Product Reviews

I've had this lens for a number of years firstly with my a6500 and now with an a6700. It is very good between 24 and 55mm and good outside those focal lengths. Stopping down improves the image quality at the edges of needed. The A6700 seems to get more from the lens, maybe because of the better sensor.

Having been in the photographic retail trade (now retired) I know of the reputation for quality Zeiss has. I also have a Sony RX10 MKIV which has a Zeiss lens and is super sharp, so I was expecting a lot from the 16-70 Tessar on my newly purchased Sony A6600 and it has lived up to my expectations. Incredibly sharp all all focal lengths edge to edge, great colour reproduction, very light and compact. Highly recommended.

I bought this lens to replace the Zeiss A Frame lens and expected it to be the best there is. I wasn't disappointed.

I use this lens on an A6500. Together they provide a lightweight system that is comfortable to carry around all day. The lens focuses quickly and produces edge to edge sharpness at all but extreme settings.Even wide open edge sharpness is only a little softer and perfectly acceptable.

Bought this a few months ago to use as a day to day lens as I needed more flexibility than my 50 1.8 and better quality glass than my 16-50 kit lens. IT.HAS.NOT.LEFT.MY.CAMERA! I use it for everything from landscapes to portraits and everything in between. I have used it on several pro shoots and continue to be impressed. For the price there are no better lenses that offer such quality and flexibility. It has its limitations in very low light scenarios (it is f4 wide open) but with careful planning and set up these can be overcome. You will not be disappointed with this lens.

Having just purchased an Alpha 6400 body I bought this lens using the Welcome to Alpha promotion. I have only used it for a few shots so far. It is a reasonably lightweight and easy to operate lens with very effective OSS - I have obtained acceptably sharp results hand held at 1/5th second exposure. The constant f4 maximum aperture is a nice feature.

I bought my A6000 camera a few weeks ago. It came with the 16-50mm kit lens which did not impress me. This lens, however is a different story. It produces very sharp images with great colour rendering, handles well with great build quality. It also benefits from OSS and is an excellent lens for the A6000. I am very happy with it.

Purchased a month ago. Lens is ok nothing special. Quite a expensive for what you get.

Lived up to the great expectations promised by previous reviewers.

Love it for street photography and as general lens

Bought this to upgrade on my current lenses. Although I have not used it that much since purchase, the limited amount of pics I have taken have been fantastic - I am still getting used to the lens, but feel confident in saying for an amateur like myself it has increased my pic taking capabilities.

This product gives great functionality for an everyday walk around lens! This is the only lens I own and I am not looking to purchase another lens any time soon! The focal range gives you a lot of options for different styles of photography.

Feels good to use Excellent results so far, obviously extended use will be needed

This lens isn't known for its sharpness, and often gets bad reviews by those who are slaves to fashion and tests that have no real world relevance. It's not soft; it's just not razor sharp. People focus on razor sharpness because it's unnatural...we don't notice such details with our own eyes, day to day, and so it gives us a sense of the exotic. But if you're focusing on skin pores, you're not really looking at the picture are you? Pictures from this lens draw your eye to the subject instead, and the luxury of light and colour surrounding it. The micro-contrast and smooth colour gradients give a wonderful sense of depth. Its representation of light and colour is natural in a way that other zoom lenses for APS-C E-Mount can't match, and can render a scene more real than razor sharpness ever will.

I bought this lens over a month ago to replace the kit lens supplied with my Sony a6300. Am absolutely thrilled with it as photos are much sharper and the zoom gives me greater versatility for taking pictures. It was very expensive but I can't see any need for another lens in the 16-70mm range.

Starting with positives, build quality is superb, the look and feel of using this lens is fantastic. The zeiss colour is great too. However the optics on this are very poor. Edge sharpness is very bad wide open and barely passable stopped down. It is actually outperformed by the kit lens in a number of situations. For the price this is a very disappointing lens which I don’t expect to be keeping for long

Bought this a few months ago. Forgot to register it. Really like the versatility, but had noticed that the zoom ring stuck, between 50-70mm. Thought it might loosen up after a while. Ended up sending in for repair. They replaced the Optical Block Assembly, whatever that is. Great all around tense!

Bought yesterday to complement A6300 Camera and my Hobby.

Had the lens only a few weeks but I would recommend it, quality is very good, small in size and picture quality excellent.

Great lens to travel around with on the sony a6000 compact and sharp across the board

I bought this a month ago along with an A6500 cameea. So far very impressed. Only criticism so far is the lack if a lock.

I bought this lens three months ago.It has performed superbly well.The only draw back is an absence of a macro setting.This is an odd omission on a £700+ lens, this is the only reason why i am not awarding it 5 stars.

