Sony E 16-50mm F3.5-5.6 OSS PZ Lens Review

I was ordering a Sony Alpha 6700. This camera was available in a kit with the tiny Sony E PZ 16-50mm F3.5-5.6 OSS Lens for only $100.00 more. As the lens individually sells for $298.00, it seemed like a good deal.

This APS-C lens's attractive attributes are its tiny size, extremely light weight, useful general-purpose focal length range, power zoom capability (though this feature may be viewed as a disadvantage), Optical SteadyShot, and if purchased used or in a kit, ultra-low price.

There is a reason for the low used price. As shared, this lens is extremely cheap when purchased in a kit, making the addition to the camera purchase appear to be a good deal. After photographers experience the image quality this lens produces (and other attributes), they opt to sell it. These sales cause the used supply to be high, and those purchasing a used lens perhaps know the low performance of this one, which reduces the demand.

The purchase of any lens can be justified but justifying the Sony E PZ 16-50mm F3.5-5.6 OSS Lens purchase is not so easy for those who care about their image quality, the reason for purchasing a mirrorless interchangeable lens camera in the first place.

Focal Length Range

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The focal length range is the first aspect to consider for zoom lens selection, and the lens features a great general-purpose range.

The moderately wide-angle through short telephoto 16-50 (24-75mm full-frame angle of view equivalent) focal length range covers a huge list of general-purpose needs. This is an ideal focal length range to have mounted when you are unsure which focal lengths you will need, and it will usually be found to include the optimal angles of view.

The 16-50mm range is great for photographing people. Use 50mm for head and shoulders portraits and the wider end for groups and environmental imagery.

This range is a good choice for street photography.

The 16-50mm range is also a good choice for landscape and cityscape photography, with compositions being ideally captured using every focal length available in this lens.

It is not difficult to create compelling landscape compositions using the 16mm perspective while still emphasizing a foreground subject against an in-focus background and providing the viewer a sense of presence in the scene. 50mm works great for mildly compressed landscapes featuring distant subjects such as mountains.

This focal length range is well-suited for commercial photography, and the wide end of the range is ready to capture exterior architecture and larger interior spaces. Cityscapes, countrysides, flowers, medium and large products, and much more are in this lens's capabilities list.

The following images illustrate the 16-50mm focal length range:

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That is a range that all photographers appreciate having in their kits.

Max Aperture

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How much light does the lens provide to the imaging sensor? Usually, that question is the second most important when selecting a lens.

The f/3.5-5.6 in the name refers to the maximum aperture, the ratio of the focal length to the entrance pupil diameter, available in this lens.

The lower the aperture number, the wider the opening, and the more light the lens can deliver to the imaging sensor. Each "stop" in aperture change (full stop examples: f/2.8, f/4.0, f/5.6) increases or decreases the amount of light by a factor of 2x (a substantial amount).

Want a reasonably long focal length range in a tiny, lightweight, inexpensive zoom lens? Expect that lens to have a variable and narrow max aperture. Because this lens's maximum opening does not increase sufficiently with focal length increase to maintain the same aperture measurement ratio, the max aperture is efficiently variable, ranging from f/3.5 to f/5.6 as the focal length range is increasingly traversed.

A smaller aperture opening facilitates the use of smaller, lighter, and less expensive lens elements. The Sony E PZ 16-50mm F3.5-5.6 OSS Lens has all those attributes.

While the aperture change is continuous, narrowing as the focal length increases, the camera rounds the EXIF-reported aperture to the nearest 1/3 or 1/2 stop. Here are the focal length ranges for the Sony E PZ 16-50mm F3.5-5.6 OSS Lens's reported 1/3 stop apertures.

16-17mm = f/3.5
18-22mm = f/4.0
23-28mm = f/4.5
29-34mm = f/5.0
35-50mm = f/5.6

With these narrow max apertures, this lens is not a good choice for photographing low light motion, such as indoor sports or outdoor sports on cloudy days. Setting the ISO to a high number is the narrow aperture option for sharp low light in-motion images, and the resulting significant noise is a detrimental image quality factor. Narrow apertures also slow or inhibit low light autofocusing.

A downside to the variable max aperture is that the widest max aperture cannot be used over the entire focal length range. The camera automatically accounts for the changes in auto exposure modes (including M mode with Auto ISO), but using the widest-available aperture in manual exposure mode is somewhat complicated by the changing setting (an in-camera function may also accommodate the changes).

