p.1 #1 · Prices of the Z 600mm f/6.3 PF and Z 400mm f/4.5 after Sony's announcement.
It looks like Sony is eliminating Nikon's monopoly on smaller, lighter wildlife lenses with their equivalents announced today. I am stunned by how aggressive Sony's pricing is. It makes me wonder if Sony is releasing these as loss leaders to steal wildlife photographers away from Nikon.
Do you foresee Nikon reducing the prices of the Z 400mm f/4.5 ($800 more expensive) and Z 600mm f/6.3 ($1500 more expensive)? I personally think Nikon must drastically reduce their prices if they hope to retain and attract new wildlife shooters.
p.1 #3 · Prices of the Z 600mm f/6.3 PF and Z 400mm f/4.5 after Sony's announcement.
Savviest wrote:
It looks like Sony is eliminating Nikon's monopoly on smaller, lighter wildlife lenses with their equivalents announced today. I am stunned by how aggressive Sony's pricing is. It makes me wonder if Sony is releasing these as loss leaders to steal wildlife photographers away from Nikon.
Do you foresee Nikon reducing the prices of the Z 400mm f/4.5 ($800 more expensive) and Z 600mm f/6.3 ($1500 more expensive)? I personally think Nikon must drastically reduce their prices if they hope to retain and attract new wildlife shooters.
Price and performance typically align, but not always. The 600 6.3 GM has looked a bit underwhelming in YouTube reviews and example photos. 400mm looks better. Plenty of comparisons will pop up when these are in released to public, but to your point I doubt most future buyers will even know if there is a difference in performance if there was one.
p.1 #4 · Prices of the Z 600mm f/6.3 PF and Z 400mm f/4.5 after Sony's announcement.
I think it's a bit more complicated. First, Nikon often does larger sales on their premium lenses, so the price difference if you wait for a sale won't be as large, probably about 1/2 of what it currently is. Second, to really take advantage of these lenses on Sony, you need a 6k+ camera. You can often find a Z8 new for $3,500 or less. So if you're buying into a system, or you need a wildlife camera, Nikon can still have a 2k+ advantage.
p.1 #5 · Prices of the Z 600mm f/6.3 PF and Z 400mm f/4.5 after Sony's announcement.
Ding ding ding.
DWOfPaul wrote:
I think it's a bit more complicated. First, Nikon often does larger sales on their premium lenses, so the price difference if you wait for a sale won't be as large, probably about 1/2 of what it currently is. Second, to really take advantage of these lenses on Sony, you need a 6k+ camera. You can often find a Z8 new for $3,500 or less. So if you're buying into a system, or you need a wildlife camera, Nikon can still have a 2k+ advantage.
p.1 #6 · Prices of the Z 600mm f/6.3 PF and Z 400mm f/4.5 after Sony's announcement.
Savviest wrote:
It looks like Sony is eliminating Nikon's monopoly on smaller, lighter wildlife lenses with their equivalents announced today. I am stunned by how aggressive Sony's pricing is. It makes me wonder if Sony is releasing these as loss leaders to steal wildlife photographers away from Nikon.
Do you foresee Nikon reducing the prices of the Z 400mm f/4.5 ($800 more expensive) and Z 600mm f/6.3 ($1500 more expensive)? I personally think Nikon must drastically reduce their prices if they hope to retain and attract new wildlife shooters.
NO. We don't want Nikon competing to the bottom. People can buy the still quite good 180-600/6.3 if they are wanting cheaper teles.
If you look at the block design for the Sony 600/6.3 it is similar to the SOny 600/4 GM, but with substitution of cheaper components. No FL glass is used. No fancy Extremely aspherics. I think they screwed up by making the 600/6.3 2kg like the better 400/4.5 of the same weight. The 600/6.3 PF has a more sophisticated optical design with fewer elements.
I would have rather paid $$$ for a more expensive 600/5.6 with very high IQ.
p.1 #7 · Prices of the Z 600mm f/6.3 PF and Z 400mm f/4.5 after Sony's announcement.
EB-1 wrote:
NO. We don't want Nikon competing to the bottom. People can buy the still quite good 180-600/6.3 if they are wanting cheaper teles.
If you look at the block design for the Sony 600/6.3 it is similar to the SOny 600/4 GM, but with substitution of cheaper components. No FL glass is used. No fancy Extremely aspherics. I think they screwed up by making the 600/6.3 2kg like the better 400/4.5 of the same weight. The 600/6.3 PF has a more sophisticated optical design with fewer elements.
I would have rather paid $$$ for a more expensive 600/5.6 with very high IQ.
I am interested to see just how Sony pulled off their 600mm f/6.3. Did they use phase phresnel glass elements like Nikon? Or did Sony simple use lighter/cheaper plastic elements?
p.1 #8 · Prices of the Z 600mm f/6.3 PF and Z 400mm f/4.5 after Sony's announcement.
It's like most of the modern fast tele primes, 400/2.8 and 600/4 for example, that have one full-diameter element at the front and many smaller/lighter elements further back. Presumably the casing is made of rather flimsy materials also.
p.1 #9 · Prices of the Z 600mm f/6.3 PF and Z 400mm f/4.5 after Sony's announcement.
Wait so Sony cheaped out on their premiere flagship badged lenses? What's the point of them being GM's then? EB-1 wrote:
It's like most of the modern fast tele primes, 400/2.8 and 600/4 for example, that have one full-diameter element at the front and many smaller/lighter elements further back. Presumably the casing is made of rather flimsy materials also.
p.1 #10 · Prices of the Z 600mm f/6.3 PF and Z 400mm f/4.5 after Sony's announcement.
In theory the Sony 600mm f6.3 could be a bit better optically since it uses a traditional lens design, so without a PF element it shouldn’t have the loss of contrast or the strange bokeh that some times happens with PF lenses.
Technically the Sony 400mm f4.5 and Sony 600mm f6.3 have very similar MTF curves, but early reports seam to favor the Sony 400mm f4.5. So we are going to need some more real world testing to understand how the Nikon and Sony 600mm f6.3 lenses stack up against each other in the real world.
p.1 #12 · Prices of the Z 600mm f/6.3 PF and Z 400mm f/4.5 after Sony's announcement.
Native lenses will work fine on any camera, Sony on Sony or Nikkor on Nikon. It's not like some oddball 3rd party lens.
The a7RVI will show the IQ limitations more than the low-res fast a9 III.
p.1 #13 · Prices of the Z 600mm f/6.3 PF and Z 400mm f/4.5 after Sony's announcement.
Nikon needs to wake up and get going, the differentiator it had in terms of wildlife lens options is slowly diminishing. Sony did a better implementation in terms of costs and weight, the quality of the 400mm looks spot on. It will be interesting to see the internal design of these lenses.
