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 p.15 #12 · Sony FE 400-800mm f/6.3-8 G OSS Image Thread | |
I am new to the 400-800mm club :-)
I shoot landscapes and I like to shoot Moon with landscape alignments and I felt sometimes my Tamron 50-400 on A7RV is not enough. In warm months air distortion destroys image quality at 400mm already, but in cold months longer could be beneficial. I am not a birder, but I will definitely try birding now that I have a long lens.
I have investigated few lenses: 200-600/5.6-6.3, Sigma 500/5.6 (with TC hack) and 400-800/6.3-8.
I visited two shops several times. I tested on my A4-format printed test target at 9m, far from my desired use case which is near infinity, but it was only consistent target that I could use to have comparable pictures across four visits and two places. I tested two 200-600, one second hand Sigma 500 and three 400-800. For landscapes I was interested in sharpness not just in center but also on sides and a bit in corners too. It turned out that there was a quite a difference between copies of the lenses.
I tested mainly at f/8, from tripod with 10s delayed electronic shutter, but in later days I took a range of apertures.
The good 200-600 was perfect at 600 right to the sides. The first 400-800 was same in center, but corners were quite worse. At 800mm the center had definitely more detail than what 200-600mm delivered. But corners were again worse. It could be DoF issue though as I was not completely perpendicular to target (about 0.5m off at 9m) due to space constraints (I have made sure to be perpendicular in further tests). But at those 600mm it was fair in comparison with 200-600.
The Sigma 500/5.6 was something that I would consider only if it would work well with TC as 400mm vs 500mm is not that big difference. The Sigma 500 I tried had one worse corner, otherwise it was okish. With TC (I have used on-off-on trick for MF for testing, for actual use I would count on modifying TC to bypass its chip which works for AF according to reports I read), the bad corner was out of frame but still it was weaker side. Center quality was about similar to the good 200-600 at 600, but less contrast and a bit more barrel distortion (LrC did not have profile for it as it was marked as generic 500/5.6 lens (no mention of Sigma in lens name) and also it did not automatically apply LaCA correction, but manual LaCA correction worked well). Maybe it could be better with another copy, but that was not available anywhere to test. A user on reddit that mentioned using Sigma 500 with TC in MF recently replied to my question on it and he/she mentioned that Sigma 500 without TC on A1 II has much lower BiF focus rate than on his/hers previous A1 I so much that he/she had sold it. So future compatibility was also a concern.
The second 400-800 I tried was absolutely perfect at 800mm. Sharp to the corners without stopping down. The problem was that it was weak at 600mm on one side, even in center it had to be stopped down to f/9 for full sharpness and on that side it need to be at f/11 for good but not perfect sharpness. Other day I re-tested it to see what happens at other focal lengths and it was weak for any focal length except 800mm (I tried 400, 500, 600, 700, 800; for 600 and 800 the results were same as the other day). For 800mm with 1.4 TC it looked good, but I felt like there is no more detail compared to no TC. So TC is not worth it on 60MP. I tried also second 200-600 which was a bit worse than the first one at 600mm. I tested this one also with 1.4 TC at 840mm. It was much worse with the TC than the 400-800 at 800, especially outside of center.
The third 400-800 I tested was tiny bit worse than the second perfect one at 800 at sides (stopping down improved them a bit), but unlike the second one it was good (but not perfect) at other focal lengths. This is the one I bought. This one was freshly unboxed unlike two others which were in glass cabinets in the shops. I guess those might be from online shopping returns waiting for in-store customer to buy them as new while online they would have to be marked as opened.
So far I have tested my new lens on mid and long distance horizon and it seems it is ok. I have also took the Moon picture. For this time without a landscape, the Moon was high in the sky so less air in the way compared to what I will be able to get with landscape.
Technique: A7RV, 400-800 at 800 (no TC) on tripod, intervalometer, ES, OSS off, cropped (image is full remaining resolution if your browser does not scale it down), median of 84 aligned good photos selected from about 200 total, selective sharpening, saturation increased (but not extremely like some people like to do), taken on 9th Dec 2025.
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) which is why I still have a fair bit of GAS for getting one.