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Best Travel Lens for Sony A7 III (Top 5 Picks)

I assume you own the great Sony A7 III, or are you planning to buy one and then buy the lenses for it?

If you are on the “hunt” for the best travel lens for Sony A7 III, you made it to the right place. This handful of articles will take you through the best travel lens for Sony A7 III, and also, in the end, you will find some extra valuable information.

A Quick Look At My Favorite Travel Lenses For My Sony A7 iii

ImageProductFeaturesPrice
Best for Street Photography
Sony FE 35mm F1.8

Sony FE 35mm F1.8

10
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Best For Landscapes
Sony - FE 16-35mm F2.8 GM

Sony - FE 16-35mm F2.8 GM

9
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Most Affoardable
Sony 24-70mm f/4

Sony 24-70mm f/4

8.6
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Best Prime Lens
Sony 55mm F1.8

Sony 55mm F1.8

8.5
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Best Overall
Sony - FE 24-105mm F4 G OSS

Sony - FE 24-105mm F4 G OSS

8.6
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Key Takeaways

  • Why not get a superb lens for your excellent Sony A7 III camera and improve its performance?
  • You may select from various excellent travel lenses depending on your demands and budget.
  • If you’re asking my opinion, I’d say the Sony FE 24-105 F4 G OSS is the greatest all-around lens.
  • The Sony 24-70mm F4 Vario-Tessar T FE OSS is a beautiful lens for individuals on a small budget who desire high-quality optics.
  • Ensure your lens is lightweight and has an ideal focal length and aperture.

Top 5 Best Travel Lens for The Sony A7 III

5. Sony FE 35mm F1.8 lens – Best for Street Photography

What I Like

  • Compact
  • Lightweight
  • Good wide-open resolution
  • Dust and splash protection

What I Don’t Like

  • Expensive

Starting the list with a great prime lens that will hugely benefit street photographers, the Sony FE 35mm F1.8 lens. This is a great lens if your traveling journeys take place around the streets.

There are a lot of things to love about this lens, it is lightweight, fast, sharp and on top of it affordable.

The reason why this prime lens is good for street photography is that you won’t be able to zoom. Yes, you will be forced to move around more and get closer to subjects and think more about what you want to do, instead of playing around with the focal length and wasting time.

The major selling point of this lens must be its performance in low-light situations; it is simply unbeatable for those night street shots.

No matter if you are shooting in crowded places like New York or Hong Kong at night, the image quality this bad boy provides, will never disappoint.

Key Specifications:

  • Maximum aperture: F1.8
  • Minimum aperture: f22
  • Number of diaphragm blades: 9
  • Elements: 11
  • Groups: 9
  • Weight: 280g (10 oz)

Why should you buy it?

It is a compact, affordable, sharp, fast lens, if you are into street photography and most of your travels consist of towns and such, don’t hesitate on this one.

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Sony FE 35mm F1.8 Sample Photos


4. Sony 16-35mm F2.8 GM – Best For Landscapes

What I Like

  • Wide-angle coverage
  • Quick autofocus
  • Dust and moisture resistant

What I Don’t Like

  • Some distortion
  • Omits lens-in stabilization

If your journeys take place mostly on mother nature, there won’t be a better choice for you than the Sony 16-35mm F2.8 GM. It is among the best lens you can currently get for landscape photography.

It promises to take breathtaking and sharp images with minimum distortion even when shooting wide-open. Wide-angle lenses tend to have sharpness problems on the edges, most of the time the edges don’t come looking as sharp as the center. But that’s a different case with the Sony 16-35mm F2.8 GM, this bad boy is a league on its own.

With that being said you should also know all that comes with a price that is hard to swallow, it is a lens that belongs to the high-end spectrum.

Belonging to the G Master series, a line with which Sony only entitled their best lenses with; this bad boy does everything a flagship lens from Sony can do. It produces stunning background bokeh effects with 11 diaphragm blades.

Key Specifications:

  • Maximum aperture: F2.8–22
  • Minimum aperture: F2.8–22
  • Number of diaphragm blades: 11
  • Elements: 16
  • Groups: 13
  • Weight: 680 g (1.50 lb)

Why should you buy it?

