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Sony FE 400-800mm F6.3-8 G OSS Review | the Ultimate Telephoto Zoom?
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Mar 31, 2025
Photographer Dustin Abbott shares a deep dive review of Sony's most extreme telephoto zoom to date. Is the FE 400-800mm F6.3-8 G OSS worth buying? Find out in Dustin's exhaustive review. | This video is sponsored by Fantom Tracker. Visit https://store.fantomwallet.com and use code DUSTIN20 to get 20% off | Read the Text Review: https://tinyurl.com/400-800Greview | Visit the Image Gallery: https://tinyurl.com/400-800Gpics | Purchase the Sony 400-800G OSS @ B&H Photo https://bhpho.to/4heFF4D | Adorama https://howl.link/6f6fh8cv4ku51 | Amazon https://amzn.to/4iATBXT | Sony Canada https://tinyurl.com/Buy400-800G | Camera Canada https://shrsl.com/4v14q | Amazon Canada https://amzn.to/4it6DqC | Amazon UK https://amzn.to/4iLLWGo | Amazon Germany https://amzn.to/3FBreui Check out the DA Merch here: https://bit.ly/TWIMerch | Become a Patron: https://www.patreon.com/dustinabbott | On the Web: http://dustinabbott.net/ | Sign up for my Newsletter: http://bit.ly/1RHvUNp | Instagram: http://bit.ly/DLAinsta | Facebook: http://on.fb.me/1nuUUeH | Flickr: http://bit.ly/1UcnC0B | 500px: http://bit.ly/1Sy2Ngu Follow Craig @ https://www.instagram.com/craigstoffersen/ Want to support this channel? Use these affiliate links to shop at: B&H Photo: http://bhpho.to/1TA0Xge Adorama: https://howl.link/nt4zdz1goa7ql Camera Canada: http://bit.ly/DLACameraCan Sony Canada: https://www.thesonyshop.ca/?ref=abbott Amazon: https://amzn.to/3HrY64d Amazon Canada: https://amzn.to/3qG1p18 Ebay: http://bit.ly/DustineBay Into the AM Clothing: https://bit.ly/intotheAMda and use code DUSTIN10 for 10% off Fioboc Clothing: https://tinyurl.com/FiobocDA20 and us code DUSTIN20 for 20% off Make a donation via Paypal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/dustinTWI ============================= Table of Contents: ============================= 0:00 - Intro and Concept
View Video Transcript
0:00
[Music]
0:10
hi I'm Dustin Abbott and I'm here today to give you my review of the Sony Fe 400 to 800 mm f6.3 to8 G OSS lens now I
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bought the 200 to 600 mm this is the F5 to 6.3g OSS shortly after its release
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and I've used it for the Last 5 Years if you've been watching my channel for a while you know that this has shown up in
0:34
a number of different comparisons along the way I've compared it to a lot of the thirdparty lenses that have come onto
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the market on Fe and generally I've come out thinking you know what I made the right choice in purchasing this but what
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Sony has done now is basically take that same formula and expand it out all the way to 800 millim basically shift
0:53
everything about 200 mm forward that makes it the first Sony zoom and
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probably the best zoom currently available to actually reach 800 mm that also makes it bigger heavier and more
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expensive so is it worth it well that's what we're here to explore here today which we'll jump into right after a word
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dustin2 for 20% off and I want to start by saying thank you to Sony for getting
2:09
me loners of these equipment and making sure that I have an opportunity to check out critique and sometimes praise their
2:16
most recent offerings now what's interesting is that although these two lenses have the same number of focal
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links available they cover a range that covers basically 400 MM but what's
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interesting is because of where they both start the 200 to 600 mm has a three time zoom range starts at 200 mm up to
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600 mm which if you do the math that's three times Well ironically if you move that that starting position forward to
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400 millim as we do here even though it still covers 400 MM it's only a two time
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zoom range and so that looks like this you can go from this framing at 400 MM to this now like the 200 to 600 this is
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a variable aperture zoom and so we start at F6 .3 and so f6.3 that is from 400 to
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482 mm at 483 mm it becomes
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f7.1 as the maximum aperture all the way through 594 millim and then from 595
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millim roughly 600 mm to 800 mm you're going to end up with the maximum aperture of f8 now of course variable
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zooms also means that the minimum aperture is going to scale in the same way and so at 400 MM minimum aperture is
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F3 6 at 800 mm the minimum apture is f45 now again like the 200 to 600 mm it is
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compatible with their teleconverters so that includes the 1.4 times which I own
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and I have here and then also the two times telecon converter now I say that it's compatible that comes with a little
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bit of a caveat here so with the 1.4 times I have tested it it focuses fine
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image quality is is decent so that will get you all the way out to 1120 millim
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and uh that's going to be a maximum aperture of f11 now with the two times
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telecon converter that'll get you all the way to 1600 mm however your maximum
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aperture is going to be F16 now you might be able to get away with that if you're shooting with a low resolution
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body but both of my Sony cameras are either 50 or 61 megapixels respectively
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and so frankly at F-16 defraction is going to take a hit on pretty much any lens and so I don't know that I would
