arbitrage wrote:
My plan is to keep my 300GM and use it mostly at 300 and 420 going forward.
I will get the 600/6.3 to have a lighter lens AND the biggest advantage for me is having that option to hit 840/9 which I can't do with the 300GM.
But I totally understand that a 300GM user doesn't really need these new lenses as the 300GM is just so good even with the TCs. I do use mine at 600mm 50% or more of the time.
This is why I wish we had of seen a 400 f/4 GM released as the more useful for wildlife, longer FL brother to the 300, with identical optical performance with the TC's. 560 f/5.6 and 800 f/8 would be nice. f/5.6 stays under the diffraction limit of the A7RVI too.
Glad I pre-ordered 400. I didn't have any doubt about the lens alone or with 1.4X. I was curious about 2X combo. Looks like with ideal light it can produce usable images at 800mm
Crops : Raw opened in PS without NR/Sharpening. 100% crops from A7RVI at 1/500sec, f/9
Full frame : Processed
Last one : cropped to 30MP (using 2X). Effective FL = 1100mm
Comparison of the 400/600 with the 200-600 and a few test chart images vs the 600 f4
No one that has the new 600 seems to have the 300+2x TC to compare it to though haha, that's what we really want to see! Interesting results in 600 6.3 vs 600f4, closer than I would have thought they'd be and yeha really expected the 600 6.3 to be better than 200-600, contrary to what a chart says. The internet is full of comments like why $1600 more for same 6.3. Maybe i'm the minority because I don't like using zoom lens for birds, because if I had a 200-600, it would be stuck on 600 about 98% of the time. Oh no, a bird is too close, i can't zoom out to get the shot. I'll live. How often does that happen? But the versatlity!
Pixel Perfect wrote:
Bingo. People should also realise the 600 and 400 have the same ight gathering abilities with ~ 89mm apertures. If you are FL limited the 400mm cropped to 600mm loses all the advantages of the faster aperture.
There's no correct answer for which is best, it's highly circumstantial. I use a 600mm a lot more than I use a 400mm, but I live in Australia, we don't have large mammals and most of them are nocturnal anyway. So I usually only shoot birds and a lot of wading birds. It's not often I'm not FL limited even with 600mm unless it's the big waders like egrets and herons. My Nikon 800mm has helped me a lot in that regard. I would love to see Sony offer a sub 2kg 800 f/6.3 down the track.
For me 100-400 f/4.5 + 600 f/6.3 combo would be ideal. I would prefer the Sony 100-400 f/4.5 to my Nikon 400 f/4.5 because it's a lot more versatile lens when I'm not birding and also better in tighter quarters shooting some smaller birds with much superior close focus....Show more →
I’m still not in line with this argument. Aperture is aperture when it comes to exposure. If the full 600 frame indicates an exposure of 1/2500 at f6.3 at iso 1600, then we could shoot that same scene with a 400 at 1/2500 at f4.5 and iso 800; and then crop the 400 to match the 600’s FoV and still maintain identical exposures. DoF would in fact be almost the same after the crop, but exposures remain 1 stop apart. We are not talking photons on the sensor, we are talking exposure. We don’t need to add exposure in order to crop.
Don’t get me wrong, there are dozens of reasons to not want to crop, but exposure isn’t one of them.
pdog109 wrote:
Maybe i'm the minority because I don't like using zoom lens for birds, because if I had a 200-600, it would be stuck on 600 about 98% of the time. Oh no, a bird is too close, i can't zoom out to get the shot. I'll live. How often does that happen? But the versatlity!
Well, last fall I was in Alaska photographing the bald eagles in Haynes. I was using my 400-800mm and did find that I had quite a few images in the 400-500mm range. One of my favorite images was taken at 400mm with a mountain in the distance with spectacular light and an eagle flying by it. We were on a boat going between Juneau and Haynes and a sea otter popped up near the boat. If I had a fixed 600mm I would have gotten it's mustache . In both of those cases there was no time to swap lenses. Additionally, it was useful on some occasions to zoom out to pick up the eagle flying in the falling snow, zoom in and get locked on prior to something interesting happening. As has been said a few times, different styles for different people. If fixed focal length works for you, great. But fixed focal lengths will limit what you can capture in certain situations that do occur, whether you want to recognize it or not.
