Evaluating The Sony FE 400-800mm F/6.3-8 G OSS Lens

Forbes

20-05-2025

One of my biggest passions outside of technology is photography, so I'm very lucky to have the opportunity to evaluate cameras and lenses as part of my job. The Sony FE 400-800mm f/6.3 lens is a newcomer to the Sony lineup and offers one of the widest telephoto zoom ranges. This matches the 200-600mm model that was previously the company's deepest zoom lens, but topped out at 600mm.
Sony also offers 400mm f/2.8 and 600mm f/4 lenses, but they retail for $12,000 and $13,000, respectively, and are meant primarily for high-end sports photography. Don't get me wrong, I would love to get my hands on one. But they're 'unobtanium' for most hobbyist photographers, since the lens probably costs more than all the other camera gear — including camera bodies — that most photographers own.
The Sony FE 400-800mm f/6.3-8 G OSS lens
Anshel Sag
This Sony lens is unique because it offers a broad range of telephoto zoom without requiring the lens to expand. The FE 400-800mm lens is also undoubtedly the largest lens I've ever shot with, although nothing that a monopod or tripod can't help with. (More on that in a minute.) As shown in the photo below, it is roughly double the size of my Sony FE 70-200mm f/4 GM — my primary telephoto zoom lens — so if I used it all the time, it would likely require an entirely new camera bag configuration, or possibly even a new bag.
As much as I like my FE 70-200mm, which has served me exceptionally well, it doesn't quite have the reach that I need in some scenarios. While I have previously used Sony 200-600mm and 100-400mm lenses to fill that gap, my use cases for them have been narrow enough that I generally have stuck to renting those lenses rather than buying them. Based on all of this, I was eager to try the FE 400-800mm lens.
The Sony FE 400-800mm next to my FE 70-200 lens
Anshel Sag
Although this lens can have many applications, it is mainly intended for nature photography and some sports. As I'll explain below, I also had the opportunity to shoot an eclipse with it, although I probably chose the wrong camera body for that task. For the most part, I used this lens with my Sony A7RV camera body.
There's simply no getting around how massive this lens is. That said, it isn't as heavy as it looks, but even if you have strong arms, I'd recommend a monopod or a tripod. A monopod is easier because you can make small adjustments without needing to fully reset everything like you would with a tripod. Not shooting with a monopod will likely result in more shots that are blurry, not to mention sore arms and shoulders. Plus, a lightweight monopod shouldn't take up much space or add much weight in your camera bag.
With this lens, I also recommend shooting in better lighting conditions and using higher shutter speeds to get sharper images. I found that most of my blurry images came about when the sensor was not getting enough light, which told me I needed to shoot at a higher ISO. The best shots were all around 1/100 of a second or faster. The depth of field on some of the shots for subjects that were closer to me was fabulous; they looked like I was shooting with a much lower aperture than f/6.3 and created a significant bokeh effect. This was especially apparent with the flamingoes at the San Diego Zoo. The image below is incredibly sharp and took advantage of the full 60 MP of the A7RV, showing each feather hair and drop of water.
A close-up shot of a flamingo at the San Diego Zoo
Anshel Sag
Before I went to the Zoo, I also tested the lens at a local airfield to see how it would work for plane spotting, and it was fantastic. The zoom range really gave me a lot of choices for how I wanted to frame the shot and how much of the surrounding environment I wanted to include. These were smaller planes, but the same could be done with larger aircraft from farther away. I also took the plane photos to help me learn how to shoot with the camera and home in on some of its quirks before I went to shoot wildlife in La Jolla at the Cove.
Shooting planes was definitely easier than shooting wildlife, especially since birds and seals move very quickly and are not always in the best lighting. Even so, I did get some great shots of the wildlife in La Jolla before I headed to the Zoo a few days later. Since these animals are highly protected, having such a supertelephoto zoom lens was very useful as I kept my distance, and I was able to get shots that I otherwise couldn't have without that amount of zoom. Lots of the best wildlife photographers shoot with crazy-long zoom lenses to avoid disturbing the animals they photograph.
At the Zoo, it was a great day for animal photography, so I was able to capture photos of orangutans, tigers, gorillas, monkeys and hippos. I tried taking pictures of the tapirs, but because they were all-black, my camera had difficulty focusing on them while they were moving.
A colobus monkey from the San Diego Zoo
Anshel Sag
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The gorillas mainly were sleeping, so they were easier to photograph, but the best angles of them were through glass, and it was the same story with the orangutans. Thanks to the resolution of the A7RV, cropping some of these shots was a breeze, and I didn't feel like I lost much in terms of quality thanks to the lens and body combination.
A sleeping gorilla at the San Diego Zoo
Anshel Sag
I was lucky enough that a lunar eclipse fell during the two-week period when I had the lens for evaluation. The eclipse happened on a miserable night in San Diego, when it was surprisingly cold, windy, cloudy and rainy. While I caught only a couple of drops of rain, I unfortunately had to battle with the wind and clouds quite a bit, so I struggled to get good low-light photos with the FE 400-800mm lens paired with my A7RV.
This is where I believe I made a mistake and should've used my A7III, which is much better at low-light photography but also has much lower resolution. Considering I had 800mm of telephoto zoom to play with, I shouldn't have been concerned about cropping or resolution. Using the A7RV, I had to take longer exposures, which came out blurry because of either the camera shaking from the wind or the moon's own movement. (You can take a maximum of a 1-second shot before the moon moves enough to create blur.) I found that my biggest enemy with this lens was the wind; because of its size, the lens would act like a sail and catch the wind, which resulted in blurry images. That said, I did manage to capture a few shots with decent sharpness that I was happy to share — like the one below.
The Sony FE 400-800mm f/6.3-8 G OSS is an excellent lens for Sony's E-Mount camera system and complements the capabilities of many of its camera bodies. It certainly helps to achieve shots that are impossible on a smartphone; I believe this is where the makers of many of these interchangeable-lens mirrorless camera systems should concentrate to attract avid photographers who want better photos than a smartphone will allow.
While this lens costs $2,899, it also offers a zoom experience that's not possible with many other lenses worldwide, especially not for Sony's E-mount ecosystem. If you want an even broader zoom lens range, Canon does offer a 200-800 f/6.3-9 IS USM lens; meanwhile, Sigma offers an APO 300-800 f/5, but that lens is only for Nikon's old F-mount system. Currently, Nikon itself doesn't offer a zoom supertelephoto lens for its Z-mount system, only fixed-focal-length lenses at 400mm, 600mm and 800mm.
With this lens, Sony offers an excellent option for the niche photographer who needs to get that extra zoom in well-lit scenarios such as sports, nature or other outdoor photography like plane spotting. However, I can't say that I would recommend it for astrophotography or any low-light photography unless you also have a low-light camera like the A7III or A7IV. The price is a bit steep at $2,899, yet there is apparently quite a market for this lens — they are sold out everywhere. It seems clear that Sony has found a sweet spot in the market and is satisfying a need for big zoom lenses among full-frame Sony mirrorless users.