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recommend that and of course you're going to need a lot of light to be able to get any kind of reasonable shutter
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speed when you're shooting at F-16 now be beyond that consideration what we have here is a another
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beautifully built lens you know and frankly I've used a lot of uh GM lenses
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at this point and frankly as I look at this lens and I look at the new 400 to 800g I kind of wonder what's the
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difference between a g and a GM in this case obviously they're reserving reserving the GM label for
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um either the 100 to 400 MM and so that was an early GM model and beyond that
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mostly for the telephotos the GMS have been reserved more for the super Telly primes and so in this case however what
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you've got is what I would call a GM level of build quality what you do have here is a very professional grade lens
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it's made out of a mixture of metals metal alloys and engineered Plastics and
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it feels tough and durable and frankly over the last 5 years that's exactly what this lens has been it's held up
5:31
perfectly well during that time it is a thoroughly weather sealed lens um in this diagram I count about 21 different
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gaskets plus a flooring coating on the front element obviously a gasket at the lens mount so we've got thorough weather
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sealing at all the points throughout the lens itself and so when you've got a high grade of build you've got full
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weather ceiling I don't know what more really you could ask for out of a lens like this you know to make it a g master
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and certainly when it comes to the feature set it is a you know it's got a thorough Suite of features here most of
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those come in a bank of switches here there's kind of two different banks all
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operating the same or filling the same area on the lens here and so the top three are an AF MF switch there's a
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switch here that allow you to turn on and off full-time DMF and so if you have that enabled no matter what mode you're
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shooting in and with whatever camera you're shooting in you can do direct manual override which could be really useful if you're shooting birds for
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example Le in you know branches and some sometimes sometimes a branch might get in the way and so if you just need to pull focus a little bit tweak it into
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the area where it needs to be that can be very handy there's also a focus limiter and so that's going to give you three options you get the full range you
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can shoot from 10 m down to the minimum Focus distance and that's going to vary obviously depending on the focal length
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more on that in just a moment and then you can shoot from 8 m to Infinity now a little bit lower down you have a couple
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of uh OSS related so Optical steady shot which is the image stabil ization system
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two switches related to that a basic onof and then you've got a three position switch and so position one
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being standard two being dedicated for panning and three being a a mode that tries to stabilize the viewfinder more
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it's probably what I would reach for if you're shooting video as well now I looked very hard and I did not find any
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kind of actual rating for the OS s system here as is typically the P case
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with these Sony lenses if you have a a camera that has embod image stabilization built in it's not one or
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the other but they both work or they neither one of them work and so if you turn off the OSS switch here it'll also
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turn off steady shot inside the camera itself and so in so if they're working
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in concert let's just say that I doubt that the camera is doing much in terms of stabilization my experience has been
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the longer you go with telephoto lenses particularly on Sony the less the stabilizer seems to do and so what I
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found is that I when I was shooting at 800 100 mm at least I really couldn't get good handh holdable results until I
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got down to about 160th of a second so I tried first at 1/8 and then I tried
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going up to 130th and then I went to uh 160th of a second it wasn't until 160th
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of a second that I got any kind of repeatable handh holding results obviously your mileage going to vary depending on how stable your hands are
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bottom line is is that in my test I found about four stops of stabilization at 800 mm and so I because there is no
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rating if if it was better than that I suspect they would be bragging about it the fact that they aren't tells me
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that's probably about the zone that it's actually in obviously it makes a huge difference in a lens uh this long and so
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having stabilization makes a huge difference and the stabilizer is okay but it's nothing that's radically good
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and frankly on Sony it has been kind of rare that I have seen a lens that I
