REVIEWS | SONY ALPHA WEDDING PHOTOGRAPHER - WHAT LENSES I USE AT WEDDINGS
In this blog post I discuss and review the Sony lenses I use on a wedding day
MY SONY CAMERA & LENS SET-UP FOR WEDDINGS HEADING INTO 2024 WEDDING SEASON
As you will see as you scroll down this blog post, I own many Sony G and G Master lenses, which I use at weddings. I don’t use every lens shown at every wedding, but all these lenses will be with me on a wedding day, either on the cameras, in the bag I have on me, or in the car.
In my other post about the Sony cameras I use at weddings, I discuss how I use three cameras at every wedding, but it's worth mentioning it here again as it will make more sense when you look at the lenses I use.
Typically, for 90% of a wedding day, my camera and lens combo looks like this:
Sony Alpha 1 + Sony FE 35mm F1.4 GM Lens (camera on my Holdfast strap)
Sony Alpha 1 + Sony FE 50mm F1.4 GM Lens (camera on my Holdfast strap)
Sony Alpha 1 + Sony FE 20mm F1.8 G Lens (camera in my hip bag)
Typically, for the remaining 10% of a wedding day (from 7 pm onwards) my camera and lens combo often looks like this:
Sony Alpha 1 + Sony FE 24mm F1.4 GM Lens (camera on my Holdfast strap)
Sony Alpha 1 + Sony FE 50mm F1.4 GM Lens (camera on my Holdfast strap)
Sony Alpha 1 + Sony FE 20mm F1.8 G Lens (camera in my hip bag) (camera with flash for the dancefloor)
So, that’s my typical Sony camera and lens combo - let’s have a deeper look at each lens and how / when I use them on a wedding day, and if I have made any changes to my set-up, you will be able to see the changes at the bottom of the page under the ‘Updates.’
SONY FE 35MM F1.4 G MASTER LENS
The Sony FE 35mm F1.4 G Master Lens is a lens that I could easily use all day at a wedding, and it be the only lens I use on a wedding day - it's that good.
I have always been a 35mm lens shooter at weddings; my first wedding back in 2016 was mainly shot on a 35mm lens.
The lens starts the day on one of my Sony A1 Cameras, and I use it throughout the morning, the ceremony, post-ceremony, speeches, and the early evening of a wedding; it is a very versatile lens, and its why the 35mm focal length is the primary camera lens for a large proportion of wedding photographers.
The Sony FE 35mm F1.4 G Master lens is excellent at so many things:
Wide enough for most scenarios at a wedding, you could easily shoot a whole wedding on this lens.
It is beautiful and sharp at F1.4, which makes it great for subject separation or when the light gets dark and you need the light gathering capabilities of a F1.4 aperture lens.
Images have a pop to them that only a few lenses I have ever used have had.
Fantastic autofocus when paired with a new generation Sony Alpha camera such as the Sony A1.
It can easily resolve every detail on even the highest megapixel cameras, such as the A7rv.
The images have a natural feel to them, and the distortion is almost nonexistent on this lens.
Weighing in at just 524g, the lens doesn’t feel big or heavy and the weight is even which means you don’t have a front heavy lens.
Being a Sony G Master lens, the lens is very good optically and handles high-contrast situations very well with very little purple fringing, even in very harsh-contrast situations.
SONY FE 50MM F1.4 G MASTER LENS
The Sony FE 50mm F1.4 G Master Lens is the one lens that never leaves one of my Sony A1’s.
It’s a magical lens, and after nearly 50 weddings with this lens, it is one of only two lenses I will never not have it with me on a wedding day (the other being the 20mm..)
I haven’t always used a 50mm lens on a wedding day, I was, for a time, more of a 35mm & 85mm type of guy, but when Sony released the Sony Alpha A1 and the 50mm F1.2 GM (which was sold to buy this lens) I took the plunge on the 50mm focal length, and I have never looked back!
Many photographers will question why my primary two lenses are a 35mm and a 50mm - two lenses that, based on numbers, look very close together in terms of focal length, but in reality, they are very different and yet work so well together.
The 35mm F1.4 GM lens is my documentary lens, which allows me to get in the action, while my 50mm F1.4 GM is my subject separation lens, which I use to highlight or pick someone out.
It’s the lens I use most during a wedding ceremony where I can isolate the bride or groom while exchanging vows or rings.
The Sony 50mm F1.4 GM lens is on one of my A1’s from the morning prep through out the wedding day, it's a lens that I love to use as the images it produces on the Sony A1 is stunning and at 1.4 can send the background beautifully out of focus.
The positives of the Sony FE 50mm F1.4 GM lens:
One of the standout features of the Sony FE 50mm F1.4 GM lens is its remarkable image quality, and the images captured with this lens have a distinct look and feel.
