It's definitely impressive how light these lenses are, and they seem fairly priced. I didn't think the 400mm f4.5 would be about 40% lighter and cheaper than the 100-400mm f4.5.
Personally, I am curious to see how they handle the TC 2x. A 40mm f4.5 / 560mm f6.3 / 800mm f9 all in one could be very convenient. At first, the 100-400mm f4.5 was tempting me as a one lens telephoto solution, but the 2x performance seems to be a bit hit or miss, unlike the 300mm f2.8. Hopefully the new lenses being primes will perform closer to the 300mm f2.8 with TCs.
Overall, I am sure these will be popular lenses for Sony wildlife photographers looking for a lighter lens, or for Sony photographers starting to get into wildlife photography. I can't deny, though, that part of me is a bit disappointed that 3+ years after Nikon released similar lenses, Sony didn't do something even more unique, like make them a 400mm f4 and 600mm f5.6. We now have basically 4 ways to get to 600/560mm f6.3. 200-600mm f6.3, 600mm f6.3, 400mm f4.5 + TC 1.4x, and 100-400mm f4.5 + TC 1.4x
Sep 15, 2026 at 02:13 PM
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