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think that the stabilization is fantastic I think maybe sigma's um you know new Optical stabilizer with their
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generation 2 algorithm is probably about as good as what I've seen but anyway um it's it certainly helps a lot but don't
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expect it to be like Rock Solid if you're trying to track at 800 mm now as you can see this is a big lens and I
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I'll pop off the hood for a moment because the hood is obviously quite large but just looking at the raw lens
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itself the lens is 1198 cm in diameter it is
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34.6 um cm in length and so that breaks down to 4.72 in by 13.6 in overall
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obviously you put that hood in place it's going to add a significant amount of additional length to it so to give
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you an idea of comparison here so here's a shot where you can see them side by
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side and obviously here again the hoods make a difference if I remove the hood as you can see here the difference isn't
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quite as uh a significant so it's basically this lens is 9.3 mm in
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diameter wider than the 200 to 600 and it is a pretty significant 28 mm longer
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than it it weighs in at right under 2 1/2 kog 2.47 kg that's right under 52
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PBS and so it's a good 300 plus grams heavier than either this lens or a lens
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like sigma's 150 to 600 uh sport lens so it's obviously a heavy lens also the
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front filter diameter is grown from 95 millimet on the 2600 it's now 105 mm so
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unfortunately you're probably going to have to buy some additional filters if you don't have any that they're that big
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now to help with those filters the lens Hood now has a window in it and so you can rotate a circular polarizer for
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example it also has a lock which is not there on the 200 to 600 but like both it
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has that rubberized front surface which as you can see as I'm doing with the 2600 it makes it for a nice stable place
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to set that and so um you can help to protect whatever surface you're putting this monstrosity on and that tends to be
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the most stable way to put things in place now the tripod foot and collar is somewhat similar in design to what we
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found on the 200 to 600 however this one is easily removable this one is not
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really designed to be removed and so you're going to probably want to keep it in place unfortunately like 2 to 600 the
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400 to 800 its tripod foot is not ARCA compatible so you can see I I had add a
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quick release plate here and so that I could put it onto a tripod I don't know why that is but obviously it is what it
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is this knob here will allow you to loosen the tension and so that you can easily rotate the lens around and
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interesting is there is no detents there's markings on the barrel to line up at kind of the Cardinal positions but
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there is no detent there to give you a feel for when to adjust it but obviously you can easily rotate that around also
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in this section we have got a couple of attachment points on either side and so you can attach a strap that is included
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there's also a nylon nice nylon zip padded case that comes for it as well um
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in the package now minimum Focus distance here is actually a variable minim minimum Focus distance so on the
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short end which is 400 MM on the uh the wide as we'll call it the minimum Focus
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distance is 1.7 m or 5.6 feet and then that stretches out to 3.6 or 3.5 M on
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the telephoto end or 11 and A2 ft your maximum magnification comes at 4 mm and
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it's a decent 0.23 times and as you can see here you can you know fill the frame
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fairly well with an object like that and frankly even though the working distance is much longer at 800 mm 800 mm is a
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really long focal length and you can actually get fairly close to that magnification on the telephoto end as
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well but you'll get a little bit better results if you work on the wide end instead obviously we also have two rings
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here the manual focus ring I think it has actually a nice level of damping I liked the Precision of it and of course
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the best thing about these these designs is that most of the competing third-party lenses have an externally
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zooming lens and so even if they have a smooth Zoom action it's a lot more work a lot more rotation so you can't be as
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reactive in the field these lenses are amazing you can go just that easy from the whole extreme and so what I find is
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it's very easy to quickly acquire at 400 MM snap up to 800 mm if you want a tight framing or anything in between the
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balance stays the same so these lenses they're more difficult to transport but
