Sony’s New G Master Lenses Are Made For Pros, But The a6300 Camera Is For Everyone

Canon has its red-ringed L lenses for professional (read: cashed-up) photographers, and Nikon has its own gold-ringed competitors. Sony’s the newest entrant into the ring (ha, get it) with its G Master professional lenses; the first three pieces of likely-very-expensive glass for its full-frame E-mount cameras fill two of the three most-demanded focal length ranges for serious snappers.

The new G Master lenses will work on any E-mount mirrorless camera, but they’re really made for the hardcore high-resolution a7R II, a7 II and a7S II. The SEL2470GM is a 24-70mm f/2.8 zoom, the SEL70200GM is a 70-200mm f/2.8 zoom, and the SEL85F14GM is a classic short-tele 85mm f/1.4 portrait prime. These are three much-used and oft-recommended formats from other brands, and Sony has long had exactly these in its legacy A-mount (DSLR) line-up, but this new glass is redesigned.




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Crucially, there’s no in-lens image stabilisation. That’s because all Sony’s hardcore E-mount cameras have built-in sensor-shake optical image stabilisation, across five axes — and it does a very good job already. With no gyros in the lenses themselves, they can be smaller and lighter, or pack in larger glass elements and more of them to improve image quality. That is going to be Sony’s big selling point for the G Master line-up.

Sony’s new a6300 is a mid-range camera in the company’s now extensive Alpha line-up, with a 24-megapixel APS-C sensor and the world’s fastest autofocus, with 425 phase detection autofocus points distributed across the entire image frame. It can also shoot 4K video with no pixel binning — the sensor size is right on the Super 35mm format, and is the first Sony interchangeable lens camera with a smaller-than-full-frame sensor to do so. The biggest selling point of the a6300, though, will be the 2.4-million dot XGA OLED viewfinder on the upper left of its rear face.

When it’s out in March, the Sony a6300 should cost around the $1500 mark — we’ll let you know once Sony confirms an official Australian RRP. At the moment, we only know that the body-only version is on its way, but kits with one or two lenses are also likely too. [Sony]


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