Sony 50mm f/1.4 AF

The Sony 50mm f/1.4 AF portrait lens is a very compact and solid feeling piece of kit with a metal lens mount for extra durability.

At 220g, the Sony 50mm f/1.4 AF is nicely weighted for small or large Sony D-SLRs. The barrel features a distance window for hyperfocal work, but at only 8mm wide, the manual focus ring is a bit too thin for large fingers. This is compounded by a lack of grooves meaning that, despite being rubberised, it still feels a bit slippery in use. It’s very nicely weighted, though, and its smooth action is one of the nicest we tested.
Autofocusing, the lens is very fast and only struggled to lock-on in very dim and low-contrast conditions. It has a pretty noisy mechanism, but this isn’t really an issue for portraits. The front element extends (but doesn’t rotate) on focusing, however, the lens is so stubby that it won’t create a shadow when using flash.

Specifications:
Street price (body only): £255
Construction: 7 elements in 6 groups
Max aperture: f/1.4
Min aperture: f/22
Aperture blades: 7
Aperture ring: No
AF/Manual focus switch: No
Autofocus monitor: No
Minimum focus distance: 45mm
Distance window: Yes
Filter size: 55mm
Dimensions (length x width): 66x43mm
Weight: 220g
Lens mount construction: Metal
Lens mount: Sony Alpha)
Website: www.sony.co.uk