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what I love about them is that when you're actually in the field the handling is so beautiful in these lenses it allows you to be much more reactive
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than with with with any kind of externally zooming lens so I love that we've also got custom or function
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buttons Focus hold buttons in three different positions and so bottom left side and top side and there's a Sony
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logo that's over on this side but what that allows you to do is that whatever your shooting position is you're going
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to be able to uh you know quickly have a custom or function button that's easily
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accessible to hand there now I did note that when it comes to the balance of the lens again because
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you have to introduce an extra variable in this uh quick release plate obviously you're going to want to go for as stable
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a plate as possible but what I found is in comparing these two lenses I actually found that the balance point is better
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in the 200 to 600 mm um I most shot handheld believe it or not when shooting
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the lens for my real world use but for doing all of my chart tests obviously I'm doing them on a tripod and being
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trying to be as steady and stable as possible so that takes a lot of work to frame the CH the test chart properly and
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what I found is that I could easily do it because of a great balance with the 200 to 600 with the 400 to 800 I felt
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like the balance wasn't as good so what I tended to have to do was overcompensate with it a little high to begin with cuz once I allowed that
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weight to fully settle down it was going to settle downward just a little bit on my tripod and so I had to adjust the
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framing accordingly so overall however this is a another beautifully made lens
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it handles great yes it's going to be heavy um it's certainly not impossible to handhold it but you have to be
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accustomed to handholding heavier lenses sometimes it can be handy if you know that's kind of in your way to just
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rotate that up out of the way and so you're holding it like this but I found that you know it's certainly possible to
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use it out in the field this way but obviously if you're shooting for extended uh times extended durations you
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may find that you get fatigued in carrying this let's just say that this is kind of like a weightlifting you're
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going to have to uh put in some reps before you get accustomed to carrying this kind of weight it is possible to do
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it but many people are going to find it more comfortable to work either off of a tripod or off of a monopod and using it
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so let's talk about autofocus uh obviously autofocus has updated a little bit it's a similar design to what we see
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in the 200 600 but they have updated to their more recent XD linear Motors we have nice big XD linear Motors in this
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particular model and so what it allows it to do is to have you know quick Focus Transitions and even when you're doing
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you know causing big Focus changes like what I'm doing in my test you can see at 400 MM it's really really quick and then
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at 800 MIM it's a just a tiny bit more deliberate but really for shooting at 800 mm that's impressively fast and what
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I found out in the real world is that this lens is very nicely reactive now I
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have tested autofocus on the alpha 1 so I was shooting up to 30 frames per second but this lens is designed for use
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also with the A9 Mark II which would allow you to keep up with 120 frames per second they also say that tracking will
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keep live while also while zooming in and out and so obviously that's going to be useful as well I did shoot this
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sequence for example with 138 frames as I was out and there was hundreds of
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geese out of on this ice flow and and I but most of them were just staying still and I saw a a goose take off out of the
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peripheral I turned and I snapped focus and it picked it up from the very first
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frame and you can see that the focus was perfect all throughout that frame which is fantastic and so I mean it's it's you
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have the right kind of light in the right situation uh Focus changes are just it it's fantastic at tracking I
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said with the right amount of light you know the problem is with the lens that has this small of a maximum aperture it
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means that you really do need adequate light so there's going to be certain applications that work and certain applications that don't I did test
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testing in a fairly brightly lit Fieldhouse of a runner moving at a a
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moderate Pace there and and so what I found however even in setting up the shot in that lighting though it wasn't
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bad and frankly I shot on the 4 millimet and so I could get the widest possible maximum apture of f6.3 what I found is I
