Reaching far with Sony's 100-400mm F4.5 zoom lens

Sony a7R VI | Sony FE 100-400mm F4.5 GM OSS | 320mm | F4.5 | 1/800 sec | ISO 800 Photo: Richard Butler

Alongside the a7R VI, Sony launched an ambitious new telephoto lens: the FE 100-400mm F4.5 GM OSS. It has a constant aperture through its range, internal zoom, and a wide selection of controls, making it clear that it's aimed towards professional sports and action photographers.

We were able to shoot it alongside the a7R VI, taking it to a rugby game, a bird sanctuary and the streets of New York City to test it in a variety of scenarios. And, now that we have Raw support for the a7R VI, we can provide a closer look at how the lens performs, without having to worry about what corrections the body is applying and JPEG noise reduction. You can see the results in the gallery below.

Sample Gallery

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While we typically process images for a lens sample gallery using Capture One, we used the Sony a7R VI to test the lens, which isn't currently supported by that program. We've reverted to processing these images using ACR. We've worked to use settings similar to our standard C1 recipe while also using the lens' built-in correction profile. No correction for vignetting was applied, and we'll replace the images with ones processed in Capture One when a7R VI support becomes available.