Finally a 'proper' long range lens for me for shooting birds. With the convenience of zoom from 200mm to 600mm, though for birds and wildlifes most likely the lens will be deployed at 600mm all the time, if not with 1.4x tele convertor.
I am not a serious bird photographer. 500mm is a standard or basic focal length for bird photography, and I have made do with a Rollei 500/5.6 and a Nikkor 600/5.6 manual focus lens with adaptor on A7R Sony for that matter. Manual focus can be a handicap but not something impossible. Nikkor has an advantage being internal focus so is much easier to use. I always have that feeling that these lenses although still can perform (especially for the price), there is a issue of lack of resolution and fringing correction on modern digital sensors. So I get a FE 100-400/4.5-5.6 G Master, the first non-German lens that I seriously using, for bird photography. However, the 100-400 will need to be used with 1.4x teleconvertor, or 2x teleconvertor most of the time.
Then it comes this FE 200-600/5.6-6.3. Strange enough Sony decided not to make this lens a G Master. For user like me, with a profile that is too old for the weight of a 600/4 prime (and actually also the 500/5.6 Zeiss and 600/5.6 Nikkor being lighter than a modern 600/4 already), old enough not to have the pocket for a 600/4 at S$15000, the FE 200-600 comes in handy. Not being a G Master, the lens is slower (and therefore lighter), and is more 'affordable' (at least 1/5th FE 600/4 GM, or 1/2 used FE 600/4 GM if you can find one few years down the road).
The first few hands on with the FE 200-600, I felt that, not being a G Master, the lens resolution and fringing correction at full aperture seem slightly below that of the GM 100-400. When I finally looked at the photos on the computer the results were totally acceptable, and can easily be considered very good. Of course if you want the best for bird photography then go for the 600/4 (any brand), but that is not the scope of the discussion here : D. 600/4, period.
http://www.fuwen.net/index.php/home/my- ... 00-5-6-6-3
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Rolleiflex 3003, SL2000F - SONY Alpha7R 1/2/4. A1
Carl Zeiss C/Y T* - QBM HFT - ZM T* - ZF T* - Batis T* - Otus T* - Loxia T*
Sony. Zeiss 16-35/4 T* G200600 GM100400 GM600
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