The Sony FE 600mm F6.3 GM OSS is one of a pair of long telephoto primes introduced at the same time, alongside the Sony FE 400mm F4.5 GM OSS. The two are very closely related, not only in terms of their feature sets and physical designs, but also optically. As members of the top-end G Master series, both promise uncompromising build quality, operability, and imaging, and should turn out to be among the best Sony lenses. However, this comes at a suitably premium price, with the 600mm f/6.3 set to cost $3700 / £3300.

　　Sony FE 600mm F6.3 GM OSS at a glance: $3700 / £3300 95mm filter thread 2.5m minimum focus 263mm x 108mm; 995g (lens only with no accessories) Sony E mount It might seem crazy for Sony to be charging this much, when zooms with 600mm f/6.3 telephoto ends are available for a fraction of the price. But one big difference lies with portability, with both the 400mm and 600mm lenses somehow weighing in at less than 1kg. That’s about half the weight of either the Sony FE 200-600mm F5.6-6.3 G OSS, or the Sigma 150-600mm F5-6.3 DG DN OS. It’s also 2kg lighter than the Sony FE 600mm F4 GM OSS.

　　As a result, both these new primes should be ideal for photographers shooting such things as wildlife, sports, or aircraft, who require long focal lengths and top-notch optics in a package they can easily carry around all day.

　　Indeed to get some further perspective on just how remarkable the Sony FE 600mm F6.3 GM OSS really is, we just need to compare it to the most similar lens on the market, the Nikon Nikkor Z 600mm F6.3 S. Sony’s offering is 400g lighter, 15mm shorter, focuses considerably closer, and is substantially less expensive. It’s all really impressive on paper, but how does the lens perform in practice?

　　Features Looking first at the optics, Sony has built the 600mm f/6.3 using 24 elements in 17 groups. As with its 400mm sibling, this includes one element made from extra-low dispersion (ED) glass and three from super ED glass to suppress chromatic aberrations. In addition, Nano AR Coating II is employed to minimise flare and ghosting.

　　Focusing is driven by two XD linear motors. This promises quick, quiet, and accurate AF, along with support for tracking focus at 120 frames per second, for both stills and video work. The minimum focus distance is 2.5m, which is unusually close for a 600mm prime.

　　Optical stabilisation is built-in, which works together with the camera’s in-body image stabilisation. As with Sony’s other recent lenses, it has three modes, set using a switch on the barrel. Mode 1 is for normal use with static subjects, Mode 2 is for conventional panning, while Mode 3 is designed to deal with more erratic subjects such as birds in flight.

　　With this being a pro-spec lens, it boasts dust and moisture-resistant construction. This includes an array of seals around all of the controls, plus of course at the mount. A fluorine coating helps keep the front glass clean of raindrops and fingerprints.

　　At the front, there’s a 95mm thread for attaching filters. A deep cylindrical lens hood comes in the box, with a rubber bumper at the front to protect against knocks. It has a locking button to stop it from coming off accidentally and reverses for storage.

　　For those who need more reach (and bird photographers will tell you that you can never get enough), the lens is also compatible with teleconverters. Fit the Sony FE 1.4x Teleconverter, and you get an 840mm f/9 combination; with the Sony FE 2.0x Teleconverter, it’s a 1200mm f/13. Even with these small apertures, autofocus should still work normally.

　　Build and Handling What’s most striking, when you first put this lens on your camera, is just how compact and lightweight it is for a 600mm lens. Of course, at 108mm in diameter and 263mm in length, it’s still anything but small or inconspicuous. That’s compounded by the white finish – you’re unlikely to pass unnoticed when wielding the lens in public view.

　　Its also important to understand that Sony’s headline 995g figure only refers to the bare lens with no accessories. Fit the hood, and you’re actually mounting 1125g onto the camera, plus about 70mm additional length. Once you add in the caps and tripod foot, you’ll be carrying 1250g in total.

　　That’s still remarkable for a high-end 600mm prime (in comparison, the Nikon equivalent weighs 1390g without accessories), and I was entirely happy carrying the lens around for extended shooting sessions.

　　The lens is nicely balanced too, so it doesn’t feel front-heavy on the camera. I found it nestled perfectly in my hand, with the manual focus ring falling perfectly for operation by my thumb and front two fingers.

　　Four AF hold / function buttons are arranged at 90-degree intervals around the barrel towards the front. So one should always be accessible, no matter whether you’re shooting vertical or horizontal photos. All four always have the same function, which can be assigned from the camera body.

　　Just behind them is a function ring that can be assigned to either Power Focus, or switching between full-frame and APS-C crop shooting. I found Power Focus to be particularly useful on those occasions when the autofocus gets stuck at a particular distance, and you need to shift it either closer or further away. A twist of the lens ring will quickly drive the focus through its range, so you can set it to roughly the right distance. At this point, you can let the autofocus take over again.

　　An array of switches on the side controls the autofocus and image stabilisation systems. There’s a conventional AF/MF toggle, a focus distance limiter that restricts the minimum distance to 7m, and a full-time Direct Manual Focus (DMF) switch. When this is engaged, you can use the focus ring to fine-tune the focusing at any time. Finally, two switches turn OSS on/off and set the required mode.

