Sony Alpha A77 Digital Camera Review

Chromatic Aberration

The kit lens suffers from some problematic chromatic aberration. Take a look at the crops; there's some severe color fringing, more so than most enthusiast cameras. It isn't particularly surprising, since the lens is brighter (f/2.8 rather than the typical f/3.5), wider (starting at 16mm rather than 18mm), and just as zoomy (about 3x) as most other kit lenses, all of which present some design challenges.

The problem is particularly pronounced at the wide-angle setting at the edges and midway sections of the frame, and the wider the aperture, the more severe the fringing. The center of the frame is generally free from aberration at any setting, and toward the telephoto end of the lens, aberration diminishes to the point where it's only noticeable at the very edges of the frame.

The A77 does offer in-camera aberration correct for many A-mount lenses (including this kit glass), and we did not use the correction in our testing. JPEGs are much crisper with that option turned on. Most decent raw file converters should be able to correct the fringing as well (just make sure it supports the A77 and whichever lens you use—check for updates if you're using older software).

Distortion

Since the wide-angle is so wide (16mm, a 24mm equivalent), it's no surprise that it shows some serious barrel distortion—about 3.5 percent, easily visible to anyone with a set of eyes. It evens out at the middle and telephoto settings, though, to a point where its negligible.

Like aberration (and vignetting), the A77 offers in-camera distortion correction for most A-mount lenses, including this kit lens. We obviously didn't activate that setting for our tests. Any decent raw converter will have a correction profile for this camera and lens combination as well.