Sony E 16-70 F4: Part 1: Just arrived!

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Part 2
Part 3

I just received the fine looking and newly announced Sony E 16-70mm F4 lens.   It commands a hefty price so I am hopeful that the image quality will be excellent.  I must say it comes in a pretty box, and a pouch and lens hood are included.

The lens looks good and feels well balanced on the NEX 6. The zoom ring and focusing ring operate very smoothly, making this feel like a really high quality product.  Just aiming at things around the house, it seems to focus very quickly and quietly.

I am surprised how small and light this lens is for something that boasts a constant F4 aperture.  It weighs under 11 ounces and when fully retracted it is less than 3" long. Because the NEX sensor is 2/3rds the size (the diagonal dimension) of a full frame sensor, this zoom will give an effective focal range of 24-105mm.  In my opinion, this is a perfect all-around lens for landscapes, travel and portraits.  That being said I do wish they had made it an F2.8 to help reduce depth of field when taking "people pictures".  This would have been acceptable to me even if it increased the weight to, say, 16 ounces.  But my guess is that the price tag would have increased dramatically, and this lens already costs a pretty penny ($999 makes it the most expensive lens I have ever bought).

I will follow up with additional posts about how this lens performs.  My main interest is sharpness at the edges as I have read some concerns about this on the Internet.  I am expecting chromatic aberations and distortion to be well controlled.