Shooting experience

I’ve spent the past couple of weeks with both lenses ahead of launch, taking the 600mm F6.3 to photograph wildlife in Montana at Ninepipe National Wildlife Refuge and the CSKT Bison Range, where, frustratingly, I didn’t see a single bison.

The first thing I noticed is how little the lens feels like a super-telephoto. Sony’s 995g figure doesn’t include the hood, which you’ll almost certainly have attached and which adds roughly 130g, but you’re unlikely to notice much difference. More importantly, the lens’s weight is concentrated close to the camera, so it doesn’t feel front-heavy the way many telephotos do.

Dale Baskin

I shot entirely handheld on a Sony a7 V, which is really the point of this lens: it’s built for walking, not for sitting on a tripod. I wandered the refuge’s primitive dirt roads and marshy areas with nothing but the camera slung over my shoulder and a small pack. My tripod stayed in the car the entire trip.

That’s why I can (mostly) forgive the one design choice I’d change: the tripod foot isn’t Arca-Swiss compatible. It’s not the end of the world for a lens meant to be handheld, but when you do need a tripod – for video, for example – a built-in Arca-Swiss foot would be very useful.

Dale Baskin

The hood has a locking button and a rubber bumper on the front, which is a welcome touch, since a lens this long inevitably bumps into things as you carry it. It also reverses for storage. Reversed, it partially blocks the focus hold buttons, but the function and focus rings remain easy to reach, so if an opportunity appears suddenly, you can still raise the camera and shoot.

The focus ring is nice and deep, and full-time DMF lets you take over focusing without flipping a switch. When subject detection couldn’t pick out an animal partially hidden by grass or plants, a quick twist of the ring to bring it into focus was often the fastest way to get the camera to recognize the animal and begin tracking.

Dale Baskin

The trade-off for its compact size is the F6.3 maximum aperture. For sample galleries, we keep ISO as low as practical so noise doesn’t affect perceived sharpness; I generally aim for ISO 1600 or below, though it’s not a hard rule. With this lens, that target had to move. In early-morning light at Ninepipe, or in overcast or misty conditions, I often shot at ISO 2000–3200 to get shutter speeds fast enough to freeze wildlife in action.

When not shooting sample galleries, I might push to ISO 6400 or higher, and with modern full-frame sensors and AI Raw noise-reduction tools, that makes F6.3 less of a compromise than it once was. Still, if you regularly shoot in low light, you might be the target audience for Sony’s 600mm F4, which is 1.3 stops faster.

Dale Baskin

Even at F6.3, I generally had plenty of subject separation and found out-of-focus areas pleasing both in front of and behind the plane of focus. The one exception was when something busy, like tall grass, sat in an awkward middle zone – not sharp, but not blurred enough to disappear – where the bokeh could look slightly distracting, though that kind of transitional distance is a tough test for any lens.

For a closer look at the design and controls, and how both lenses fit into the market, check out our hands-on with the 400mm F4.5 and 600mm F6.3 GM.

Sample gallery

Sony

Sony FE 600mm F6.3 GM OSS

• 
  $3,698 at B&H