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was still shooting at ISO 6400 and even then only getting shutter speeds like 1/200th of a second which frankly isn't
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enough to really stop action and so what you can see in these sequences is that while focus is keeping up um it's things
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don't look all that sharp because a majority of the frames have some degree of motion blur that are affecting them
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and so obviously that's going to be a significant issue and that was I mean I could boost things on up to 12,800 but
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even then I'm only going to be increas ining shutter speed so much and only stopping action so much so that
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obviously is going to be a huge consideration you're going to need lots of light with this lens and so you know
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frankly this is a lens to be used in daylight outdoor conditions either that you're going to have to be under
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extremely bright uh lights if it's some kind of sporting event this is the
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reason why people pay the big bucks for the you know the big super telephoto primes because they do manage to give
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you a long focal length with a fast maximum aperture or faster maximum
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aperture this is just kind of slow for those applications so it's not really an autofocus problem it's a light Gathering
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problem autofocus seems to be fantastic how about on the video side of things I
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actually frankly I didn't have high expectations and so my expectations were actually more than met when I tested for
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that now obviously I have to change all of my test paradigms when testing with something this long it's it's frankly a
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pain because it's just so long that it doesn't fit in any of my spaces you know
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for example when I was shooting my test chart this is how far away I had to be I had to set up everything outside I had
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to shovel some snow to even get to a place where I could you know work the range of the zoom and so it was a pain
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however what I found is that I was actually very pleasantly surprised by how nicely damp Focus pools were going
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back and forth between subjects and what you can see here is that Focus breathing is actually really low and yes I did
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have Focus breathing compensation turned off for this test and what I found is that is I put these side by side you can
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see that the size of the object changes almost not at all whether or not it's in or out of focus and so that was really
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really great I had to you do kind of a weird hand test you know instead of about the six foot difference distance
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that I usually work I was like 40 feet away but even though the the compression means that there's not much distance
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between my hand and my face it I it felt like it did okay in that and that it
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transitioned just fine from one subject to the other I also took some videos where I was tracking turkeys walking
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around in the early morning light in my backyard I did see one moment in one of the clips where Focus drifted onto a
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foreground Bush that was there but for the most part everything seemed to track just fine so obviously I mean video is
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going to be work as well trying to track and keep the subject in the frame but autofocus seems to be doing a good good
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job and so as far as the actual Focus I give it very good results for that particularly for being such an extreme
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focal length and zoom range so how about the image quality I'm going to give you the overview here and then those of you
21:11
that want the deeper dive that will come at the end of the video this is a hugely complex lens 27 elements in 19 groups I
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think it ties with the sigma 60 to 600 uh DN sport lens as the most complex
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lenses that I have ever tested in terms of their Optical designs so there's a lot of elements six of those are extra
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lad dispersion elements you can see from the MTF chart that it looks really quite
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good and uh it's very sharp in the center of the frame and 400 MM in it
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kind of slowly drifts towards the edge on the 800 mm end it's really there's quite a difference between the two axes
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and so one drops while the other stays pretty flat now what's interesting here is that Sony's mtfs show wide open and
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they show f8 so you may have picked up at the 800 mm in because the maximum aperture is f8 it shows f8 twice there
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and so if it doesn't look like it it gets any better when it stops down that's because there is no stop down between wide open and f8 in this
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particular case now what I found when I begin to test other things is that I found that there is a minimal amount of
22:18
fringing in that sequence where I was shooting the runner in the Fieldhouse I saw a little bit of green fringing in an
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open door where there was a really bright transition area but it was just really really minor and then these other