Like all new GM lenses from Sony, the autofocus when paired with a newer Sony camera body is pretty much faultless.
Distortion is pretty minimal, again, like all the newer GM lenses.
The 50mm F1.4 GM has a 67mm filter thread, the same as the FE 24mm F1.4 GM and FE 35mm F1.4 GM, which means they are all similar in size and weight - great for gimbal work if using these lenses and needing to swap the lenses quickly.
The negatives of the Sony FE 50mm F1.4 GM lens:
Fare, that’s the only issue with this lens; it can produce (like most new lenses) iffy lens flare when light enters the lens at certain angles. You can see some examples if you click the button below and head to the full review.
SONY FE 20MM F1.8 G LENS
The Sony FE 20mm F1.8 G Lens has been a magic lens since I switched to using three cameras at the start of 2020.
Having three cameras on me at a wedding means I can have one with the 35mm GM lens, one with the 50mm lens, leaving me with one for my wide lens - the 20mm F1.8 G Lens.
I have always loved wide lenses; when I first moved to Sony in 2018, I purchased the Sony Zeiss 18 mm F2.8 lens, but I never felt good using the lens; I always thought it was too wide and had far too much distortion.
A wide lens can give you a perspective you don’t usually see or make a boring scene a little more dynamic.
I use the 20mm lens during most of the day, I love using it on the morning of a wedding, it helps to capture the chaos and carnage of a wedding morning, and it can help make a small Premier Inn hotel room look spacious.
My favourite images to capture using the 20mm lens are the dress going on, venue shots, people grabbing the drinks and canapés, the garden games and it is great for getting in the action when it comes to the dance floor.
The Sony 20mm F 1.8 G Lens is a lens I will never be without on a wedding day.
The positives of the Sony FE 20mm F1.8 G lens:
Super sharp at F1.8 (which is mostly what I shoot at).
Has great purple fringing control (unlike the 24mm GM Lens).
Weighing in at 373g and with a filter size of 67mm, the Sony 20mm F1.8 lens is nice and small.
Autofocus is very quick and very accurate when paired with my Sony Alpha A1.
This lens should have been a GM lens it’s that good!
The negatives of the Sony FE 20mm F1.8 G lens:
It does have some distortion, so you have to be careful where you are placing your subject in the frame.
The aperture ring is a little loose (could be my copy), which means I sometimes move the aperture ring when grabbing the camera from my hip bag.
As you can see, I’m struggling with negatives.
SONY FE 24MM F1.4 G MASTER LENS
The Sony 24mm F 1.4 GM Lens is a lens that is with me at every wedding and is used at every full day wedding, its the lens I go to for the evening of a wedding.
As you can see from my set-up listed in the intro, for 90% of a wedding day, the 35mm F1.4 GM lens is my lens of choice as my main lens, and the 24mm F1.4 GM lens is the one I reach for, for the evening as I find that around 7 pm people let you much closer and the 24mm lens is great for getting in the action.
Almost all of my evening guest arrival, cake cut and first dance pictures are taken on the Sony 24mm F 1.4 lens.
The lens is knocking on a bit now, was released in October 2018 and was one of the first lenses to use Sony’s (then new) direct drive SSM motors, making it a fast to focus 24mm lens.
The positives of the Sony FE 24mm F1.4 G Master lens:
The best 24mm lens for the Sony E mount when writing this post (I have tried the new Sigma DG DN 24mm lens).
At F 1.4 the lens is accurate enough for shooting weddings, stopping down gives you an even better hit rate.
For video shooters, this lens handles focus breathing better than the newer Sony GM lenses.
The lens has a look that is not clinical and boring; there is something about this lens and how it renders.
The negatives of the Sony FE 24mm F1.4 G Master lens:
Not the sharpest lens wide open, at F1.4 it can be a little soft.
Autofocus is ok on this lens, its not as good as the newer Sony GM Lenses.
Can suffer from very obvious purple fringing and chromatic abrasions, but its only us photographers that worry about this.
The Sony 20mm F 1.8 is a ‘better’ lens, but the 24mm has a nice feel to it.
Sony should look to update this lens in 2024 or 2025 to the standards set with the newer GM lenses (The Sony 35mm GM, for example).
SONY FE 135MM F1.8 G MASTER LENS
The Sony 135mm F1.8 GM Lens is back in my camera bag after a short holiday in 2020 and 2021.
I originally purchased the Sony 135mm GM the day it was released and knew instantly that it would be a lens that is used only a few times at a wedding (if at all).
When we hit the pandemic and the world was closed down, I had to decide to sell my original copy.
