Click to Enlarge This full-framer boasts topdrawer materials, solid construction, flawless optics and fast, silent autofocus. The street price, $1,600, is high-end, too. Made for Sony’s Alpha 900, it scales up to 105–600mm on bodies with APSsize sensors. And it has a 5.7X internalfocusing zoom, two ED elements to suppress color fringing, and rounded aperture blades for better bokeh.
Heavy and long (15.4 inches with the petal-style hood), it has an unusual silvery matte finish. AF torque is surprisingly high, with split-second start/stop timing and moderately fast speeds. The zoom ring turns stiffly across a broad radius; manual-focus action is very well damped and smooth. There’s a dual-range focus limiter (full and nonmacro ranges), tripod collar, and access port in the hood for adjusting filters. Three perfectly positioned AF-stop buttons circle the barrel.
On our test bench, SQF results were Excellent at 70mm and 135mm, dipping only to Very Good at 400mm—the best of any long tele zoom we’ve seen. DxO Analyzer 3.0.2 tests found superb control of distortion—slightly better than Tokina’s 80–400mm f/4.5–5.6 ($650, street). Light falloff handily beat the Tokina, as did maximum magnification ratios.
An optical superstar, this lens is a natural for wildlife and sports. And you can mount one of Sony’s manual-focus teleconverters to reach an equivalent 1200mm on APS-sensor Alpha bodies.
Certified Test Results
-Distortion: At 70mm, 0.01%
(Imperceptible) pincushion. At 135mm, 300mm, and 400mm, 0.18% (Slight) pincushion.
- Light falloff: At 70mm, f/5. At 135mm and 300mm, none. At 400mm, f/6.3.
-Close-focusing distance: 55 inches.
-Maximum magnification ratio:
At 70mm, 1:15.40.
At 135mm, 1:8.16.At 300mm, 1:4.01.
At 400mm: 1:3.16.
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