22:31
shots with the geese out on the ice you know lots of opportunities there for fringing and frankly I really didn't see
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any and so I think overall that's not going to be an issue I also didn't really see any kind of issue with lateral chromatic aberration near the
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edge of the frame as I looked testing for vignette and Distortion what I found
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on the Distortion front is that it's all pen cushion Distortion to varying degrees and I actually found that it
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kind of fluctuated a little bit up and down as I move forward and so you know starting at 400 millim I saw about a
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minus four to correct and so a minor amount of pincushion Distortion it fluctuated as high as
23:10
aus6 and then it was as little at the 800 millimeter and as a minus three what
23:17
I also found is that vignette was consistently very very low surprisingly
23:22
low throughout that Zoom range only about a stop maximum at any given point and you can see at this sh for example
23:29
this is around 700 mm wide open no correction and you can see that even though we've got nothing but snow in the
23:35
lower right corner of this image you'll see no U no Vin yet there and that's with zero correction so I think that
23:42
that is pretty fantastic it is very good at keeping a even illumination all across the frame so how about the
23:49
sharpness of the image I did a a multiple test here to try to you know callate the results make sure I got as
23:55
consistent as possible because again there's a lot of EXT EXT variables when you're shooting with something that's this long and what I found is that at 4
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mm the results are fairly good um good sharpness across the frame contrast is
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okay but not amazing in my experience and my test however again as I looked at
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that and I said well that's good but I think I I feel like I've seen better so I went to compare with the 200 to 600
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millim lens that I have you know found in a lot of comparisons is as good or better than any of the competition that
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I've tested it against and what I found is that 400 mm I found this to be just a
24:32
little bit sharper and so um you know that's great if it's taking something that I already considered to be kind of
24:38
the standard Bearer and it's even a a hair better than that that's obviously great what I found also is that when I
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stopped it down there is a minor Improvement a little bit more contrast but nothing significant and so probably
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not much you're really going to pick up on in without looking at it at extreme
24:56
levels of magnification now when I sto the lens on down remember that that minimum apture here on the wide end is
25:04
f36 you're going to want to avoid that because defraction particularly on a high resolution body is going to really
25:10
Hammer image quality you can see it's a lot softer at f36 than it was at f11
25:16
moving on in the zoom range I found at 500 mm that it probably achieved Peak sharpness it was definitely uh sharper
25:23
better contrast and that was consistent across the frame I was very impressed at those results and so that's a great
25:30
focal length if you're shooting at 500 mm you're going to probably get the best results out of the lens moving on to 600
25:36
mm I found that the results were not quite as good as at 500 millim and again
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when I went back to test with the 200 to 600 millimet I felt like at 600 millim I
25:46
did slightly favor the results from the 200 to 600 millim but again that's at
25:51
high levels of magnification with them side by side moving on to 7 and then 800
25:57
mm I found it 800 mm that results were good but contrast is a little bit lower
26:03
but what's interesting is that even if you stop down just that 1third stop from f8 to F9 it's actually surprising how
26:10
much contrast improves and you can see it here in this chart test so I thought well is that going to be true in a real
26:15
world result and so I I shot another series of comparisons and you can see here in in anywhere where I look at it
26:23
that there's definitely more contrast at F9 than what there is at f8 and and so
26:28
uh that's a little bit of a pro tip there if you're shooting with this lens you know oneir less stop of light is not
26:35
going to make a significant difference but the Improvement in image quality is probably worth doing it now what's
26:42
interesting is that if I put the 1.4 times on the 200 to 600 I can get up to
26:47
840 mm at F9 on the telephoto in so if I compare 840 mm and that combo to 800 mm
26:55
here both of them at F9 you can see that the uh 400 to 800 millimeter is
27:00
definitely better and so um if you're looking to have good image quality at 800 millim then this is the way to go
27:09
the overall rendering I feel like this lens is optimized to try to get as much sharpness as possible out of it the boa
27:16
is okay I find that it can be a little bit busy with these kinds of um focal
27:22
length it seems like at least you know in the time I'm shooting right now is the ugly season of the year so there's a lot of just bare stuff in the background
27:29
I found that the Boke looked a little bit busy to my eye in a number of different shots a lot of stuff is going
27:34
to be in the transition zone particularly if you're shooting at a you kind of a distant subject and then the background it's it's not a great ratio
27:41
now if you get close to a subject you can obviously completely blur out of background and of course the bokeh is
27:46
going to look fine there but I would say that if you want amazing bokeh at long focal links you probably need to pay for
27:53
one of the higher end prime lenses or haven't tested it yet maybe a lens like
27:58
the new uh you know Sigma 300 to 500 mm F4 lens like that is might give you a
28:04
little bit more blurred out backgrounds I also found though I didn't really point it into the Sun a whole lot
28:11
that the flare resistance is good overall uh this is obviously can get you to a very narrow angle of view and so
28:17