A narrow aperture does not create a background blur as strong as a wider option, but the longer focal lengths availed in this lens can create a reasonable blur. These examples illustrate the maximum blur this lens can create:

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While the 16mm background details are easy to recognize, the 50mm results show a nice amount of blur – when the lens is focused to the minimum focus distance.

Image Stabilization

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Adding to the versatility of this lens is OSS, Optical SteadyShot image stabilization.

"Gyro sensors built into the lens detect even the slightest movement, and the stabilization lens is precisely shifted to counteract any image blur that might occur. The use of precision, quiet linear motors and technology inherited from high-end Sony professional camcorders results in exceptionally quiet, effective image stabilization that contributes to high-quality movies as well as stills." [Sony]

Sony cameras also feature IBIS (In-Body Image Stabilization). Perhaps not immediately clear is that these two stabilization systems are complementary: "5-axis image stabilization becomes available when used with α series bodies that feature built-in image stabilization." [Sony] One example of the IBIS benefit is camera rotation correction, a correction the lens cannot perform.

Another image stabilization benefit is its aid to AF precision, as the camera's AF system can produce improved focus precision if the image it sees is stabilized.

Sony does not provide an assistance rating in stops for this lens, but the OSS and IBIS difference seen in the viewfinder is significant, impressively so for the size and price of this lens, and the stabilized viewfinder aids in optimal composition. Handheld movie recording quality is significantly improved by image stabilization.

While OSS is active, framing drift is not an issue, and the viewfinder view is well-controlled, not jumping at startup/shutdown and permitting easy reframing. This OSS implementation is also quiet.

Image Quality

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The resolution test chart was not kind to this lens.

The wide-open center-of-the-frame results are soft over the entire focal length range. 16 and 24mm results are considerably sharper at f/5.6, but 35 and 50mm results are not so good even at f/8.

Moving out to the periphery of the image circle, where light rays are refracted to a stronger angle than in the center, lenses typically show decreased sharpness, and this one is not an exception. Wide-open mid and periphery results are quite soft. Stopping down pushes the sharpness outward, but the peripheral results never get really sharp, though 24mm f/8 periphery sharpness is not too bad.

The resolution chart is brutal/merciless on image quality, so let's take the testing outdoors, next looking at a series of center-of-the-frame 100% resolution crop examples. These images were captured in RAW format using a Sony Alpha 1 and processed in Capture One using the Natural Clarity method. The sharpening amount was set to only "30" on a 0-1000 scale. Note that images from most cameras require some level of sharpening, but too-high sharpness settings are destructive to image details and hide the deficiencies of a lens.

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The natural details are kinder to this lens's performance. The 16mm wide-open results are not bad, but f/5.6 brings a noticeable improvement. At 24mm, the wide-open results are soft, and f/8 brings the desired sharpness. 50mm wide-open results are soft, and they improve through f/11, despite the impact of diffraction.

Next, we'll look at a series of comparisons showing 100% resolution extreme top left corner crops captured and processed identically to the above center-of-the-frame images. The lens was manually focused in the corner of the frame to capture these images.

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Samples taken from the outer extreme of the image circle, full-frame corners, can be counted on to show a lens's weakest performance. If you need sharp corners at 16mm, this is not your lens (and focusing a lens in the corner is challenging when the corner is rendered strongly blurred). At 28mm, wide-open corner results are soft, though the f/8 corner performance is reasonable. 50mm results are similar to the 28mm results, though f/11 brings the sharpest corners.

Corner sharpness does not always matter, but it does matter for some uses, including landscape and architecture photography.

This lens does not exhibit focus shift, the plane of sharp focus moving forward or backward as the aperture is narrowed (residual spherical aberration or RSA).

This lens has a relatively low about 1.5 stops of peripheral shading at 16mm, with the remaining focal lengths having even less, about 1 stop of shading. Stopping down to f/8 reduces the shading to about 0.7 stops, and the further reduction at f/11 is small.

One-stop of shading is often used as the visibility number, though subject details provide a widely varying amount of vignetting discernibility. Vignetting is correctable during post-processing, with increased noise in the brightened areas the penalty, or it can be embraced, using the effect to draw the viewer's eye to the center of the frame. Study the pattern shown in our vignetting test tool to determine how your images will be affected.

