Sony SEL1855 18-55mm kit lens sharpness at 18mm (27mm equivalent)
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To test real-life performance with the SEL1855 kit lens, we started with it fully zoomed-out to 18mm, and shot this scene at all aperture settings using the NEX-5 body.
As before, the NEX-5 was set to its lowest sensitivity, but this time to avoid any in-camera corrections, we shot in RAW mode and processed the files using the supplied Image Data Converter SR 3.2 using the default settings. The crops below are taken from the areas marked with the red rectangles and presented here at 100%. |
The Sony SEL1855 lens delivers very good innings when zoomed-out at all the aperture settings presented below. Even when wide-open at f3.5, there's nothing significant to complain about.
Explore the extreme corners and there's some softening, but it's not at all bad compared to rival kit zooms. Stop the lens down a little and it performs very well, but again even if you're forced to use it fully-open, you'll still get respectable results.
Indeed examining the crops below, there isn't an obvious sweet-spot to the lens when zoomed-out. The sample taken at f5.6 has the edge over the others, but it's fairly subtle. So overall, a great performance from the kit zoom, at least when zoomed-out anyway.
Now let's see how it performs at its longest focal length in our Sony SEL1855 sharpness results at 55mm. Alternatively if you can't wait to see how the camera fairs in low light, skip straight to our Sony Alpha NEX-5 High ISO Noise results.
Sony SEL1855 18-55mm kit lens
Corner sharpness at 55mm |
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Sony SEL1855 18-55mm kit lens
Centre sharpness at 55mm |
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f3.5, 200 ISO |
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f3.5, 200 ISO |
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f4, 200 ISO |
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f4, 200 ISO |
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f5.6, 200 ISO |
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f5.6, 200 ISO |
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f8, 200 ISO |
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f8, 200 ISO |
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