perhaps the need to shoot right into the Sun is going to be pretty rare but Sony's Coatings are great and flare
28:23
resistance is good so my conclusion is this I I recognize that for most photographers this this lens is going to
28:29
be somewhat of a novelty it's you know it's we like looking at lenses like this
28:34
but most people they're just not interested in carrying something this big and this heavy around and obviously
28:39
it's also going to be at $2,800 us it's going to be somewhat prohib expensive
28:45
for a lot of people and so they're probably going to be content with one of the $1,200 to $1,500 lenses from Tamron
28:52
or Sigma that aren't as Extreme as this but much more affordable and maybe a little bit smaller and easier to carry
28:58
around but for a certain niche of photographer this is going to be a game-changing kind of lens because all
29:04
of a sudden it opens up completely New Horizons in terms of overall length this
29:09
is the first Sony Zoom to reach 800 mm and as we've just seen it does so quite
29:14
competently and while $2,800 sounds expensive if you're accustomed to
29:20
looking at lenses you know below a th000 or you know from ,000 to $1,500 you know
29:25
the truth of the matter is that this lens is $10,000 000 cheaper than the you know the primes that are the closest to
29:33
getting to this kind of focal length and so in that sense it's quite a good value
29:39
it really all depends on your perspective I will also note that lenses like this have a steeper learning curve
29:45
than more accessible lenses you have to learn how to use them right you have to learn the conditions where they actually
29:51
work you have to be a little more intentional about making sure you have the right lighting conditions and so yes
29:56
they do involve some work how however this is a lens that's going to enable you to get photos that maybe you were
30:02
unable to get before it's got fast autofocus it's got good Optics it handles great it's heavy but it handles
30:09
great and so this may be the lens that you have been waiting for and if you want even more information about it you
30:16
can check out my full text review that's Linked In the description down below and there is also buying links in the
30:22
description if you would like to purchase one for yourself or get a pre-order in right now and of course if you want an even deeper dive into the
30:28
optical performance stay tuned we're going to jump into it together right now okay let's start by taking a look at the
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different framing options available so we got 400 MM we have 800 millim if we take a look here at 400 millim in the
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center of the frame here with a still static subject you can see detail looks really really great and we as we pan
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over we can see that it's pretty consistent right off to the edge of the frame we look over here on the right
30:53
side we can see that contrast isn't as strong in my opinion uh if if we look at
30:58
the 800 mm end but it looks pretty decent you can see that the corners look a little bit softer relative to what we
31:06
see at 400 MM end now for the sake of
31:11
bringing all my charts outside I took just the one chart and so we can see that there is some pin cushion
31:17
Distortion at 400 MM fairly mild and you can see here in my correction on the
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right side I used a plus or excuse me a minus four to correct for the pin cushion to Distortion you can see nice
31:29
straight lines all around no problem there and vignette is really quite minimal this is about a plus 301 to
31:36
correct for as I went throughout the zoom range I found that there was a little bit of a seesaw up and down in
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terms of the quantity of the pin cushion Distortion the most I saw was about minus 6 and so all relatively mild and
31:49
the actual amount of vignette was just consistently really quite low at 800 mm
31:56
I saw even a hair less of the pin cushion Distortion this is only a minus three to correct four so you know kind
32:03
of one percentage point less vignette is incredibly low as you can see it really doesn't look all that much difference
32:09
I've added a little bit about a plus 29 to correct for vignette but it stays
32:14
really really mild and so you can see it's really quite uh evenly illuminated across the frame this is probably the
32:21
worst example that I saw at any point of any kind of fringing you can see we've got a really bright high contrast and
32:27
Open Door and so you know the light coming through there's just that tiny bit of fringing
32:32
there but again this is the worst that I saw at any point so nothing to be concerned about here we can see that
32:39
lateral style chromatic aberration are really just not a problem there's no nothing showing up in terms of the
32:45
transition here from black to white now here is the test chart and so we're going to be looking at 200%
32:52
magnification 61 megapixels and so in the middle of the frame at 400 mm you
32:57
can see as we saw in the real world shot it really looks quite good pretty good contrast and detail and uh as we move
33:04
over here towards the mid-frame again still looking quite good and as we pan on down towards the corner we can see
33:11
that really the corners look quite good and so a really consistent performance across the frame if we put that into
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perspective with the 200 to 600 mm here at 400 we can see that you know there
33:24
there's a little bit of give and take there uh I would say just a little bit more detail on the 400 to 800 mm
33:33
contrast is arguably a hair better on the 200 to 600 we look at this Zone
33:39
however there's no question that the uh 200 or excuse me the 400 to 800 is resolving better I mean that detail
33:45
looks great you can see it's a little bit more blurry looking even though contrast looks quite good down here into
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the corner and again you can see that the amount of information that is resolved is just a little bit better
33:57
than what we're seeing on the 200 to 600 if we pop up and look in this Zone it's
34:02
kind of a wash to me they look roughly similar up into this corner I think maybe the 200 to 600 looks a little bit
34:10
better up in this corner stopping down to f8 you can see does give us a
34:15
contrast boost that the blacks look a little bit darker here I would say that things are resolving just a little bit