Lateral (or transverse) CA (Chromatic Aberration) refers to the unequal magnification of all colors in the spectrum. Lateral CA shows as color fringing along lines of strong contrast running tangential (meridional, right angles to radii), with the mid and especially the periphery of the image circle showing the most significant amount as this is where the most significant difference in the magnification of wavelengths typically exists.

With the right lens profile and software, lateral CA is often easily correctable (often in the camera) by radially shifting the colors to coincide. However, it is always better to avoid this aberration in the first place.

Color misalignment can be seen in the site's image quality tool, but let's also look at a set of worst-case examples. The images below are 100% crops from the extreme top left corner of a1 frames (APS-C crop) showing diagonal black and white lines.

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Only black and white colors should be present in these images, with the additional colors indicating the presence of lateral CA. These results range from strong at 16mm to modest at 50mm.

A relatively common lens aberration is axial (longitudinal, bokeh) CA, which causes non-coinciding focal planes of the various wavelengths of light. More simply, different colors of light are focused to different depths. Spherical aberration, along with spherochromatism, or a change in the amount of spherical aberration with respect to color (looks quite similar to axial chromatic aberration but is hazier) are other common lens aberrations to observe. Axial CA remains somewhat persistent when stopping down, with the color misalignment effect increasing with defocusing. The spherical aberration color halo shows little size change as the lens is defocused, and stopping down one to two stops generally removes this aberration.

In the real world, lens defects do not exist in isolation, with spherical aberration and spherochromatism generally found, at least to some degree, along with axial CA. These combine to create a less sharp, hazy-appearing image quality at the widest apertures.

The examples below look at the defocused specular highlights' fringing colors in the foreground vs. the background. The lens has introduced any fringing color differences from the neutrally colored subjects.

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Wide aperture lenses tend to show the most color separation in this test, and the 16-50 keeps the colors well aligned except at 50mm where some separation shows.

Bright light reflecting off lens elements' surfaces may cause flare and ghosting, resulting in reduced contrast and sometimes interesting, usually destructive visual artifacts. The shape, intensity, and position of the flare and ghosting effects in an image are variable, dependent on the position and nature of the light source (or sources), selected aperture, shape of the aperture blades, and quantity and quality of the lens elements and their coatings. Additionally, flare and ghosting can impact AF performance.

The low 9-element count successfully controls flare effects, with this lens producing practically no flare effects even at narrow apertures in our standard sun in the corner of the frame flare test.

Flare effects can be embraced or avoided, or removal can be attempted. Unfortunately, removal is sometimes challenging, and in some cases, flare effects can destroy image quality. Thus, high flare resistance is a welcomed trait of this lens.

Two lens aberrations are particularly evident in images of stars, mainly because bright points of light against a dark background make them easier to see. Coma occurs when light rays from a point of light spread out from that point instead of being refocused as a point on the sensor. Coma is absent in the center of the frame, gets worse toward the edges/corners, and generally appears as a comet-like or triangular tail of light that can be oriented either away from the center of the frame (external coma) or toward the center of the frame (internal coma). The coma clears as the aperture is narrowed. Astigmatism is seen as points of light spreading into a line, either sagittal (radiating from the center of the image) or meridional (tangential, perpendicular to sagittal). This aberration can produce stars appearing to have wings. Remember that Lateral CA is another aberration apparent in the corners.

The images below are 100% crops taken from the top-left corner of a1 images (APS-C crop) captured at the widest available aperture.

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These results are ugly.

The geometric distortion results are also ugly. This lens has extreme barrel distortion at the wide end. The geometric distortion is so strong that Sony forces the correction in camera (EVF, LCD, JPG images, movies), regardless of the lens correction settings. Processing the distortion test images with correction disabled results in off-the-chart framing that shows the true image captured.

For reference, the squares in the test chart filled the viewfinder during capture. At 16mm, this lens has an uncorrected angle of view considerably wider than a corrected 16mm lens, and the straight line at the top of the chart is rendered as a strong curve. This lens's barrel distortion diminishes as the focal length increases until negligible at 35mm, transitioning into slight pincushion at 50mm.

Although today's distortion correction algorithms are good, geometric distortion correction requires stretching which is detrimental to image quality.

