byhyew's reviews

Sony E 16-50mm f/3.5-5.6 PZ OSS SELP1650

This is THE best lens on my NEX-6, period.
I bought it in China lens-only for my NEX-6. Since Chinese market allows for non-stable prices, the lens's street price dropped from us$350 to 150 in merely 2 months, thanks to the initial reviews that trashed this lens. I bought mine new for 150 and couldn't be happier.

This lens became my most used lens on the NEX-6, replacing my 10-18 OSS and Sigma 19 f2.8 for general shooting and the 50 f1.8 OSS for daytime shooting. 16mm is wide enough for most applications, and the compactness is a joy to use.
The sharpness is on par with the much more expensive 10-18 and focusing speed is yet to be beat among other E-mount lenses. The level mechanism is very handing for video.

The lens is highly dependent on software correction. Though resolution-wise

The lens is DURABLE. I was skeptical about the build quality of such a lens. But it took a tough test pretty well. My camera was splashed by a big icy wave on a glacier lake with this lens on when I was traveling in Argentina. Water immediately went into the lens, but caused no malfunction. After a while, some vapor started to form inside the frontal element, but a night on a heater solved the problem. For a full electronic lens, that was a quite respectable result. And who cares if it really breaks? It's only 150 dollars after all.