34:22
better we look back here into the mid-frame and you can see that it's not super pronounced but uh definitely some
34:28
improvement there we look up into this corner and I would say yes I'm seeing a little bit of improvement there as well
34:35
f11 is the last place you can go before defraction really starts to affect things and you can see that uh here at
34:43
f36 defraction has just demolished the image quality and so I would avoid you
34:50
know shooting at anything F-16 would be the absolute last I would go but
34:55
anything beyond that I would completely avoid on a high resolution body Now by 500 mm I think we hit what I consider
35:02
the Peak Performance for this lens you can see that the contrast is noticeably higher at 500 mm versus 400 MM Zone if
35:11
we look here in the mid-frame really quite obvious I mean it looks really gorgeous uh great detail great contrast
35:18
up here into this upper left corner again and you can see just a really noticeable difference there um look at
35:24
this Zone here versus here pretty remarkable difference now maximum apture is f7.1 at 500 MIM by 600 mm it is now
35:33
f8 where it's going to stay throughout the rest of the zoom range we can see that there's a pretty obvious decline in
35:40
terms of overall resolution just mostly it's the contrast just doesn't look quite as good uh looking at this Zone
35:46
you can see what I'm talking about there's still I mean there's lots of things being resolved there you can just see that the contrast doesn't look as
35:53
good there so there's just kind of a little bit of haze over the textures if I I bring the 200 to 600 millim back in
36:00
here at 600 mm we can see that it's got the edge at 600 millim you can just see
36:05
the contrast is better even its ability to resolve is improved there uh going up
36:11
into the mid-frame we can see that it's maybe not as pronounced here but definitely still better overall we'll
36:17
take a look in this upper left corner and we can see that it's pretty similar there down in the lower right corner I
36:24
would say that the 400 to 800 has a very slight Edge if we pop over into this
36:30
Zone looking roughly similar over on this side again more similar than different at 700 mm we can see a fairly
36:38
similar performance to 600 mm looking good but not necessarily great it's
36:44
resolving a lot of information but contrast doesn't jump off the page Corners are looking pretty decent
36:49
however and so it's holding up on its image quality fairly well here's some quick real world perspective near 700 mm
36:57
with a fairly still subject I mean I think that's a pretty pretty great amount of information that's being
37:03
resolved there so uh I don't think I have much of a complaint about that so finally near 800 mm it's very similar to
37:10
what we saw at 700 mm in that detail is good contrast is just okay now this
37:17
actually looks quite good here in the mid-frame and down into the corner Corners are holding up fairly well so
37:23
overall a pretty good performance just contrast isn't mind-blowing as noted however even at 200% magnification if
37:30
you'll stop down even just that oneir stop to F9 you can see that it really
37:35
makes a difference in improving that contrast it actually improves really quite quickly and so everything looks a
37:41
little bit deeper if we look in some of these zones you can just see that more of the textures pop on here on the right
37:48
side and that's due to just improv contrast so it's definitely worth that little bit of stop down at F9 if you
37:56
want that extra bit of top of resolution if we compare the 800 mm at F9 of the
38:03
400 to800 versus the 200 600 with the 1.4 times that gets us up to 840 mm you
38:10
can see you're definitely going to get a better result at 800 millim on the uh the 400 to 800 and so pretty obvious
38:17
difference in the middle in the mid-frame you can see still that it's just a better contrast better detail
38:25
better performance there down into the corners pretty obvious win uh there and up into this corner as well you can see
38:32
a nice amount of centering and just an overall better performance versus the
38:37
telecon converter combination and how about if we throw on the teleconverter and so here on the wide end it becomes
38:45
560 mm and F9 on the telephoto end with the 1.4 times it becomes 1120 mm at f11
38:54
and so we can see looking in at both of these obviously you're going to get higher performance on the wide end it's
39:01
you know it's for a variety of reasons but you can see that it's certainly still a usable amount of image quality
39:07
here even at 1120 mm just not incredibly sharp but I think that if you did a
39:13
little bit of work with that if you you know this is again this is high resolution if you scaled that down a
39:19
little bit I think it' probably look just fine now here's the look at the maximum magnification on the 400 mm end
39:26
and again I think that the you know the result holds up pretty well here pretty good detail and contrast looks good
39:33
there uh this is an example of you know what you can do in Catching something in Flight here and this is probably one of
39:40
my favorite images out of my review period with this you can see the detail looks great there and a great looking
39:47
image since we've already looked at flare resistance let's just end this off by taking a look at the rendering and
39:53
boket quality so as mentioned if you get really close to a subject as we've got here you can strongly blur out the
39:59
background and the bokeh is great image like this however with some complicated
40:04
layers I just find that that looks a little bit busy to my eye I also don't love these kind of elements with the
40:11
bright kind of specular highlights there and so that isn't fantastic this to my
40:17
eye looks kind of busy and so um you know the it's just it's not a great
40:22
ratio of my distance to my subject and then the distance to the background here's a kind of of a more moderate
40:28
result where my distance to the subject isn't too bad and then the distance to the background there's still some stuff
40:33
in the transition zone but we'll call this the neutral shot and I think it looks okay so in other words you're just
40:39
going to have to be selective about your backgrounds and what you put in the frame thanks for sticking around to the
40:44
very end I hope that the Deep dive into the Optics has helped you to understand whether or not this is the lens for you
40:51
as always thanks for watching have a great day and let the light in [Music]
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