Sony FE 70-200mm f/4.0 G OSS Lens SEL70200G - Review

This was Sony's first full frame 70-200mm G lens to be released, shortly before the FE 70-200 F/2.8 GM.

With a constant aperture of F4 through the 70-200mm zoom range and in built Image stabilisation this lens represents fairly good value considering it's F2.8 Bigger brother is around $1000 AUD more. It is much smaller and more compact then the FE 70-200 F/2.8 weighing in at .840kg.

Features

F/4 maximum Aperture
Excellent image quality
Telephoto Zoom
Constant Aperture
Full Frame format

Tech Specs

Focal Distance - 70-200mm
Optical Formula - 21 elements in 15 groups.
Aperture Range - f/4 - f/22
Angle of View - 34 - 12 degrees (Full Frame) 22 - 8 Degrees (aps-c)
Minimum Focusing Distance - 1m - 1.5m
Lens Mount - Sony E-Mount
Weight - 0.840kg
Filter Thread - 72mm
Manual focus / Auto Focus

Build Quality

Composite Metal and Plastic
Metal mounting
Dust sealed

Originally I was considering the option of opting for the F/2.8 version as we have all come to expect through marketing and general opinions that the wider the aperture, the better the lens. I didn't purchase the 70-200mm for portraiture work or night shooting (even though they do both fine) so the F/2.8's added cost, Weight and Size was not necessary. With this 70-200m F4 wide open we still get perfect back ground separation for subjects relatively close (up to 5m or so). With your subject 5m from your image señor at 70mm focal distance wide open at F4 you can expect a depth roughly 1.3m of Acceptable sharpness. obviously this will taper off towards either extreme. At 200mm you can expect a depth of field roughly 0.15m of acceptable sharpness. As your subject moves further away from the Image sensor your DOF will increase. For a list of common focal lengths with their respective DOF distances see here.

Acceptable focus will vary from person to person, the Depth field will render more and more out of focus towards the edges of the "acceptable Sharpness" to someone with 20/20 vision. As this is a guide only for DOF in relation to Aperture and how little the variances actually are.

F/2.8 @ 70mm, Subject at 5m - 0.90 meters acceptable focus. About 400mm of depth better the F/4

F/2.8 @ 200mm, Subject at 5m - 0.11m around 4cm shallower then the F/4.

Even F/16 @ 200mm, Subject at 15m your "acceptable" DOF won't be much more then .35m, the Bokeh or background blur wont be as pronounced as @ F/4 or F/2.8, But your separation will still be there.

In terms of DOF, for me it isn't really much.

Shooting at night I don't find the extra stops incredibly necessary either, I shoot a camera with exceptionably good low light High ISO performance. It's not a factor for me.

150mm @ F/4

70mm @ F4

Although this lens is not what you would call a Wildlife lens, If you can get close enough (within 4 meters) line of sight, it does take some pretty nice images.

The good thing about Full frame camera's like the A7r paired with the 70-200mm, you can always set your camera to APS-c size capture in your menu settings. The resulting images render 15.4mp APS-c sized prints, which in turn will change your focal length from 70-200mm to 105-300mm. If your intended print is for online content, this may not effect you.

the above images were shot @ 7360 x 4912 (36.2 MP, 3:2) - standard full frame.

The next two images were shot from the same position In normal Full frame mode, then switched to APS-c mode, as discussed above the difference between a 36mp full frame image, compared the 15.4mp apsc sized image. These images aren't for image quality or sharpness, they're just showing the equivalent focal length change once the image has been cropped internally in the camera.

Full Frame - 7360 x 4912 (36.2 MP, 3:2) @200mm