There’s nothing at fault with this lens, I am hard-pressed to find a con besides the painful price it comes with. Although it lives up to the price, I would advise you to go after this lens only if you are serious about landscape photography.

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Sony 16-35mm F2.8 GM Sample Photos


3. Sony 24-70mm F4 Vario-Tessar T FE OSS – Most Affordable

What I Like

  • Compact
  • Affordable
  • Very sharp through the zoom range
  • Optical stabilization

What I Don’t Like

  • Soft edges at 24mm and 70mm

While the premium lenses come with a painful price, it doesn’t mean a budget one will perform way worse.

There are a lot of good quality lenses that won’t break your bank like the Sony 24-70mm F4 Vario-Tessar T FE OSS

While it compromises on just a few things, this is one of the best traveling lenses that you should consider, especially if you are an entry-level photographer.

It is one of the lightest zoom lenses in the market currently, it is ideal for long journeys.

It has the known Aspherical lens design which dramatically reduces aberration while also contributing to lens size and weight.

It has a gyro sensor built into the lens that detects even the slightest movement, while the quiet linear motors help with the lens being as quiet as possible.

Also worth mentioning is the image stabilization that makes the video content look as well as stills.

The filter thread at the front of the lens does not rotate, which is quite convenient if you’re using a polarizing filter.

Key Specifications:

  • Maximum aperture: F4
  • Minimum aperture: F22
  • Number of diaphragm blades: 7
  • Elements: 12
  • Groups: 10
  • Weight: 426 g (0.94 lb)

Why should you buy it?

It is a really well-built lens, that has a great focal length range, OSS, and autofocus. The AF is Sony tier meaning it has pinpoint accuracy. The OSS promises to perform well and give the freedom to shoot at slower shutter speeds with limited blur.

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Sony 24-70mm F4 Vario-Tessar T FE OSS Sample Photos


2. Sony 55mm F1.8 Sonnar T FE ZA – Best Prime Lens

What I Like

  • Amazing build quality
  • Negligible distortion
  • Extremely sharp from edge to edge

What I Don’t Like

  • Pricey

Next, we have another great prime lens, the Sony 55mm F1.8 Sonnar T FE ZA.

It has almost everything you need and it will proudly deliver everything you ask it.
It is compact, small, and light; you won’t be dreading to carry it with you for long journeys.

At the same time, it is fast and reliable that will deliver sharp images with almost no distortion or chromatic aberration.

Being a prime lens means that the focal length is fixed and you won’t be able to zoom it. It has a 55m focal length which is the average of a normal lens, the pictures you are taking will come as the human eye views them.

It also has great low-light performance and it creates a smooth, creamy bokeh effect.

Key Specifications:

  • Maximum aperture: F1.8
  • Minimum aperture: F22
  • Number of diaphragm blades: 9
  • Elements: 7
  • Groups: 5
  • Weight: 281 g (0.62 lb)

Why should you buy it?

Even though its focal range is average, nothing else is average with this lens; it is unbelievably sharp, lighting fast and quiet autofocus with great color rendition, and on top of all that is light and compact.

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Sony 55mm F1.8 Sonnar T FE ZA Sample Photos


1. Sony FE 24-105 F4 G OSS – Best Overall

What I Like

  • Fast focus
  • Image stabilization
  • Lightweight
  • Compact

What I Don’t Like

  • Pricey

Last but not least we have, hands down one of the best overall lenses out there from Sony, the Sony FE 24-105 F4 G OSS.

A lens that promises us to work for almost any situation, thanks to its versatility. From portraits, landscapes, street photography, to travel photography.

Its promises don’t stop here, at the same time it will offer us great image quality with minimal distortion when it’s wide open.

Besides that, it also packs a dedicated focus-lock button and AF/MF switch.

This lens is also quite lightweight and compact which is essential for traveling, you don’t want a heavy lens hanging from your neck or shoulder for long periods, do you?
The minimum focus distance is at 0.38m (1.25 feet ) while its 9-blade circular aperture provides beautiful de-focused backgrounds, or what we call a bokeh effect.

