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Sony now makes a G Master 400mm lens that weighs under a kilogram, which puts a super-telephoto in the same carrying class as a standard 70-200mm zoom. If you shoot motorsport, wildlife, or field sports without a monopod, that weight changes how long you can stay out and how freely you can move.
Picking between 400mm and 600mm usually comes down to reach. Mathphotographer shot both new lenses at the same dirt-track race and found the Sony FE 400mm f/4.5 GM OSS much easier to manage than its longer sibling. Its full frame angle of view is 6 degrees and 10 arc minutes, against 4 degrees and 10 arc minutes on the Sony FE 600mm f/6.3 GM OSS. The difference sounds small on paper. In practice, it gives you enough room at the edges of the frame to keep the tracking point on a driver's helmet while the car slides and bounces. Physically, the two lenses are nearly twins, with the same focus ring, the same customizable function buttons, and the same switches. With erratic subjects, the ability to keep them in the frame often counts for more than the extra reach, since a high-resolution file leaves room to crop later.
The optical formula uses 22 elements in 16 groups, including one ED element and three Super ED elements, with 11 aperture blades. The aperture stops down to f/32, though he steers away from the smallest settings because diffraction starts eating into fine detail. The weight comes in at 994 g, almost exactly matching the 600mm. Minimum focus distance is the same 2.5 meters on both lenses, but maximum magnification drops to 0.18x here, compared with 0.25x on the longer lens. That gap shows up most if you photograph shy subjects like dragonflies from a distance. Both lenses also accept the Sony FE 1.4x Teleconverter and the Sony FE 2x Teleconverter, each adding reach and costing light.
Nikon started this shift with the Nikon Z 400mm f/4.5 VR S in 2021 and followed it with the Nikon Z 600mm f/6.3 VR S in 2023. Canon took a more extreme route in 2020 with the Canon RF 600mm f/11 IS STM and Canon RF 800mm f/11 IS STM. All of these designs accept a slower aperture in exchange for a lens you can carry. Sony's own Sony FE 400mm f/2.8 GM OSS weighs close to three times as much as the new f/4.5 version. For daylight sports, the stop or so you give up rarely decides a shot, because current sensors produce clean files at the moderate ISO values a sunny race calls for. Indoor arenas and dawn wildlife are different, and the faster lens still earns its weight there. A light lens also changes your technique. You can pan by hand and follow a subject through a turn. You can also move to a new vantage point between heats without packing up a gimbal head. If you're new to long glass, starting at 400mm and cropping is a sensible way to learn tracking before you take on the narrower view of 600mm. For the moments you do mount it on a tripod, he recommends using the lens' own removable foot so the weight stays off the camera mount.
The sample images come from a Sony a7R VI with subject recognition left on auto, and the system found the driver's helmet in nearly every frame. One standout was shot at f/5.6 and 1/1,000 s. The driver is pin sharp, and the foreground and background fall away into blur, which gives the car a layered, three-dimensional look. At 100%, the crops show dust hanging in the air, skin texture, and even fingernails under the grip of a steering wheel. He also points out that a Sony a1 II should match the lens' performance while delivering lower-resolution files than the a7R VI.
The rest of the race frames and their full-resolution crops are waiting in the video above.
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