If you love the dramatic perspective that an ultra-wide angle lens can produce, the Sony Vario-Tessar T* FE 16-35mm F4 ZA OSS ($1,349.99) is a lens that should be on your radar. When paired with a full-frame camera, like those in Sony's Alpha 7 series, it captures a wide swath of scenery. You can shoot it at f/4 and get sharp results from edge to edge, and while there's some distortion evident, modern software processing tools eliminate that with ease. Not every photographer strives for the wide-angle coverage the 16mm focal length captures, but those who do, and who are invested in Sony's full-frame mirrorless system, should put the 16-35mm near the top of the wishlist. It's one of the best lenses of its type that we've used, and worthy of being called Editors' Choice.

The 16-35mm ($1,249.99 at Dell)  measures 3.9 by 3.1 inches (HD), weighs 1.1 pounds, and supports 72mm front filters. That's fairly compact given its angle of view and maximum aperture; Nikon's AF-S Nikkor 16-35mm f/4G ED VR ($1,299.00 at Amazon) is 4.9 by 3.2 inches, weighs 1.5 pounds, and has a larger front element that requires larger 77mm filters. Like the Nikkor, the Vario-Tessar is optically stabilized, a big plus for video use in a lens this wide. The metal barrel is free of switches or buttons, but there is a big zoom ring in the middle of the barrel, and a manual focus ring ahead of it, just behind the front element. Both rings have ridges for easy gripping, and the zoom ring has marks for the 16, 20, 24, 28, and 35mm settings. The lens does extend a bit, about an inch and a half, when set at its widest angle; it's shortest at 35mm.

Like the Sony Alpha 7 body with which we tested the 16-35mm, the lens is sealed against dust and moisture. I used it in snowy conditions and the kit came through with flying colors. The only real challenge was keeping snowflakes off of the front element. Sony does include a reversible lens hood, which adds some protection to the front element and works to fight lens flares. Flare resistance is a strong point; even at 16mm f/4, with the sun placed toward the corner of the frame, the lens had no issues with lens flare, and captured images with excellent contrast and color saturation.

There aren't any comparable lenses in Sony's system that cover a full-frame sensor; the company does make a 10-18mm f/4 ($898.00 at Amazon) lens that can mount directly on an Alpha 7 series camera, but it's designed for bodies like the Alpha 6000 ($398.00 at Amazon) that use smaller, APS-C image sensors. Because of that, the 10-18mm will capture images with a lower resolution—with the 24-megapixel Alpha 7, you'll get 10 megapixels of resolution out of an APS-C lens. The 10-18mm acts like a 15-27mm zoom in terms of field of view, so it won't be significantly wider than the 16-35mm in terms of field of view.

I used Imatest to check the sharpness and distortion characteristics when paired with the 24-megapixel Alpha 7. At 16mm f/4 the lens scores 2,810 lines per picture height, which is well in excess of the 1,800 lines we use to deem an image sharp. Even the outer edges of the frame, which can be an issue with lenses this wide, are sharp at 1,824 lines. At f/5.6 the center-weighted score improves to 3,003, with edges that fall just shy of 2,500 lines, and the lens is just as good at f/8. Diffraction sets in at f/11, dropping the overall score to 2,581 lines.

At the midpoint of the zoom, 24mm, the lens manages 2,825 lines at f/4, with even sharpness across the frame. At f/5.6 it improves to 2,966 lines; it's just as good at f/8, and nearly as good (2,827 lines) at f/11. At 35mm f/4 the center-weighted score is 2,740 lines, with edges that aren't quite as sharp, but still quite good at 2,096 lines. Stopping down to f/5.6 improves the score to 2,907 lines (edge hit 2,400 lines), and at f/8 the lens shows about 2,700 lines. Diffraction is an issue at f/11; the score dips to 2,422 lines there.

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In one way or another, distortion is always a concern when shooting at very wide angles. First, let's talk about the type that's easy to rectify. The lens shows barrel distortion at 16mm—about 2.3 percent. That gives straight lines a bit of an outward curve. The distortion gives way to the pincushion variety, which makes lines appear to curve inward—it shows 2.1 percent at 24mm and about 1 percent at 35mm. That's fairly modest for a full-frame ultra-wide zoom, and it can be collected with a single click when using software like Adobe Photoshop Lightroom.

The other type of distortion to worry about is perspective distortion. Due to the wide field of view, if you're framing something close toward the edge of the scene, it's going to look stretched out. It's possible to focus fairly close, to about 11 inches, with the lens, so that is a concern. If you're in a tight space and shooting an event at 16mm, people at the edges of the frame can look like they're walking through a funhouse hall of mirrors. This can be avoided with some effort and practice, or it can be used for effect for certain shots. The proportions of the tree at the left of the frame in the image below are exaggerated, but it works in the context of the image.

If you're shooting with a Sony full-frame mirrorless camera, and really strive to capture images with the dramatic perspective that an ultra-wide zoom can deliver, the Sony Vario-Tessar T* FE 16-35mm F4 ZA OSS is a great lens to get. It's the only zoom available for the system that covers the full-fame sensor at this point, but it's an excellent one. It's not an everyday lens for most photographers, but it's one of the best of its type, and deserves to be called Editors' Choice.

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