 295g more than the FE 70-200mm F2.8 GM OSS II. But in context, compared to my old 70-200mm f/2.8 lens for DSLRs it’s 325g lighter. So all things considered, it’s nicely balanced.
Both the zoom and focus rings are large, smoothly rotating, and have plenty to hold on to. The zoom ring goes from 50mm to 150mm in less than a quarter turn, so it’s pretty quick to zoom in when needed.
Focus and zoom are both internal, so the lens doesn’t rack forward when zooming in. This keeps the balance essentially constant and means the sealing can be more comprehensive, too.
The barrel also features an iris ring for setting the aperture. It can be toggled between clicked or de-clicked at the flick of a switch, which filmmakers will rejoice at. You can also pass aperture control to the camera body if you prefer.
Switches towards the front of the lens have been kept minimal with just a simple AF/MF toggle, and another switch to flip between Full Time AF and DMF (Direct Manual Focus). There are also three customisable buttons arranged around the barrel that are usually set to focus hold.
Autofocus
The Sony FE 50-150mm F2 GM employs four XD (extreme dynamic) linear motors to drive the focus group. Sony says this will deliver fast, accurate and quiet focusing and tracking that can keep up with the 120fps shooting on the likes of Sony’s A9 III. On the Sony A7R V body I had for testing, I had no issues with its rapid speed and tracking. It was very quiet, but it’s worth noting, not totally silent. There is a very slight motor whir when autofocusing.
When unobstructed the lens was rapid at locking on autofocus, and the subject detection was very good. However, when shooting through fences it was a bit more hit-and-miss. I was glad to have the DMF (Direct Manual Focus) feature to override the focus and get it roughly in the ballpark where I needed, and the subject detection would then kick in.
Image Quality
Considering the zoom and aperture range of this lens, the image quality blew me away. That’s likely to be down to its premium glass including two Extreme Aspherical (XA) lenses, two Aspherical elements, three extra low dispersion (ED ) glass elements and two Super ED glass elements.
I shot both in RAW with no profile corrections, and in JPEG with lens correction profiles enabled, to compare the output. The JPEGs corrected a little pincushion distortion which helped straighten out horizontal and vertical lines at the edges.
The lens is razor sharp in the centre, even when shooting wide open. Corner sharpness impressed too, even wide open, although I found the sweet spot tended to be around f/2.8-3.5. I’m thrilled to say there was no trace of chromatic aberration in my sample photos.
A little vignetting was noted in the corners when shooting wide open at both 50mm and 150mm. However, this quickly disappears and is much less noticeable at f/2.8. I was surprised that the in-camera lens profile didn’t correct the vignette entirely, but it can be easily removed when editing RAW files.
With such a large maximum aperture at your fingertips, this lens is a bokeh monster and can easily diffuse backgrounds into a beautiful blur. I found the bokeh to be very pleasing with both large round circular balls of bokeh when shooting close or at 50mm, and more swirly cats-eye style bokeh when shooting further away and at the long end. This adds a lovely depth to the images and works well with central subjects.
Sony FE 50-150mm F2 GM: Our Verdict
I could give you all sort of facts and figures to compare the Sony FE 50-150mm F2 GM to the FE 70-200mm F2.8 GM OSS II, such as it’s twice as bright, or that it’s 17% larger in diameter, 28% heavier and so on. However, I suspect the number you’ll be most interested in is the price. Costing a cool £3799 it’s a staggering 58% more expensive. In fact by my count, it’s Sony’s fourth most expensive E-mount lens, topped only by the firm’s 300mm f/2.8, 400mm f/2.8, and 600mm f/4 optics.
Whether the lens is worth the spend will be entirely down to your personal preferences, what you like to shoot and how much you’re going to use it. I believe the lens will be worth the asking price for many pros shooting with Sony bodies, as it could mitigate the need for carrying a 70-200mm f/2.8 and several fast primes, such as a 50mm, 85mm and 135mm. So for professional photographers of weddings and events, I think this could be a bit of a game-changer.
It could even be a system seller: people will undoubtedly switch or start afresh in Sony’s ecosystem due to ground-breaking lenses like this. So competitors like Canon and Nikon will surely need to get cracking with a lens to reply ASAP!
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Sony FE 50-150mm F2 GM full specifications
| Price | $3,899 / £3,799 |
| Filter diameter | 95mm |
| Lens Elements | 19 |
| Groups | 17 |
| Diaphragm blades | 11 |
| Aperture | f/2 – f/22 |
| Minimum focus | 40-74cm |
| Length | 200mm |
| Diameter | 102.8mm |
| Weight | 1340g (without tripod mount) |
| Lens Mount | Sony E |
| Included accessories | Hood, soft case, caps, lens strap, tripod foot |
