I spent a hot, hazy, and humid afternoon in Gettysburg putting Sony’s E 18-135mm f/3.5-5.6 OSS zoom through some of it’s paces. Some of the video will appear on the next episode of What’s In My Head. The lens used for the test was rented from Lensrentals.com for the purpose of the test.
The combination of this lens and the APS-C a6100 provides an equivalent of a full-frame 27-202.5mm lens, which is about the same range that I had on the Konica-Minolta DiMage A2, but with much better image and video quality. This range is nearly perfect for most of my general shooting, and the relatively “slow” apertures usually don’t present too much of an issue for me. And, as you can see, achieving shallow depth-of-field is not impossible. I’m frankly surprised by just how shallow the depth-of-field can be with this lens/camera combination. Sharpness is also amazing for what is considered a “kit” lens, and chromatic aberrations and fringing are completely non-existent. The optical image stabilization in the lens is really quite effective for still photography, though it does struggle a bit when shooting video.
Here are some of the pictures I took, mostly straight from the camera. I will admit to some straightening and slight crops, but no other adjustments have been made. In general, I’m really impressed with the lens, and the Sony Alpha a6100 camera. I usually try to keep these limited to twenty images or so, but I had so much fun, I ended up with almost sixty! Sorry? Not really. As usual, click a thumbnail for the full image.