　　One control you don’t get, though, is an aperture ring. That may seem odd, given how common they’ve become on Sony’s FE lenses. But I don’t think it’s a major problem here, as with this lens, you’ll probably be trying to gather all the light you can, and barely ever adjusting the aperture at all. Personally, I shot almost every photo with the aperture wide open. You can, of course, still set the aperture using a dial on the camera body.

　　The included tripod foot sports both 1/4in and 3/16in threads, with a socket for an anti-twist pin placed between them. It can be removed quickly and easily using a combination of a locking knob and a push-button release. One small disappointment, though, is that it doesn’t have a built-in Arca-Swiss plate for mounting the lens directly to a tripod or monopod.

　　Autofocus With this kind of lens, excellent autofocus performance is absolutely essential. I tested the Sony FE 600mm F6.3 GM OSS using the 61MP Sony Alpha A7R V, and while this doesn’t represent the leading edge of AF technology quite like the firm’s pro-spec A1 II or A9 III models, in the wider scheme of things it’s still no slouch.

　　With a relatively limited time to test the lens, I concentrated on shooting local wildlife, including birds in flight. In this real-world use, I found the lens to be super-fast, silent, and consistently accurate at autofocusing. Indeed, I felt it was limited mainly by the camera’s ability to acquire focus on moving subjects, rather than by anything to do with the lens itself. Indeed, the only time I got out-of-focus images was when the A7R V couldn’t pick up a rapidly oncoming flying bird.

　　I did find the camera sometimes got stuck focusing at the wrong distance, for example when photographing small birds with branches in the foreground. That’s far from unusual with telephoto lenses, especially when using subject detection, as out-of-focus subjects can easily become too blurred for the camera to recognise what they are.

　　Here, switching to manual focus (or using direct manual focus) can be invaluable, and thankfully, it works very well. Alternatively, as I previously mentioned, you can use the power focus function.

　　Performance Sony’s GM lenses are known for their superb optics, and the 600mm f/6.3 continues in this tradition. Quite simply, it delivers superb sharpness right across the frame wide open. That’s crucial for a long telephoto lens, with which you’ll often be shooting distant and unpredictably moving subjects.

　　This impressive sharpness means you can crop your final image from anywhere within the frame and be confident of getting detailed results. Its also advantageous on the frequent occasions you find yourself shooting at high ISOs, as it gives noise reduction algorithms the best possible data to work with.

　　Sony cameras automatically correct for chromatic aberration, distortion and vignetting by default, so you won’t see any of these in your JPEG files. Adobe software removes colour fringing during raw processing, too. Even if you disable shading compensation, there’s no problematic corner darkening, which presumably is aided by the relatively modest maximum aperture. There is visible pincushion distortion in uncorrected raws, but for most of the subjects you’ll shoot with this lens, that won’t be a problem.

　　This is a lens where you’ll often find that large areas of your images are out-of-focus. Thankfully it renders bokeh very nicely, not just in the background, but in front of the focus plane too. That’s great when you want to use tracts of defocused foreground to frame your subject.

　　I found Sony’s optical stabilisation performs very well, too. Crucially, it stabilises the viewfinder image sufficiently that you can compose your images confidently, and therefore place your subject where you want it within the frame.

　　With static subjects, I was able to get sharp images hand-held at shutter speeds down to about 1/60sec, as long as I shot a few replicates. But going any slower resulted in visible blur pretty much every time.

　　Sony FE 600mm F6.3 GM OSS : Our Verdict As you can probably tell, I’ve been immensely impressed by the Sony FE 600mm F6.3 GM OSS. It’s remarkably portable while delivering superb image quality, and it’s a real step up from a 600mm f/6.3 telezoom in almost every way. The ability to wander around with a high-quality full-frame 600mm lens, without having to worry at all about the size and weight, really has been an eye-opener.

　　Indeed I’m struggling to find fault with this lens at all. It handles brilliantly, focuses rapidly and silently, and the stabilisation works really well too. In fact, it comes to something when my only real gripe is the lack of an Arca-Swiss plate on the foot, especially as this is a lens that I overwhelmingly used hand-held.

　　Unfortunately, though, while the price is nowhere near that of a 600mm f/4, it’s still high enough that this lens will likely only find its way into the hands of the most committed sports, wildlife and action photographers. I guess that’s just the consequence of such an uncompromising design – and to be fair to Sony, Nikon’s equivalent costs even more. But for those who can afford it, this really is a stellar optic.

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　　Sony FE 400mm F4.5 GM OSS review light, sharp and quick, a versatile dream for wildlife and more Sony FE 400-800mm F6.3-8 G OSS review: super-long zoom, but is it too big? Sigma 300-600mm F4 DG OS Sports review – heavyweight champion Do you want to win some great prizes for your photography? Enter your photos in our International Amateur Photographer of the Year competition. Free entry for photographers aged 13-21.

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