This Teardown of a Sony E-Mount Lens Shows Optical SteadyShot in Action

Want to see the inner workings of a Sony E-mount lens? Engineer Dave Jones of EEVblog was having problems with his $350 Sony 16-50mm f/3.5-5.6 OSS E-mount lens, so he decided to take it apart on camera to see what’s inside. You can watch the teardown in the 26-minute video above.

At about 7m30s, Jones gets to the lens’ zoom motor and applies voltage to it to zoom the lens in and out. He reaches the optical image stabilization system at about 15 minutes in and explains how the design works.

21 minutes into the teardown, Jones connects the disassembled lens to his Sony mirrorless camera and watches what the inner components do based on the camera’s instructions.

At 24 minutes, we get to see the exposed OSS image stabilizer shake around in response to the camera being wobbled.

If you found this teardown interesting and educational, you should check out Jones’ previous teardowns of a Koda DCS315 (one of the first DSLRs) and a Chinon Genesis II 35mm analog bridge camera.