hasenbein wrote:
All in all, obviously IQ of this lens is worse than that of the 50-400.
I am an avid pixel peeper, and with my two copies I had of the 28-200, I was really dissatisfied with the corners. 50-300 seems to be a similar story. With my 50-400, though, I was immediately astonished how good the corners are and how the performance holds up at 400mm.
So, while the compactness of the 50-300 surely is tempting, it's not an option for "downgrading" from the 50-400 if one wants really satisfying IQ.
And if you have 400mm,you WILL use it and you WILL like it, believe me 😉
Hi, I'm not sure that "obviously" that the 50-300 has worse IQ than the 50-400. Dustin Abbott's review shows poor corners on the former, but this is not corroborated by SonyAlphaBlog's review (which concludes the 50-400 is "a little bit less good optically"). I would imagine sample variation is coming into play here.
I do agree with you that if you have 400mm, you will use and like it.
The bigger barrier for me in terms of "downgrading" - something one always has to be aware of when buying third party lenses - is that resale value of the 50-400 has plummeted and grey imports in Hong Kong are being retailed at as little as GBP 650, and I don't see the retail price of the 50-400 being significantly cheaper. So in all likelihood I'd be making a financial loss if I were to "downgrade"!