But with weddings back in full swing at the end of 2021, I started to look at getting another copy of the Sony FE 135mm F 1.8 GM lens.
Early in 2022, Samyang released a 135mm lens, and after having two copies sent to me from Samyang and having tried both lenses with lens FW V1.0 and then FW v3.0, I realised that the Samyang was a poor lens, the focus was very inconsistent, it didn’t like backlit situations and is a lens that should be no way near any wedding professionals camera bag.
So, enter again the Sony FE 135mm F1.8 GM Lens.
As I have mentioned at the top of this blog post, I use three cameras on a wedding day and three main lenses, the 135mm GM lens is not one of those lenses, its a lens for specific weddings. Its a lens that I would use only during the speeches or a Church wedding ceremony and only when I have the space as 135mm is a long lens!
The 135mm focal length is stunning; for couples portraits, it can blow the background out of focus with beautiful BOKEH like no other Sony lens.
The positives of the Sony FE 135mm F1.8 G Master lens:
The Sony FE 135mm F1.8 GM lens renders beautiful out-of-focus backgrounds.
Very, Very, Very sharp lens, even wide open.
As accurate autofocus as I have seen on a Sony GM lens.
Despite its size and weight, the lens is not front heavy which helps balance the camera.
Not sure what more you could ask for with this lens!
The negatives of the Sony FE 135mm F1.8 G Master lens:
The only negatives to this lens is the size and weight. It weighs 950g (nearly 1kg!) and has a 82mm filter thread.
As mentioned above in the positives, this is a sharp lens and maybe too sharp for some types of skin if you are shooting close to your subject.
SONY FE 24MM F2.8 G LENS
The Sony FE 2.8 G lens is still in my camera bag for 2024, having picked this little fella up in July 2022.
This lens is only ever used on my third camera body (instead of my 20mm) and only for the dance floor, I have never used it for anything else.
The reason I use the smaller lens for the dance floor is it helps me keep mobile, helps me keep my dancefloor camera nice and light and isn’t something that people mind when I pointing the camera at them.
Something that I really like about the lens is the focus ring at the front of the lens is tight and is not easily knocked, and as I zone focus on a dancefloor, having a tight focus ring is a must.
The positives of the Sony FE 24mm F2.8 G lens:
Nice size and weight.
Has an aperture ring on the lens making it easy to see your aperture when you look at the lens.
Nice and sharp at F2.8.
Fast and very accurate autofocus.
The negatives of the Sony FE 24mm F2.8 G lens:
Given its size, Sony has focused on making the lens small, which means you do have some optical imperfections, such as pin cushioning effects.
For the lens being an F2.8, it is quite a lot of money (RRP £630) for the lens and isn’t often on sale or reduced in price.
SIGMA 85MM F1.4 DG DN LENS
When I first started wedding photography, I followed the lead of many wedding photographers by shooting weddings using a 35mm lens and an 85mm lens, and I kept this set-up from 2016 until the beginning of 2018 when I moved to a different set-up.
I have tried the Sony FE 85mm F1.4 GM lens and have purchased the Sony FE 85mm F1.8 lens many times (it’s linked at the bottom of this page), but I don't feel the love for an 85mm lens.
So why don’t I like the 85mm focal length?
I think its because it’s a bit long for a primary lens, when I view a blog or a series of images from a wedding where the photographer has used the 35mm and an 85mm lens, I feel that the jump from images taken on the 35 to the 85 is too big, we go from a nice photo on the 35mm showing the scene or a nice moment between people to then an 85mm lens shot which is a closeup of someone etc.. we go from a wide shot to a closeup, and I find that a little jarring.
The set-up that I use on a wedding for my main long lens is my 50mm F1.4 lens, and that, paired with my Sony A1, means I can jump into crop mode / APSC mode and still get a 75mm reach and have a 21mpx file, so I can still crop in even further if I need to, which makes an 85mm lens a bit redundant for me as a main lens.
The Sigma 85mm F1.4 lens is with me on a wedding day for two specific scenarios - a Church wedding ceremony for when I am asked to be too far back for comfort to crop into my 50mm GM lens on an A1, and wedding speeches for when I have a large room, and again for times when I feel that cropping into my 50mm GM lens on an A1 will not be long enough of a reach.
The positives of the Sigma 85mm DG DN F1.4 lens:
The Sigma 85mm is a better lens than the Sony FE 85mm F1.4 GM, in terms of IQ and sharpness, and it should be, as the Sony 85mm F1.4 GM lens has been out since February 2016, a good 4.5 years before the Sigma, and the sigma beats the Sony 85mm F1.8 lens in every single area
The lens is silent when focusing, unlike the Sony 85mm F1.4 GM lens; this is useful if you are mounting a mic on the camera for video
I have autofocus in the ‘positives’ and the ‘negative’ sections, as it can sometimes be inconsistent.
