Sony FE 50mm F/1.4 G Master Launched

2023.02.21

This morning, Sony announced a new normal lens for their series of Full-Frame Mirrorless Digital Cameras that bears the G Master mark. The new Sony FE 50mm F/1.6 G Master is designed to maximize optical performance while realizing the advantages of a mirrorless platform, namely lightness and compactness.

This prime lens captures a very natural 47° viewing angle which is what classifies it as a normal lens. This is a general purpose prime focal-length that has been used in countless models due to its versatility. Sony already has a FE 50mm F/1.2 G Master which is an even brighter and significantly heavier lens. A lens of exactly this size and weight was also coproduced with Carl Zeiss, the Sony FE Planar T* 50mm F/1.4 ZA starting in 2016. Today, the newly introduced lens provides a fractionally brighter aperture than the F/1.2 G Master and slightly slower Sony FE Sonnar T* 55mm F/1.8 ZA.

The brand new Sony FE 50mm F/1.4 G Master claims its sport right in between. It is substantially lighter than the F/1.2 version while being over 50% heavier than the F/1.8 model. At 516g, this lens feels dense yet is not overly heavy for such a bright lens. The weatherproof body of this lens is fairly compact too.

Sony equipped the FE 50mm F/1.4 G Master with an incredible array of features: A dedicated and declickable aperture-ring, an iris Lock, two customizable buttons, a focus switch plus a focus-ring. An 11-blade iris makes it possible to capture extremely smooth bokeh with thin depth-of-field. The front of the lens accepts both standard 67mm filters and a lens hood.

One can only expect top image-quality from this lens gives its brand new optical formulation which allows the lens to focus down to 38cm where it achieves 0.18X magnification. This is slightly closer than other Sony 50mm lenses yet not suitable for closeups. Dual XD linear moters promise ultra-fast autofocus performance too.

Sony expects to ship this lens in May for $1300 USD or $1800 CAD. Our reputable affiliates B&H Photo and also Adorama are already acceptring pre-orders.

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