I went back and looked at where my images were taken for my 400-800mm and then more recently with the limited shooting with my 100-400mm f/4.5 and they are pretty well distributed across the range of both lenses. Not a ton at 100mm on the 100-400, but certainly down to 200mm.
That said, there are limitations to the big heavy zooms and 600 f/4's. For one, getting them on a domestic flight in some countries with their ridiculous 7 or 10 kg weight limits for carry on bags is problematic. Particularly if you want to bring additional lenses for landscape work, etc. In those cases and where one has to hand hold all day or has very limited space to work, these new lenses are an interesting and much more affordable option to the 400mm f/2.8 and 600mm f/4.
It is a bit of a pain to do, but if you pull up both of Dustin Abbott's reviews and look where he shows the test chart with the 400mm with 1.4x and then the 600, the 400 w/ 1.4x looks to my eyes as having more contrast and maybe a little more sharpness than the 600. That holds center, mid range and corners. That 400mm is pretty stunning optical quality even with the the 1.4x. The 400 was marginally sharper than the 100-400 f/4.5 at 400mm in the center. I would like to see comparison of the 400mm and the 100-400mm f/4.5 with 1.4x at 560mm. Would be interesting.
The Viltrox 2x is degrading things by his tests, but more usable than the 600mm with 2x. I would like to see tests with the Sony 2x.
Jack Flesher wrote:
With these being so lightweight and relatively affordable, I wonder if the 600/4 and 400/2.8 resale market will tank? My guess is yes…
Well, there is a 600mm f/4 for $9000 on the B&S right now. That is the lowest asking price I have seen. Looks to be in decent shape as well, but can't totally see that due to cover on the lens.
Jack Flesher wrote:
With these being so lightweight and relatively affordable, I wonder if the 600/4 and 400/2.8 resale market will tank? My guess is yes…
Even without these new lenses, there should be some deprecation because of the fact that they were released in 2019/8 respectively, and more lightweight successors are anticipated for both with or without TCs.
Jack Flesher wrote:
I’m still not in line with this argument. Aperture is aperture when it comes to exposure. If the full 600 frame indicates an exposure of 1/2500 at f6.3 at iso 1600, then we could shoot that same scene with a 400 at 1/2500 at f4.5 and iso 800; and then crop the 400 to match the 600’s FoV and still maintain identical exposures. DoF would in fact be almost the same after the crop, but exposures remain 1 stop apart. We are not talking photons on the sensor, we are talking exposure. We don’t need to add exposure in order to crop.
Don’t get me wrong, there are dozens of reasons to not want to crop, but exposure isn’t one of them. ...Show more →
By definition, the exposure is light per unit sensor area, and this is indicated by the ISO alone.
Cropping a 400 mm image to 600 mm means a crop factor of 1.5 - this is close enough to 1 stop; thus, the crop should be practically equivalent to 600 mm f/6.3 if the full-sized image was at 400mm f/4.5.
The other things that you have said are less clear. For example "We are not talking photons on the sensor, we are talking exposure" is contradictory, because the exposure is light (photons) per unit sensor area.
"DoF would in fact be almost the same after the crop" - the DoF shall be the same as that of a 600mm f/6.3 image. It is not going to be the same as that of a 600mm f/4.5 image.
"but exposures remain 1 stop apart" - yes, the ISO for the crop should be equivalent to 800 x 1.5^2 = 1800 (close enough to 1600).
The original argument "the 600 and 400 have the same light gathering abilities with ~ 89mm apertures" is confusing because it silently assumes the same luminous flux. There is a difference, however. The 600 and 400 mm lenses have different angles of view. I expect that the luminous flux from the larger field of view at 400mm should deliver more light (more lumens) than the 600 mm lens can gather from the more narrow field of view (assuming the same luminosity).
Dustin Abbott just released his 600 F6.3 GM review. I thought this was an interesting comparison that I was able to make by downloading some of his test chart images.
Looks to me that the 400 F4.5 + 1.4x TC is at worst indistinguishable, and most likely slightly sharper with better contrast, from the 600 F6.3 bare lens. The bare 400 F4.5 looks sharper than the bare 600 F6.3. This makes sense given the optical similarity of the lenses.
Where this falls apart is that the 400 + 2x TC is massively worse than the 600 + 1.4x TC, which was slightly surprising to me. Both lenses frankly look bad with the 2x TC. So the question is really do you want a 400/560 or a 600/840?
