(Personally, I’m not buying the idea that a lens must creep in order to have a smooth and effective zoom mechanism. I’ve never heard of another lens where new copies behaved this way.)
No one said a lens must creep to have a smooth zoom ring. The smoothest zoom ring I've ever used is the Sony 200-600 and that has no creep.
But with the design of the elements in this lens it obviously had enough weight to allow some creep.
Steve Perry pointed out in his first review that the lens changes balance on a gimbal when zoomed from 100 to 400. That is not a common thing for internal zooms that I'm aware of.
But that shows us these elements that are moving are of considerable mass.
As pointed out previously on this thread if Sony had just left the lens with no adjustment to the smoothness and it just worked like it does on the current Tight setting then no one would be talking about this.
Sony made the design choice to allow a looser setting and designed in the switch. I'm sure they were aware the lens would creep as otherwise there is no point to the switch as it isn't designed to be a tight lock on Tight.
The issue seems to be the tolerance in the mechanism resulting in a range of resistance. Not sure why there is so much variability??
My issue would be having too tight of a lens OR a lens that still creeps on Tight setting. So I'm okay with the lens as it is. I'm actually very interested to try my friend's copy that seems to creep very fast. His might be an even better lens than mine as long as it doesn't creep on Tight. An even smoother/looser zoom on Loose would be killer for swallows in flight!!
If it was a design choice, then why does it apparently not affect all copies of the lens? And if it was a choice to allow “creep,” does that then mean that lenses that don’t creep should go back for warranty service.
You may or may not be right that it is intentional, but everyone is simply guessing about this… and the fact that it apparently only affects a subset of the lenses suggests at least the possibility that it is manufacturing bug (one way or the other) with early copies of the lens.
It sounds like a great lens otherwise, so let’s hope that Sony can clear this up and let us know whether the “should creep” or “supposed to creep” lenses are the correct ones.
It isn’t that it creeps or that it doesn’t creep that raises the question — it is which is the correct, intended behavior.
We need to have a little patience. I’m sure this will get sorted out.
Jul 07, 2026 at 10:43 PM
Previous versions of gdanmitchell's message #17068123 « Sony 100-400 F4.5 Internal Zoom Creep ? »