Every lens is a compromise, with size, weight, price, image quality, and focal length range being common factors, and manufacturers are relying on software over physical lens design to manage geometric distortion with increasing frequency. While severe distortion and the required crop factor is seen by most as a detriment to this lens, the offsetting factors are welcomed. Still, the distortion amount must be considered when comparing lenses, and an image captured from a non-distorted lens can be similarly up sized to even higher resolution using the same AI, potentially giving it an advantage.

As seen earlier in the review, it is easy to illustrate the strongest blur a lens can create, and narrow-aperture lenses are inherently disadvantaged in this regard. Due to the infinite number of variables present among available scenes, assessing the bokeh quality is considerably more challenging. Here are some f/11 (for diaphragm blade interaction) examples.

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All examples are 100% crops except the second 50mm example, which is a full image reduced in size. The 16mm results are not favorable, but the 50mm result appears nice, normal.

Except for a small number of specialty lenses, the wide aperture bokeh in the frame's corner does not produce round defocused highlights, with these effects taking on a cat's eye shape due to a form of mechanical vignetting. If you look through a tube at an angle, similar to the light reaching the frame's corner, the shape is not round. That is the shape we're looking at here.

The 16mm examples are upper-left quadrants reduced in size, and the balance of the examples are full images reduced in size.

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The 16mm wide-open aperture results show strong shape truncation in the corners. As the aperture narrows, the entrance pupil size is reduced, and the mechanical vignetting diminishes, making the corner shapes rounder. The longer focal length corner shapes appear well-rounded at wide apertures.

A 7-blade count diaphragm will create 14-point sunstars (diffraction spikes) from point light sources captured with a narrow aperture. Generally, the more a lens diaphragm is stopped down, the larger and better shaped the sunstars tend to be.

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At 16mm, this lens is stopped down a reasonable amount to reach f/16, and the wide focal length stars appear nicely shaped. There is less stopping down at the long end, and these stars are not nicely shaped.

This lens's design incorporates one extra-low dispersion glass element to help reduce chromatic aberrations and color fringing and four aspherical elements to reduce astigmatism, field curvature, coma, and other monochromatic aberrations.

Overall, this lens's optical performance does not create a strong purchase argument.

Focusing

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The Sony E PZ 16-50mm F3.5-5.6 OSS Lens focuses with good speed, and only faint shuffling and are clicks heard.

While those are positive traits, I experienced repeated failure-to-focus issues on a Sony Alpha 1 under bright conditions (at the beach), especially when using narrow apertures.

This lens focuses in surprisingly dark environments at 16mm, but not at 50mm. AF, as always, is slow in low-light conditions.

Non-cinema lenses usually require refocusing after a focal length change, and as illustrated in the 100% crops below, the reviewed lens does not exhibit parfocal-like characteristics. When focused at 50mm, zooming to wider focal lengths results in focus blur.

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This lens does not have an AF/MF switch, requiring this frequently used camera setting to be changed via the menu system (or via a camera switch on some models).

When MF mode is selected in the camera, the lens's finely ribbed plastic ring adjusts the focus distance. This ring offers only light resistance, and if focusing with a magnified view, the scene moves noticeably when the ring direction is reversed. Also, when zoomed into the corners for magnified MF, the geometric distortion corrected framing does not exactly match the corrected results.

This lens features a variable rate MF adjustment. Slow turning of the ring requires 250° and 400° for full extent adjustments at 16mm and 50mm respectively. A fast turn requires only 45° of rotation at both focal lengths.

It is normal for the scene to change size in the frame (sometimes significantly) as the focus is pulled from one extent to the other. This effect is focus breathing, a change in focal length resulting from a change in focus distance. Focus breathing impacts photographers intending to use focus stacking techniques, videographers pulling focus (without movement to camouflage the effect), and anyone critically framing while adjusting focus.

This lens produces a modest change in subject size through a full-extent (worst-case) focus distance adjustment at 16mm and a moderate change at 50mm.

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This lens has a minimum focus distance of 9.8" (250mm), and at 50mm, it generates a reasonable 0.22x maximum magnification spec. The site's database lacks Sony "E" APS-C general-purpose lenses at review time, but plans include filling out that category.

