Sony Carl ZEISS Sonnar T E 24mm F1.8 ZA E-Mount Prime Lens

This high-performance Carl Zeiss wide-angle prime lens delivers superior corner-to-corner sharpness even at the maximum F1.8 aperture. Employing the legendary "Sonnar" optical design, it provides standout image dimensionality and presence. With the ability to focus as close as 16cm, it offers an unusual combination of close focus and wide-angle perspective, making the 24mm focal length an excellent choice for general shooting.

When changing the aperture to defocus the background, the light sources appear pleasantly blurred. This "bokeh" effect is enhanced by the lens's circular aperture blades, which maintain an almost perfectly circular shape from the wide-open setting to when closed by 2 stops. This unique design overcomes the unappealing polygonal defocused points of light created by conventional flat-edged aperture blades, resulting in smoother, more natural background blur.

As focal lengths increase, lenses built with conventional optical glass often struggle with chromatic aberration, leading to lower contrast, color quality, and resolution. However, this lens benefits from ED glass, which dramatically reduces chromatic aberration at telephoto ranges and provides superior contrast across the entire image, even at large aperture settings. The inclusion of Super ED glass further enhances the compensation for chromatic aberration.

Aspherical lens design is also employed to dramatically reduce spherical aberration while simultaneously reducing the lens's size and weight. Spherical aberration, caused by differences in refraction at different points on conventional spherical lenses, can degrade image quality in large-aperture lenses. Specially shaped "aspherical" elements near the diaphragm restore the alignment of light rays at the image plane, maintaining high sharpness and contrast even at maximum aperture. These aspherical elements can also be used at other points in the optical path to reduce distortion. Well-designed aspherical elements can even reduce the total number of elements required, further decreasing the overall size and weight of the lens.

The advanced Aspherical (AA) elements used in this lens are an evolved variant, featuring an extremely high thickness ratio between the center and periphery. AA elements are exceptionally difficult to produce, relying on the most advanced molding technology to consistently and precisely achieve the required shape and surface accuracy, resulting in significantly improved image accuracy and quality.

Coated optics were pioneered by Carl Zeiss, and this superb lens features the Carl Zeiss T (T-Star) coating that virtually eliminates lens flare, internal reflection, and light scattering at glass-to-air surfaces. The T coating contributes to outstanding image quality, with high contrast and uniformly excellent resolution extending to the image edges. The T* symbol appears only on multi-element lenses in which the required performance has been achieved throughout the entire optical path, guaranteeing the highest quality.

Additionally, only the middle groups of the optical system move to achieve focus, ensuring the overall length of the lens does not change. Other benefits include fast autofocusing, a short minimum focusing distance, and a non-rotating front filter thread, which is convenient for using polarizing filters.

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