After a few years of silence, Sony is bolstering its APS-C lineup with a trio of quality wide angle lenses, but you'll be hard pressed to find a camera to pair them with if you don't already have one.

Sony is back on the scene with three new lenses for it E-mount camera system, a family of consumer cameras built around the APS-C sensor format. All cover wide angles of view—making the E 10-20mm F4 PZ G, E 11mm F1.8, and E 15mm F1.4 G good fits for vloggers using the company's most recent APS camera, the video-first ZV-E10.

The E PZ 10-20mm F4 G is a slim power zoom with internal zoom, a big plus for use on gimbals. It's among the widest angles available for the system, but drops the optical stabilization feature included with the still-on-sale E 10-18mm F4 OSS in favor of a power zoom. It's priced at $749.99 for US customers and $949.99 in Canada; for more detail, we have a full hands-on review.

The E 11mm F1.8 is only slightly narrower in view, but offers a bright f-stop for use in dim light and defocused backgrounds. ZV-E10 owners will sure to like it for handheld recording without a gimbal—the camera's digital stabilization crops video to remove jitters—and its $549.99 USD price is close to budget-friendly for Sony gear; Canadian customers will pay $749.99 CAD. You can read more about the lens in our review.

Finally, the E 15mm F1.4 G comes in at a $749.99 ($949.99 in Canada) asking price and is by far the most premium of the trio. Its extra-bright f-stop is great for the soft background look, though I'd recommend it more highly to vloggers who use a gimbal with the ZV-E10 given its angle of view. For stills, it works well as a wide normal lens, with an angle that's a little broader than Sony's basic E 16-50mm kit zoom. There's a lot to like, including an aperture control ring; you can read more in our review.

All three lenses will ship in July, welcome news for creators using Sony's E series lenses, a line that's been largely ignored in favor of the full-frame FE series, in part because the FE lenses are perfectly useable with APS sensors. Before today, the most recent E lens releases were from late 2019. If you've been waiting for a new lens for ZV-E10 vlogs, or to snap photos with your a6400, you're in luck.

But what if you don't already have a Sony camera? Your fortunes have changed, there simply aren't any APS-C sensor E-mount cameras available at retail. The ZV-E10, the best fit for video-first creators, went out of production in December and big photo retailer B&H shows an expected two- to six-month wait time if you order one today. The a6100 and a6600 are also out of production and out of stock at retail.

Our Editors' Choice award-winning a6400 is also impossible to buy right now, but we expect that to change going forward. Sony announced it was resuming production(Opens in a new window) of the midrange model just a few days ago, but it's unclear as to how long it will take for it to return to store shelves.

The new lenses are a good sign for the future of the system—it'd be weird for Sony to put development efforts behind them without plans to follow with refreshed camera bodies. But for the time being, they're just for creators who already have a compatible camera.

And it's beyond time for an update. We loved the autofocus updates Sony brought to the line starting with the a6400 release, but were surprised to see the company stick with a sensor that was considered aging back in 2019 when the last batch of a6000 series bodies were released. The a6400 and a6600 offer class-leading autofocus, but their sensors read out slowly, so fully electronic shutter modes aren't as useable for action, and video can show rolling shutter distortion.

We can't fault Sony for failing to predict an ongoing global pandemic and the continuing waves of repercussions that go with it, but will criticize it for sticking with existing components for its most recent releases. As appealing as the new lenses are, they can't serve as an entry point for new system owners without cameras for sale, and current system owners are underserved by cameras bodies that are now behind the times, even those who own the most recent model.

We aren't in the prognostication business, but there are some table stakes basics we'd want from an update. A refreshed sensor and image processor are paramount—more pixels aren't a strict requirement, most creators don't need anymore than 24MP, but brisker sensor readout would be a boon for both electronic shutter imaging and video.

Some more diversity among body styles wouldn't hurt either. The rangefinder-styled a6000 family is a great fit for smaller lenses and handheld use, but we'd like to see an SLR-style model as an option for use with longer lenses; the a6600 is an outlier in body style among its peers. A Stacked CMOS image sensor would be a big help too—Sony pioneered these chips and used them with great success in full-framers like a1 and a9 II, but the tech hasn't trickled down to its APS-C customers.

We'll have to wait and see what Sony does with its APS-C system, especially as competing options improve. Fujifilm just announced its first Stacked CMOS camera, the X-H2S, the first with a next-generation sensor, and the rest of its current lineup uses a 26MP imager that's a generation newer than what Sony has in the a6000 and ZV-E10 family.

Meanwhile Canon, which has cut into Sony's full-frame lead with its superb EOS R series, just added APS-C sensor options in the form of the EOS R7 and R10. Micro Four Thirds cameras are also worth a look; the OM System OM-1 and Panasonic Lumix GH6 are especially appealing for enthusiasts and professional content creators.

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Images, and the devices that capture them, are my focus. I've covered cameras at PCMag for the past 10 years, which has given me a front row seat for the DSLR to mirrorless transition, the smartphone camera revolution, and the mainstream adoption of drones for aerial imaging. You can find me on Instagram @jamespfisher.

I use all of the major camera systems on a regular basis, swapping between Canon, Fujifilm, L-Mount, Micro Four Thirds, Nikon, and Sony systems regularly, and I still find time to use Leica M rangefinders and Pentax SLRs on occasion. I keep an iPhone 13 in my pocket for the rare occasions I'm not carrying a camera.

I'm not a brand-specific photographer, and swap between a Canon EOS R5, a Nikon Z 7 II, and a Sony a7R IV when taking product photos for reviews. I use Flashpoint and Godox TTL lights, Gitzo and Peak Design tripods, and most often reach for a Think Tank or Peak Design backpack to carry equipment.

When it comes to computers, I'm an unapologetic Mac person and have been for the past 20 years. I write in Pages and use Numbers for spreadsheets. I currently use a 27-inch Retina iMac for photo and video editing, but have a Mac Studio on order, along with a calibrated BenQ display. I rely on a LaCie 6big RAID for media storage.

I split time with a few different software apps depending on the type of editing I'm doing. For Raw image processing, Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Classic is my standard. I pair it with a LoupeDeck CT console to supplement my keyboard and trackpad, and lean on RNI All Films 5 presets when I want to give an image a film look. I reach to Apple Final Cut Pro for video editing.

My first digital camera was a 3.2MP Canon PowerShot Elph, and my first interchangeable lens model a 6MP Pentax *ist DL. I have a soft spot for antique film gear, and still use a 1950 vintage Rolleiflex Automat and a 1947 Leica Summitar lens for personal work.

To relax at home, I spend time reading Marvel Unlimited comics on an iPad Pro, kick back with a good (or bad) movie on a 4K LG television with an Apple TV 4K streaming box, and enjoy story-driven video games on the Xbox Series X.

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