This lens has two things going for it: it covers a useful range and it is compact and light weight. Unfortunately the copy of the lens I have does not produce sharp images. I have other Sony/Zeiss lenses which are outstanding in image quality, but not this one. Given it's price and Zeiss badge, I would not recommend it. I can not in good faith sale this lens to someone else and it will be awhile before I can command the resources to replace it - but it will be replaced.

I bought this lens to pair with a Sony a6500 for travel. I wanted something with quality glass that covered wide angle to short telephoto and this lens covers it perfectly. I am getting beautiful results through out the zoom and aperture range. I have been using it for about a month now and could not be happier with my choice.

I have only had the camera & lens for about 2 weeks, but I am just learning to use it, however this lens has a great zoom range, perfect for keeping on the camera as a standard lens. The fact it is f4 through its zoom length means it is ideal for low light photography. It is pin sharp right to the edge& the telephoto end is great for distance shots & even half way is perfect for portraits.

My taste in photography is wide and after ditching my life-long camera manufacturer in favour of Sony, I needed a lens for my new a6500 which would give me options for Landscape, Street, and above all, Portrait photography. One of my big asks was for a lens which isn’t too big as on holiday I want to carry it around all day in a coat pocket or small bag. I also needed a lens which can focus quickly and accurately in order to take great pictures of my grandchildren, particularly as my current compact camera (not Sony) fails miserably as it is so slow - by the time I have pressed the shutter the children are out the door! I've only had the a6500 and this lens for less than a couple of weeks but I've already taken hundreds of pictures, all so far indoors and mainly of the grandchildren. The results are extremely pleasing. The lens copes with multiple shots well, and the images are very sharp. Only yesterday I was reviewing some shots and was amazed as to how much I can crop without any degradation of image quality. The 16-70mm zoom range is very good too and is just about right for my needs as it goes from a 35mm full frame equivalent of 24mm at the wide end to a portrait pleasing 105mm at the other. Finally, colour rendition is very good and my pictures look very pleasing. Although it isn’t a cheap lens, I chose to buy it in favour of the kit lens often sold with the a6500. I am very pleased I did and I know that moving to Sony has been a good decision.

Not had it long, but the balance and feel on my A6000 is great and the telephoto action is very smooth and quiet. Results to date just what I expected. Look forward to putting t through its paces

I bought this len three months ago, and I am very satisfied with it.

This is an expensive lens with many pretensions. It doesn't live up to them. There are mechanical problems in that the zoom ring is sticky in use but still slides out when carrying the camera. The stated zoom range is 16 to 70 mm but it isn't possible to use the 16 mm setting due to poor edge definition. This puts the range at 24 - 70 mm. This edge definition situation is not what would be expected from Carl Zeiss and puts the lens on a par with cheaper alternatives. I have now used it for around 1500 - 2000 images.

Bought from the Sony Centre in Carlisle where I received excellent customer service and advice on the use of this lens. I have now had the lens for three weeks and I am very pleased with the sharpness of the photographs and the fast focusing of the lens. Although it is not a macro lens it does produce excellent close up pictures

Had this a few weeks now and it takes Sharp photos and I use it as my "walk Around" lens. All was ready to take a shot. Just wish it had Power Zoom with in the price of this lens.

I have only had this lens about 2 weeks but the pictures I have taken are so sharply focussed - almost unbelievable!

Excellent lens, build quality good, crippling price the only negative

I was quite surprised that the lens/camera configuration does not take a crisp sharp picture while outdoors with the camera (Sony a6500) set on program mode. Indoor is also grainy as the ISO adds light to the image.

I bought this with a A6300 to replace a large DSLR that didn't shoot video. Since I was intending to use it more for video than stills the smoothness of the zoom was important but I found it was pretty graunchy, also the lens suffered from shocking chromatic aberration, and this from a lens with Zeiss glass? Surely not! After a couple of weeks I thought this simply can't be right and took it back to the dealer - who swapped it out immediately and cheerfully. The replacement has a silky smooth zoom and I have seen no aberration since, though I haven't been forensic about it yet! The fact that f4.0 is available throughout the zoom range is great for video, not massively fast for stills work and sometimes I would like to be able to get a shallower depth of field, but as a first lens for the camera I find it a very good compromise. (I use my previous camera's 35mm/f1.8 for critical fast or shallow images on an adapter mount). It is light, the zoom doesn't slide about when pointing the camera down (my previous camera's zoom did). I happily recommend it.

I use this lens on a A6000. This has become my go to lens with this camera. This produces images that are sharp at all levels from 16 mm to 70 mm. I am quite pleased with the quality. However, I feel that the color quality is significantly improved from the lens that came with the camera. The colors are so vivid.

