All pictures - Sony NEX-7 30mm f/3.5 macro lens
I must admit I was a little disappointed with the 30mm f/3.5 NEX e-mount macro lens on my NEX-7. Not that its a bad lens, it isn't, not that its poor at macro, in fact its very good, but that it wasn't better as an all round standard lens. This is purely on my experience with using macro lenses in the past. They are often very fine lenses. I can think of the Olympus 50mm f.2 macro, Panasonic / Leica 45mm f/2.8 macro and the Canon 50mm f/2.5 macro,in particular, which were all top class lenses when used for other work, other than macro.
Don't get me wrong the Sony 30mm is a good lens, however I was a little disappointed that the edge sharpness wide open and the bokeh weren't better. Its a slow lens at f/3.5 and my suspicion is thats to keep it relatively small. Its strange how lenses that worked very well on the NEX-5d, like this one, don't seem as good on the NEX-7. The reverse seems to be true also.
However, here's a few macro shots, and as you can see its very good at that.
Incidentally, there was strong wind blowing, but I had no problem getting the AF to lock on and get the shot, so plus points for that.
As I said my sight disappointment is with using the lens as a general purpose "standard" lens. From my experiences with the 5n, I was expecting some biting sharpness, but that didn't happen. Sharp, certainly, but I think I was assuming that the files would be impressively crisp, when they were merely good. Again on the plus side, there's not a lot of CA and fringing and as I indicated the lens is very quick in operation and handles extremely well.
If you do a lot of macro and use the NEX system then you won't be disappointed with it, and I can see no advantages in using the a-mount 30mm f/2.8, via an adapter, since with the light loss you won't gain anything and the e-mount lens will be a lot faster to use. Incidentally the 30mm a-mount is a great lens optically but has very flimsy build quality. However it is very cheap. So good value, but I personally wouldn't use it in anything approaching extreme conditions. The e-mount lens is very nicely engineered and a better looking and feeling lens overall.
