Sony 75-300mm f/4.5-5.6 SAL-75300

(From Sony lens literature) Get extremely close to your subjects from a relaxing distance. The SAL-75300 zoom lens lets you take incredible close-up portraits without making your subject nervous.

Introduction
The Sony 75-300mm ƒ/4.5-5.6 is an economic introduction to the telephoto zoom category of lenses. Priced at $229, the lens offers a versatile range of telephoto focal lengths at a price that won't break the bank.

The specifications of this lens appear identical to the Konica Minolta 75-300mm ƒ/4.5-5.6 zoom lens, suggesting the only real difference between the two is cosmetic. On a Sony digital body with a 1.5 crop factor, the lens will represent a 112-450mm lens in 35mm film terms. It's a full-frame lens design, so it won't vignette on a Minolta film body or a forthcoming full-frame Sony body. It weighs in at just over a pound (460 grams) and takes the smaller 55mm filters. It ships with a solid circular lens hood and a carrying case.

Sharpness
On the whole, and for the money, the Sony 75-300mm ƒ/4.5-5.6 produces fairly sharp images. Wide open at ƒ/4.5 and 75mm, the lens gives above-average performance with a touch of softness in some areas of the image; above 100mm, this softness increases, and by 300mm, the image is quite soft across the frame.

Closing down the aperture by just one stop improves this performance dramatically. As is the case with most economy-style lenses, optical performance is optimized towards the middle, most-often used apertures and focal lengths. In the case of this lens, ƒ/8 produces the most consistently good results across all focal lengths with more of an emphasis on focal lengths below 105mm. At 75mm and ƒ/8, you get a tack-sharp image, about as good as our test will measure, and I would point to that as the optimal setting for this lens.

Above ƒ/16, performance begins to suffer as diffraction sets in (it should be noted that at ƒ/16 and 75mm, sharpness is still excellent). Extremely small apertures are possible with this lens (ƒ/32, ƒ/36 and ƒ/40) but the soft images produced make it hardly worth it.

Chromatic Aberration
Chromatic aberration is well-controlled up to about 200mm, where light purple fringing becomes evident on edge sections in the image. To its credit, this effect is present more noticeably in smaller apertures than large, so using this lens at farther end of the telephoto spectrum may result in a trade-off between sharpness and chromatic aberration.

Shading (''Vignetting'')
Vignetting isn't really a problem for the Sony 75-300mm ƒ/4.5-5.6. Only at two points, (75mm, ƒ/4.5 and 300, ƒ/5.6) will you see a third of a stop less light in the corners than in the center of the image. In all other situations, corner light loss is negligible.

Distortion
Our test results for distortion show excellent results for this lens. Distortion is pretty much what you'd expect for a telephoto lens, ie., pincushion ("squeezed in"), but you really only see it when zoomed in greater than 135mm. At its most obvious, at 300mm, you're still only distorted by 0.25%, which is easily correctable in most image processing software.

To its credit, the lens is optimized at the zoomed-out range (75-85mm), where distortion is almost zero percent.

Autofocus Operation
The focusing operation of Sony 75-300mm ƒ/4.5-5.6 is conducted mechanically. The autofocus isn't particularly fast or quiet, talking probably around one second for the entire range. It's not an internal focusing lens, so there is some forwards-backwards travel as the lens focuses, but more importantly, the assembly rotates as it focuses, meaning any filters attached are also going to rotate as they focus. Not a huge issue, it just means that while using a polarizing or graduated filter you'll want to make sure you're focused before you align your filter to your preference.

Macro
The lens isn't a dedicated macro lens, focusing fairly distant (4' 11'', 1.5m) from the subject. The lens provides a magnification of 0.25x.

Build Quality and Handling
The lens is well constructed, with a rugged plastic mechanism. Being a budget lens there aren't any frills such as a distance scale or aperture ring. There is quite a bit of lens extension during zooming, with the lens almost doubling its length. Zoom creep wasn't really a factor for this lens; we only saw it if we waved it around substantially.

The focus ring travels about 1/4 of the diameter of the lens, not great for accurate manually focus, but not the worst we've seen. To its credit the focus ring is substantial and well-textured, rather than just an afterthought. You can hear the gears whirring as you turn the focus manually. Being gear-coupled, manual focus can only happen when the camera is in MF mode.

Alternatives

Sony 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6G SAL-70300G ~$800
We haven't yet reviewed this lens; at the time of writing, it hasn't yet hit the store shelves (Spring 2008). On paper, there's not much that differentiates the two lenses other than a big price jump: it's expected to sell for around $800. The lens contains another group of three lens elements and has some perks such as a dedicated focus button and a distance scale, so in theory, it should be a quality optic deserving of the higher price tag.

Sigma 70-300mm f/4-5.6 DG Macro APO ~$200
We haven't reviewed this lens either, but our wild speculation would be similar optical characteristics and build quality. However, as with the Tamron, you get macro mode tossed in.

Tamron 70-300mm f/4-5.6 Di LD Macro 1:2 AF ~$180
With a much lower price, the Tamron actually has better results for sharpness and resistance to vignetting, and comparable results for chromatic aberration and distortion. Focusing speed is a little slower, but you get the added bonus of a macro mode (0.50x magnification and a 37" close-focus distance) at 300mm. Build quality about the same.

Konica Minolta 75-300mm ƒ/4.5-5.6 ~$?
This lens hasn't been subjected to our tests, but it's logical to assume it's the same lens, given that Sony assumed all of Konica-Minolta's technology to make its Alpha line.

Conclusion

The Sony 75-300mm ƒ/4.5-5.6 is a capable budget zoom lens, and set to the right aperture and focal length you can get images of a high optical quality. However, it has a few weak points - image softness and chromatic aberration above 100mm, and we're not big fans of lenses whose front filters turn while focusing or zooming. You shouldn't feel bad if you got this lens as part of the A100 twin-lens kit, and it is certainly a good second lens if you already have the 18-70mm lens and want to stay loyal to the Sony system. However, at these price points, you might be better off with the worthy Tamron 70-300mm macro. Or, if you can find it, you may find identical performance with the Konica Minolta 75-300mm ƒ/4.5-5.6.

Sample Photos

The VFA target should give you a good idea of sharpness in the center and corners, as well as some idea of the extent of barrel or pincushion distortion and chromatic aberration, while the Still Life subject may help in judging contrast and color. We shoot both images using the default JPEG settings and manual white balance of our test bodies, so the images should be quite consistent from lens to lens.

Still Life shot

VFA target

As appropriate, we shoot these with both full-frame and sub-frame bodies, at a range of focal lengths, and at both maximum aperture and f/8. For the "VFA" target (the viewfinder accuracy target from Imaging Resource), we also provide sample crops from the center and upper-left corner of each shot, so you can quickly get a sense of relative sharpness, without having to download and inspect the full-res images. To avoid space limitations with the layout of our review pages, indexes to the test shots launch in separate windows.