Nice heft to it, feels like a serious piece of equipment. Beautiful Zeiss colors. No problem with center focus. This lens was factory inspected for those of you Leary of this lens because of bad center focus reports as I was.

Brought this on the advice of my dad and glad I did, it is a fantastic sharp and fast lens.

Only had the Sony 16-70 for a few weeks, having made the move to the CSC platform recently. The lens has proved to be on par with my L series Canon glass it seems as sharp and is extremely quick focusing with no hunting. I'd certainly recommend this as an essential piece of glass to have on your A6000.

Using this on my a6000 and am very satisfied with performance of this lens. Very good image quality across the full focal range. This lens is on my camera most of the time and works great in most situations.

I bought this because I wanted the low light capability throughout the zoom range and also because of the very positive reviews I'd read online about it. I've had it a couple of weeks and shot landscapes and portraits so far - I'm delighted with the sharpness and quality of the images. It offers wide angle and a decent zoom for walkabout purposes.

Excellent picture quality and compact. Perfect for when you only want to carry the camera and one universal lens

I had a clear objective when I bought this lens. I wanted to achieve a lighter compact camera with a performance similar to my full frame SLR. I think I have done that. I am very impressed with the results. It is very sharp, enabling heavy cropping if required . overall it requires less adjustment in light room & gives very good colour rendering. It is also helpful to me that it covers the same range as my canon EF 24-105L f4 & its much lighter to carry about ! . Altogether a brilliant lens if rather expensive

This Zeiss lens is a great walkaround lens and as a replacement for the kit lens. While a bit pricey, the improvement in image quality as compared to the kit lens (SEL1650 for my NEX6) is leaps and bounds. A f2.8 aperture would make this lens even better, but then the lens may end up too big and heavy to be useful as a walkaround lens.

I bought this lens about a month ago and it is now my main lens for my A6000. The quality of the images is excellent making full use of the A6000's 24mp and the images are sharp - The build quality is great too. I highly recommend this lens to anyone with a Sony Nex, A6000 or A5000.

Fab lens which is as fantastic as the reviewers say. Is expensive it worth it for one really good lens

Tested this lens on a6000. The pics are very sharp.

Been using for a couple of months now and delighted with the overall image quality and functionality of this lens. Bigger and heavier than the Sony kit zoom lens, but attached to such a small light weight camera as the A6000, this is hardly an issue. I have a few prime lenses too, but short of macro facility... this lens gives me pretty much all I need for day to day travel photography... even used in studio for portraiture and product shots and the results were crisp with excellent colour clarity when processed through Lightroom as raw file. The native jpegs are fabulous too.

Bought a while ago as a replacement for the 16-50 kit lens, which although compact is a bit "soft" for more high quality use. The Zeiss lens is amazingly sharp and the colour transmission is excellent, clearly very pleased with this lens so far, obviously this is an expensive lens but you do get what you pay for.

you'll read a lot on the web about this lens. Lots photoistas waxing about soft corners etc. We'll I've been a Olympus & Contax user in the past and a Nikon user for 30 years and this is a great lens! If you have an 'a' series Sony with an E mount you must have a Zeiss lens - and this is the most versatile one in a VERY limited range.

I've had this lens for about a year. It has a useful zoom range and it is sharp even at maximum aperture. Definitely worth the money.

Whilst it is early days, I am very pleased with the images I have taken with this lens on my Sony 6000. The sharpness, clarity and colour output appears to be significantly better than the kit lens.

A really great lens living up to the Zeiss tradition. My only niggle about this lens is its weight. But, then again the weight is a result of how well made the lens is. Zoom and focus are tight, no lens creep

Finding this lens a great companion to my a6000, it hardly comes off the camera! Crisp sharp photos with a solid sturdy build.

I've been waiting for a better quality daily lens for my NEX 7 to replace my kit and this one pretty much it. The lens is solidly built, light and good looking. Performance wise, very clear , fast and performs well on low lights. I was little bit hesitant because of the price but got it anyway. I brought it on my travel to Europe and so far have been satisfied with the results. My NEX 7 now has a perfect partner. I also have 35mm F1.8 Prime lens in addition to the standard kit.

I searched high and low this year for a great lens for my NEX 7 that I have had since it was released. And this is truly one fantastic lens. It truly brings out the full potential of the NEX7, making it a fantastic travel camera. I pop iy in my bag with my iPad and macbook Pro and I am good to go without having to lug a ton of gear around. I own a Nikon D800, D7100, Fuji X100s, and my iPhone, and I have more fun with this lens and this camera combo than any of the others. The only drawback I have seen so far is autofocus in AF-C mode. At times the camera hunts and focus is slow. Otherwise no complaints whatsoever. It is truly great fun to shoot with this combo.