Sony FE 24-240mm f/3.5-6.3 OSS Review

Sony FE 24-240mm f/3.5-6.3 OSS Handling and Features

Build and design will be very familiar to those who've handled any of Sony's mid-to-premium range of E-mount lenses with a combination of metal and robust plastics used for much of the build, finished with a metal lens bayonet. The lens isn't particularly lightweight and feels a little large when used with the compact Sony Alpha 7R body used for testing. Even though the camera body can be made smaller by producing a mirrorless full frame system, this lens may lead you to believe that this isn't possible with the lenses, which may be something to consider if you were hoping to travel light.

Autofocus is a little slow when compared to contemporary lenses of a similar ilk. Focus can hunt around, even in good light, and especially when shooting near the closest focus distance, which varies between 50cm and 80cm depending where you are in the zoom range. Having a variable minimum focus can cause issues with composing close-up images, as adjusting the zoom also adjusts the minimum focus distance. The manual focus ring is nicely damped, but the travel between closest focus and infinity is extremely short, which can make it more difficult than it should be to apply fine manual focus adjustments. 

As focusing is performed internally, the 72mm filter ring does not rotate, which makes the lens ideal for use with graduated and polarising filters. A deep petal-shaped lens hood is supplied as standard, which attaches to the lens via a bayonet fitting.

For those times when slow shutter speeds are necessary, this lens comes equipped with optical image stabilisation. With care, sharp hand-held images can be taken at shutter speeds as slow as 1/30sec at 240mm, which is roughly three stops slower than the usual rule of thumb for hand-held photography would allow.

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