Personally, I'm still torn between 100-400 F4.5 + 600 F6.3 or just rolling with a 400 F4.5 + 1.4 TC for my telephoto needs for now. But this makes a compelling case to start with the 400 F4.5 and keep my 70-200 GM II and see how far those 2 lenses + TCs as needed gets me.
ruthenium wrote:
By definition, the exposure is light per unit sensor area, and this is indicated by the ISO alone.
Cropping a 400 mm image to 600 mm means a crop factor of 1.5 - this is close enough to 1 stop; thus, the crop should be practically equivalent to 600 mm f/6.3 if the full-sized image was at 400mm f/4.5.
The other things that you have said are less clear. For example "We are not talking photons on the sensor, we are talking exposure" is contradictory, because the exposure is light (photons) per unit sensor area.
"DoF would in fact be almost the same after the crop" - the DoF shall be the same as that of a 600mm f/6.3 image. It is not going to be the same as that of a 600mm f/4.5 image.
"but exposures remain 1 stop apart" - yes, the ISO for the crop should be equivalent to 800 x 1.5^2 = 1800 (close enough to 1600).
The original argument "the 600 and 400 have the same light gathering abilities with ~ 89mm apertures" is confusing because it silently assumes the same luminous flux. There is a difference, however. The 600 and 400 mm lenses have different angles of view. I expect that the luminous flux from the larger field of view at 400mm should deliver more light (more lumens) than the 600 mm lens can gather from the more narrow field of view (assuming the same luminosity)....Show more →
Then how come in my camera if I switch from full frame to APSC mode, the exposure of a full blue sky image remains identical?
Dustin Abbott just released his 600 F6.3 GM review. I thought this was an interesting comparison that I was able to make by downloading some of his test chart images.
Looks to me that the 400 F4.5 + 1.4x TC is at worst indistinguishable, and most likely slightly sharper with better contrast, from the 600 F6.3 bare lens. The bare 400 F4.5 looks sharper than the bare 600 F6.3. This makes sense given the optical similarity of the lenses.
Where this falls apart is that the 400 + 2x TC is massively worse than the 600 + 1.4x TC, which was slightly surprising to me. Both lenses frankly look bad with the 2x TC. So the question is really do you want a 400/560 or a 600/840?
Personally, I'm still torn between 100-400 F4.5 + 600 F6.3 or just rolling with a 400 F4.5 + 1.4 TC for my telephoto needs for now. But this makes a compelling case to start with the 400 F4.5 and keep my 70-200 GM II and see how far those 2 lenses + TCs as needed gets me.
These samples don't look right as far as the 600GM is concerned. If that is really as good as that lens gets, I will not buy it, the difference with the 600/4GM will simply be too big.
Wide open, the new 600/6.3GM should produce tack sharp results, with TC on it is credible that the samples will have a fuzziness that resembles looking through overdue glasses, or that they look like they suffer from slight motion blur, but I would not expect, neither accept that from a bare GM lens wide open, even when it has f6.3 as a maximum aperture.
Question is why the samples from the bare 600/6.3 lack true detail and sharpness. Dustin Abbott admits he is totally unaccustomed to shooting at 600mm, and perhaps the circumstances were not quite right, but really, the bare 600/6.3 GM should at the véry least beat the 400/4.5GM with 1.4TC.
And I believe a good copy will do that easily, otherwise the 600/6.3GM has no raison d'être, Sony could have just made the 400/4.5GM and left it at that, with a little promotion of its TC's. For those that would argue that you cannot get to 1200mm that way, I would say that I don't want to know how Dustin's copy looks with the 2xTC.
For me it's the size and weight. The 100-400 range removes the need for the 70-200 + potentially a 2nd body which definitely mitigates some of that though. Obviously not as good in the 70-200 range but super versatile.
I'm really torn honestly. I think the 70-200 + 400 gives better field sports and close up wildlife results with the cost of two bodies or the pain of lens switching and/or TCs if needed. 400 prime is easier to handle and way lighter but is much more specific in what it can do.
I think the 400 and 100-400 comparisons are what I need now.
Ironbrew78 wrote:
I'm curious on the 400 prime vs the 100-400 f4.5 IQ comparison. I like the versatility of the zoom, but the price of the 400 prime is very tempting.
