
Sony 55mm F1.8 Sonnar T FE ZA Full Frame Prime Lens - Fixed

(475 reviews)
Amazon Price as of 06/10/2025 15:30 GMT+00:00
$998.00
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Product Description
Product Description
Sony Camera Lenses SEL55F18Z An all-day battery that intelligently powers every scroll, click, call, tap, playlist and season finale you can throw at it. Renowned Carl Zeiss contrast and resolution brings out the best in α7 series full frame E-mount bodies. The T* coating works with an innovative optical design to suppress internal reflections, for sublime contrast from highlights to deep blacks. In keeping with the Sonnar concept, a large F1.8 maximum aperture can produce beautiful full-frame background bokeh, but you also have the option of stopping down for extended depth-of-field. A bright lens like this is also an advantage when shooting indoors or outdoors in low light. Linear motor driven internal focusing is smooth and quiet, and a dust and moisture resistant design ensures consistently reliable performance. When changing your aperture to defocus the background, the light sources appear blurred. This ‘bokeh’ effect of the blurred background can be enhanced with circular aperture blades used in this lens. Conventional aperture blades have flat sides creating unappealing polygonal shaped defocussed points of light. α lenses overcome this problem through a unique design that keeps the aperture almost perfectly circular from its wide-open setting to when it is closed by 2 stops. Smoother, more natural defocusing can be obtained as a result. Aspherical lens design dramatically reduces spherical aberration while also reducing lens size and weight. Spherical aberration is a slight misalignment of the light rays projected on the image plane. This is caused by differences in refraction at different points on conventional spherical lenses which degrade image quality in large-aperture lenses. Specially shaped “aspherical” elements near the diaphragm restore alignment of light rays at the image plane, maintaining high sharpness and contrast even at maximum aperture and can also be used at other points in the optical path to reduce distortion. Well-designed aspherical elements can reduce the total number of elements required in the lens, thus reducing overall size and weight. Advanced Aspherical (AA) elements are an evolved variant, featuring an extremely high thickness ratio between the center and periphery. AA elements are exceedingly difficult to produce, relying on the most advanced molding technology to consistently and precisely achieve the required shape and surface accuracy, resulting in significantly improved image accuracy and quality. Coated optics were pioneered by Carl Zeiss - and this superb lens features the Carl Zeiss T* (T-Star) coating that virtually eliminates lens flare, internal reflection and light scattering that can otherwise occur at glass-to-air surfaces. The T* coating contributes to outstanding image quality, with high contrast and uniformly excellent resolution right out to the image edges. Not simply applied to any lens - the T* symbol only appears on multi-element lenses in which the required performance has been achieved throughout the entire optical path, therefore guaranteeing the highest quality. Only the middle groups of the optical system move to achieve focus, so the overall length of the lens does not change. Other important benefits include fast autofocusing and a short minimum focusing distance. Also, the filter thread at the front of the lens does not rotate, which is convenient if you’re using a polarizing filter. 2014 Sony Electronics All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is prohibited. Sony is not responsible for typographical and photographic errors. Features and specifications are subject to change without notice. All rights reserved. Sony, the Sony logo, (alpha) logo, and SteadyShot are trademarks of Sony. Carl ZEISS and ZEISS is a trademark of Carl Zeiss and Sony Corporation. All other trademarks are trademarks of their respective owners.
From the Manufacturer
Sonnar T* FE 55mm F1.8 ZA Full-frame E-mount Prime Lens
Renowned Carl Zeiss contrast and resolution brings out the best in α7 series full frame E-mount bodies. The T* coating works with an innovative optical design to suppress internal reflections, for sublime contrast from highlights to deep blacks. In keeping with the Sonnar concept, a large F1.8 maximum aperture can produce beautiful full-frame background bokeh, but you also have the option of stopping down for extended depth-of-field. A bright lens like this is also an advantage when shooting indoors or outdoors in low light. Linear motor driven internal focusing is smooth and quiet, and a dust and moisture resistant design ensures consistently reliable performance.
