The quintessential travel lens? Sony 20-70/4G

Of course, that is obvious to me, I've been photographing for more than 25 years now :)
But I do lack experience with E mount. I did turn the correction on, it was off by default. I just don't seem to be happy with the results even after turning it on (it may be I want too much for too little $). I need to play around with RAWs too and compare. Maybe I do something wrong.
I the mean time this Tamron is actually great walk around lens when you know its limitations.

You may need to enable the distortion compensation in the camera menu. The default setting is off. It does gets force enabled with some Sony branded lenses and when using those the user is not allowed to disabled it.

It seems like every E-mount lens with electrical contacts comes with the lens profile information.

Mestari,

It seems many newer lenses do have uncorrected distortion and vignetting because these can be corrected in camera and post processing with lens profiles. The manufacturer then prioritize sharpness and other aspects of lens IQ. A zoom lens is complex and there are always compromises and we can't realistically expect them to perform as well as prime lenses. But most of the newer zoom lenses perform at a higher level then those from years gone by. And really, unless you are making huge prints from a high res sensor (or pixel peeping) most people would never notice the difference in these lenses, in my opinion. I've watched a few YouTube reviews of this lens and it does very well in most ways and distortion is corrected in jpegs in camera. You would really need to try the lens out to see if you notice unusual uncorrected distortion at 20mm. If you are very critical, maybe just stick with good prime lenses. But zooms are indeed practical for traveling light! I have no problem myself traveling with my Tamron 28-200mm f28-5.6. I just need to understand it's limitations and its not going to perform like my Zeiss lenses. You may want to consider some of the Tamron zoom lenses for travel -- well, other than the excellent 35-150 which is very heavy. My main zoom lens used with my Maxxum 7D and my Sony A99 was the KM 28-75mm f2.8 which was really made by Tamron and it was a very good lens. Not the quality of your ZA 24-70mm f2.8 perhaps, but lighter in weight.
Kelly

   

Yeah, I wouldn't take a lens weighing over 1kg as my travel lens...

All lenses intended for travel involve trade offs, you just have to figure out what you're willing to give up to get the features you think you'll need the most .

Weight is a HUGE factor for me, I may rent the 35-150 to see if it's too heavy for me..........

AudioDoc wrote: I agree that for me, 70mm is not long enough. like Pieter, my go to travel zoom is the Tamron 28-200mm, which is an under appreciated lens! I have been traveling with it and the FE-16-35mm f4 ZA.

I just got the 28-200, was hesitating and considering returning it, but may keep it now hearing this. I was contemplating sending it back for the Tamron 35-150

24-70 just isn't enough range for me personally.

I bad mouthed Sony on the plans for the new year thread for copying the "standard" focal lengths, then they come out with a 20-70 LOL.

I have a Panasonic FZ300 compact/bridge that has angle-of-view equivalent 20-1200, and the 20mm is very useful. Of course the Sony marketing department is ignoring the Panasonic 20-60 and the Tamron 20-40....

The lack of stabilzation is surprising, and is a return to the Amount days when Sony lenses were expensive despite not having stabilization (yes apparently the Euro market pays 50% more for the 20-70?????). It has an aperture ring, and AF/MF switch, and FocusHold button; I don't understand why all lenses don't have that. It doesn't have the sexy Olympus push-pull clutch for Manual Focus, but otherwise seems fully spec'd.

Olympus has the 2 year old 8-25/4, which seems a much more useful angle-of-view equivalent, 16-50mm is everything except "portrait" and "tele", and for travel/landscape/architecture wider is better, then a tele for "tele" and a fast 1.8 prime, the Oly 45/1.8 is well-regarded and tiny.

My travel kit has been a compact/bridge (Panasonic FZ1000) and nex7 (or 5n with external viewfinder) with Minolta MD 50/1.7.

There are several of you who swear by the Tamron 28-200; when the 35-150/f2-2.8 came out I lamented it wasn't 28-135 to copy the Secret Handshake and you pointed me to the 28-200, I guess 28/2.8 at the wide end is almost perfect (but 28/2 is more perfect LOL).