Model	Min Focus Distance "(mm)		Max Magnification
Canon EF-M 15-45mm f/3.5-6.3 IS STM Lens	9.8	(250)	0.25x
Sigma 18-50mm F2.8 DC DN Contemporary Lens	4.8	(121)	0.36x
Sony E PZ 16-50mm F3.5-5.6 OSS Lens	9.8	(250)	0.22x

At 50mm, a subject measuring approximately 3.7" x 2.5" (94 x 63mm) fills the imaging sensor at this lens's minimum MF distance.

The USPS love stamps shared above have an image area that measures 1.05 x 0.77" (26.67 x 19.558mm), and the overall individual stamp size is 1.19 x 0.91" (30.226 x 23.114mm).

Need a shorter minimum focus distance and higher magnification? Mount an extension tube behind this lens to significantly decrease and increase those respective numbers. As of review time, Sony does not publish extension tube specs or manufacture these items, but third-party Sony-compatible extension tubes are available.

This lens is not compatible with Sony teleconverters.

Design & Features

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Despite being inexpensive, the retracted Sony E PZ 16-50mm F3.5-5.6 OSS Lens seems nicely built.

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When powered off, including when the camera goes to sleep, the lens retracts to a compact length. Powering on extends the lens to its nearly 2x longer ready-to-use length.

Once powered on, the extended inner barrel changes length slightly as the focal lengths are traversed, becoming shortest at about 26mm. The extended barrel has some play in it, and the composition does not stay perfectly centered during zooming.

Focal length selection is electronically controlled, and the lens is rather responsive to such input. However, it is not as responsive to starting and stopping as manual zoom rings, and the Power Zoom switch has some play and is fiddly to use, changing focal length quickly (by default). When the camera is in AF mode, the lens's ring becomes a zoom ring, handling focal length selection duties.

A big advantage of the electronic zoom feature is that remote control of that aspect becomes available.

When the Sony Alpha 1 goes to sleep, including while you are carefully composing an image, this lens retracts and the previously used focal length is lost. The camera selects 16mm upon powering up. However, the Sony Alpha 6700 does retain the pre-shutoff focal length upon powering up.

This lens is not weather-sealed, and special lens coatings, such as fluorine, are not promoted.

The Sony E PZ 16-50mm F3.5-5.6 OSS is a tiny, ultralight lens.

Model	Weight oz(g)		Dimensions w/o Hood "(mm)		Filter	Year
Canon EF-M 15-45mm f/3.5-6.3 IS STM Lens	4.6	(130)	2.4 x 1.8	(60.9 x 44.5)	49	2015
Sigma 18-50mm F2.8 DC DN Contemporary Lens	10.2	(290)	2.5 x 2.9	(64.5 x 74.5)	55	2017
Sony E PZ 16-50mm F3.5-5.6 OSS Lens	4.1	(116)	2.5 x 1.2	(64.7 x 29.9)	40.5	2012

For many more comparisons, review the complete Sony E PZ 16-50mm F3.5-5.6 OSS Lens Specifications using the site's lens specifications tool. Use the site's product image comparison tool to visually compare the Sony E PZ 16-50mm F3.5-5.6 OSS Lens to other lenses.

40.5mm filter threads? I don't have any 40.5mm filters, and the Sony FE 28-60mm F4-5.6 Lens is the only other lens in our database sharing that size. However, these filters are tiny, which makes them inexpensive and easy to carry.

No lens hood is included, and no lens hood is available. Use a filter if you require front element protection.

No lens case is provided.

If you buy this lens in, minimally, the kit with the Sony Alpha 6700, no lens mount cap is included (and the camera's body cap is excluded).

Price, Value, Compatibility

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When purchased in a kit (or used), this lens is extremely cheap, elevating the value factor. However, this lens will not deliver the ultimate image quality that your camera is capable of.

As an "E" lens, the Sony E PZ 16-50mm F3.5-5.6 OSS Lens is compatible with all Sony E-mount cameras, including full-frame and APS-C sensor format models. However, this lens's image circle only covers the APS-C imaging sensor, so full-frame models will operate in APS-C crop mode. Sony provides a 1-year limited warranty.

The reviewed Sony E PZ 16-50mm F3.5-5.6 OSS Lens was online retail sourced.

Summary

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If you must have a lens as small and light as this one and your budget is restricted, the Sony E PZ 16-50mm F3.5-5.6 OSS Lens might be your best option. While this lens does not deliver the image quality that your camera is capable of, it is tiny, light, image stabilized, and, if purchased in a camera kit or used, cheap.