Technology Circular Aperture
When changing your aperture to defocus the background, the light sources appear blurred. This ‘bokeh’ effect of the blurred background can be enhanced with circular aperture blades used in this lens. Conventional aperture blades have flat sides creating unappealing polygonal shaped defocussed points
• Diaphragm Blades 9, Rounded. Lens Groups / Elements is 5/7
• Focal Length: 55mm, Filter Diameter: 49mm
• Minimum Focus Distance: 19-11/16 inches (.50m)
• Lens Type: Fixed, E-mount Full Frame, Lens not zoomable
• Aperture (Min/Max): 22/1.8; Angle of View (35 mm): 43 °
• Magnification: 14x; Battery Life (Still Images) Approx. 530 shots (Viewfinder) / approx. 650 shots (LCD monitor) (CIPA standard)
Reviews
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4.6
(475 reviews)
Review AI Summary
Customers find the lens sharp corner to corner, with amazing micro contrast. They appreciate its performance, build quality, and fast focusing speed. The lens produces clear images and videos at full resolution.
halfmonkey
Jun 2, 2014
I love this lens! I have it matched with the Sony A7 and even my wife that knows nothing about photography and doesn't care except until I print out the pictures to hang on our walls or until I load them into the digital frame said that even she can tell that the pictures were really nice. I definitely not a pro. I would more call myself a pro-sumer and I'm still learning but this lens along with the A7 is an awesome combo! As far as the lens is concerned, it is a very sharp and fast lens. You don't have to take my word for it. Just do a search and you'll find many reports and reviews that like this lens. It's not cheap but neither is quality. Remember that this is a scaled down version of a dslr full frame lens so it is smaller than an Alpha 99 full frame lens but it is larger than a cropped sensor lens if you compare the equivalent focal length. The size is good. Without the hood, I would almost even say that it's smaller than what I expected. With the hood, it's about where I expected. The focus is fine. Out of hundreds of shots, I missed maybe a few. Again, I'm not a pro as I would consider myself a pro-sumer and I'm sure the missed shots were because of my own doing. I shoot in full manual with the A7 with the focus on one-shot focus and not continuos focus. Unfortunately, there aren't many choices for the A7 series right now but if you have to be stuck with one fast prime, go for this one. This is the only lens I have with my A7 and it works great. Focal length is about how your human eyes perceive the world so if you're comfortable shooting with that kind of frame, you'll be fine. Yes, there are some occasions that I wish I had a wider angle or a longer zoom but then I just work around it. If Sony comes out with a little faster wide angle and a telephoto anywhere between 85mm to 125mm prime, I would get that too. I like the telephoto to be fast with image stabilization thought. Let's all hope this happens.
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Laura L. George
Aug 30, 2016
This is a fantastic lens with sharpness rivaling the 50 mm Sigma Art and the Sony 50 1.4. While it is not a 1.4 lens (and therefore you won't get the utmost in shallow dept-of-field), I have been nothing but impressed with it's sharpness and edge-to-edge resolution (when stopped down a bit, although sharpness wide-open at center is no joke either). Mated to a 42mp sensor I don't feel it is ham-stringing the sensor in anyway. Sharpness is however not everything, and I do love it's Zeiss-esque color rendition (a little more cold clinical than a true Zeiss, though) and it's bokeh is more than adequate for that 3-dimensional pop that is so desired. Being a short and small-statured lens does mean that some minor caveats do exist, those being Color Aberrations and Vignetting. Both are controlled very well but do show their presence especially at large aperture.--This is where I feel these lenses lose a bit to the larger more perfect ART/OTUS/G-Master brethren. Most importantly to me, I am an avid hiker and when I do take pictures of models/subjects I do so at remote locations. Before I moved to a mirrorless full-frame, I was lugging my heavy 50/1.4 and my mirrored full-frame camera for 12(+) miles per hike up and down mountains. That got old and painful quickly and not to mention that the general bulk of what I was carrying was inconvenient for my packs and inconvenient for climbing. I believe this lens is the perfect size for a small mirrorless professional system and has 99% of the image quality needed for all but the very 0.1% of studio shoots or where the extra subject isolation of a F/1.4 (or less) lense is absolutely needed. This lens is a must for any FE-mount Sony Owners out there.
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