Verdict:
Even though travel lenses are about compromises, you can’t have all things in one package. But the compromises on the Sony FE 24-105 F4 G OSS are barely noticeable. It will provide from compactness to decent image quality

Key Specifications:

Maximum aperture: F4
Minimum aperture: F22
Number of diaphragm blades: 9
Elements: 17
Groups: 14
Weight: 663 g (1.46 lb)

Why should you buy it?

Even though travel lenses are about compromises, you can’t have all things in one package. But the compromises on the Sony FE 24-105 F4 G OSS are barely noticeable. It will provide from compactness to decent image quality

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Sony FE 24-105 F4 G OSS Sample Photos


Picking The Right Travel Lens

Picking the Best travel Lens for Sony A7 III differs from picking a lens for other situations or basic photography. Not only you will be concerned about focal length, aperture but you also need to pay consideration to the size and weight.

While it would be great and easy to pick a wide range of expensive lenses with us, on traveling we are limited on how many gears we can take with us.
So for travel photography, the best choice would be on getting a smaller number of lenses that will reward you with versatility in most situations.

Focal Length

The focal length is the number that you find in the name of the lens and it measures in millimeters (mm).
The general rule here is that the higher the number in the mm is the more magnification you get and vice-versa.

However, it gets a bit confusing because focal lengths range has different effects on different cameras, due to the sensors of the camera being different from one another.

Thankfully, most lens manufacturers try to use the same focal length standard. To solve this you need to know the crop factor and then you can just multiply by the focal length to get it to an equivalent state.

Aperture

There’s a hole in the lens that lets the light go through it to the camera’s sensor, and that’s what we call aperture.
All apertures come in different sizes and the number it can be found in the lens name just like focal length.

A bigger aperture lets in more light while a smaller one has less light.
To make things easier for you, you can consider the aperture as the pupil of the eye. When it’s bright outside less light gets in our eye, while at night or say dark places it opens really wide to let more light in.

Weight

As mentioned above, weight is key when you are picking a travel lens, as the idea of it is to be used for traveling. The less you have to carry with you the better it is, you are not doing weight lifting but photographing.

Size

Just like weight, for traveling, you want to consider the size of the lens too. Portability is an important factor in general for traveling and not just travel photography. You want something that is easy to store and hit it off.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the best focal length of a lens for travel photography?

For travel photography, you want to go for a lens that is fairly wide, for example, 16mm-30mm, and when zoomed in, 70mm -150mm. This will give you a good amount of flexibility, letting you shoot wide scenes. If we take the ranges I just mentioned, the average one would be a lens that goes from 24 to 70.

Which lenses are better for travel photography, zoom or prime?

This is quite simple; there’s no best between zoom and prime – while a zoom lens gifts us more versatility, a prime one will gift us sharper images.
So it boils down to your preference.

Can I use lenses from other brands?

Even though the list I made contains Sony lenses, you can use other lenses from other brands as well. Still, I would like to mention that for a Sony camera, a Sony lens would be perfect.

Final Words:

To wrap this article up all I can say is that Sony A7 III is a great camera no matter what lens you pick will do the work just fine.

Of course, I am not encouraging you to just blindly pick a lens but what I want to say is what matters the most is to Have fun on your journey.

What’s the point of worrying about your lens the whole journey and ruining your experience.

Further Reading:

I understand that not all of you guys own a Sony A7 III yet you need a traveling lens for your camera, or you simply are done with the lenses and you want some other pieces of equipment.

If you travel often, then you definitely need a backpack. There are some great photography backpacks under $100 you can get.

– In case you use a Sony A6500, this article will guide you through the best travel lens for Sony A6500, or was it an A6000? – here you go: best travel lenses for sony a6000.

– But if you are done with the lens and you are looking for other equipments then you can go through the best gimbal for Sony A7s III.

– Was it a Speedlight? Check out the Best Speedlights for Sony A7 III.