The latest addition to the GM family from Sony has been the mark II of the 16-35mm wide zoom lens.

Nauticam has recently released the zoom gear for this lens and has it on the port chart with a 50mm extension for the 180 wide angle port and 60mm for th 230 wide angle port the SKU is 37175.

I have owned this lens since September and has become a favourite for topside landscape trips. It produces very sharp images across the frame with excellent rendition.

The lens is quite big and takes 82mm filters. An interesting characteristic for underwater use is that the lens is longest at wide and and shortest at tele end. It has also a minimum operating distance of 22cm and is 12 cm long leading to small dome port requirements.

My preliminary tests indicate that this lens will perform best with a 55mm extension ring and after aquiring the zoom gear from Underwater Visions I made my way to Luton Inspire last night.

During my hour in the water I was called to take photos of a scuba dive experience nonethless I managed to run a series of test.

The lens is sharpest at f/5.6 and it drops afterwards a trend of all Sony mirrorless. I took tests shots at f/5.6 f/8 f/11 f/16.

The initial test is the demanding MOD test get as close as possible to a target and shoot a wide scene.

In terms of centre performance best results are at f/5.6 decreasing as you stop down.

I then take the same shot putting the target at the bottom edge.

The situation changes with best edges at f/16 however good results are already found at f/11

The wall test gives similar outcomes this is taken at around 1.5 meters.

With a target that is not near f/8 and f/11 do best suggesting those aperture are those to use for general cases, this is a good result.

Time to show some example shots.

There is no doubt that the lens is very sharp across the frame. You can zoom into the full rez images to see the detail.

Comparison with Tamron 17-28mm

So far the Tamron 17-28 held the prime spot for the best rectilinear lens on the Sony full frame format. I would say that the Sony 16-35mm GM2 is on par with maybe an edge on the overall resolution at f/11.

Consider though that the Sony is almost 3x the price is it a worthy upgrade to the Tamron? My view is that it is not.

If you bought the lens to take it underwater the Tamron is identical you cannot tell them apart, however if you own or like the 16-35GM2 as topside zoom the focal range is much more useful.

Conclusion

Strong performance from Sony and definitely recommended with the 180 wide angle port. I do not own the 230 port that has 1 cm wider radius but would expect marginally better performance.