The lens is very well built, I have dropped it a few times when grabbing it from my camera bag, and the lens has taken it.
As I write this article in early 2024, the Sigma 85mm F1.4 DG DN is listed on Amazon for £899, and the Sony 85mm F1.4 GM is listed for £1,489, a whole £590 more than the Sigma 85mm F1.4 DG DN.
The negatives of the Sigma 85mm DG DN F1.4 lens:
Autofocus - if you are firing off a series of ten images, you can see the lens almost pulsing through the capture of the ten images, and you will know that it has missed a few shots, again, not to the point where it is really out of focus, but enough that when you look at the images in the burst, a few will be softer than the others.
This might be a moot point for most photographers, but it is worth pointing out - all third-party lenses are limited to a maximum of 15fps and so cannot make maximum use of the high FPS of the Sony A1 and any future Sony camera body releases.
The lens hood is massive, like really big.
Lens distortion is quite obvious if you do not use in-camera lens corrections; this is where I think Sigma has cut corners to make the lens smaller and lighter.
SONY FE 50MM F1.2 G MASTER LENS (SOLD APRIL 2023)
The Sony FE 50mm F1.2 G Master Lens was sold in April 2023 after more than 100 weddings.
I was sad to see the lens go and to be honest, it was a lens I thought I would keep for a very long time, but once Sony released the FE 50mm F1.4 GM lens, and once I had tested that lens, I knew that it was time to say goodbye to the 1.2 and move over to the lighter and more compact 1.4 lens.
The positives of the Sony FE 50mm F1.2 G Master lens:
The images produced by the Sony 50MM F1.2 GM lens have a feel to them that is unique; the F1.2 aperture gives a look and feel that no other Sony lens can produce.
50mm is a forgiving focal length, it doesn’t distort faces or features of people like a wider lens can do.
If you have the space, a 50mm lens could be all the lens you need on a wedding day; not as wide as a 35mm lens but has a little bit more reach.
When using the FE 50mm F1.2 GM Lens on a Sony A1, you use the camera's APSC mode, meaning you can extend the in-camera reach of the 50mm lens to a 75mm ish lens and still have a 21mpx file.
The autofocus on this lens, when shot at F1.2 and on a newer Sony body, is pretty faultless; I can genuinely say that I have never had an image that was out of focus that I could not deliver it.
Optically, this lens is pretty much free from any purple fringing.
The negatives of the Sony FE 50mm F1.2 G Master lens:
There is a noticeable vignette in the corners when shooting the lens at F1.2; this can be corrected if you want to use the lens profile corrections in Adobe Lightroom. I love the vignette and do not apply any lens profile corrections (to this or any other lens).
Weighing in at 778 grams and with a filter thread of 72mm, the Sony FE 50mm F1.2 lens is a big boy, it's a wide boy and a heavy boy.
SONY FE 85MM F1.8 LENS (SOLD APRIL 2023)
The Sony FE 85mm F1.8 lens is a lens that I have bought and sold FIVE times, I buy the lens thinking I need an 85mm lens, and then a few weddings later, I realise (again) that I don’t like the 85mm focal length.
By the time you read this, I may have sold (and bought again..) the Sony FE 85mm F1.8 lens.
I did sell the lens and will not be buying any other 85mm lens for Sony E mount until Sony releases a new 85mm GM lens (hopefully sometime in 2024).
The positives of the Sony FE 85mm F1.8 lens:
Its a lovely size and weight, balances well on most Sony camera bodies.
Is often on sale via Amazon, the RRP is £530, but is always on offer at Amazon (my last copy was £359 on the 12th of DEC 2022)
It’s sharp enough, and I know many wedding photographers that love this little lens.
Very good autofocus, hardly misses a beat even in tricky conditions.
The negatives of the Sony FE 85mm F1.8 lens:
The purple fringing on this lens is bad, take a picture of a groom in a black suit and while shirt and he will have a purple halo around the cuffs and lapels of the jacket. Yes this is correctable in post, but you need to do this on every image.
No aperture ring, which is something that I love to have on a lens.
Personally I don’t think this lens is good enough for a professional lens, and Sony probably thinks so as well as this lens is not a ‘GM’ or even a ‘G’ lens.
SONY FE 90MM MACRO F2.8 G LENS (NO LONGER USED)
The Sony FE 90mm f2.8 Macro lens is a lens I bought thinking I might use it at weddings, but I tried it at one in April 2023, and was not a fan of the look and feel of the images, and it really isnt a fast focusing lens.
I use this lens solely for my product gear photos, like what you see on the individual gear blogs for all the lenses on this page.