Sony A6500 Sony answer to my 100-400 question

[meridklt]

I have used my Kit lens a6500 for 5 years and always on auto for both video and photo.. But health wise (I'm 81) my circumstances have drastically changed and so I have decided to spend more time using the camera and hopefully have additional fun doing things I have never done before using another lens.
I selected the lens based purely on a YouTube film submitted by a chap very similar to myself, in that it was a steep learning curve for him from 'Point and shoot'.

I contacted Sony asking if their 100-400 would work on my 6500 and this was their reply:
The 100-400 f/4.5-5.6 GM OSS Lens will work on the a6500 body as they are both E-Mount.
However the 100-400 lens is a full frame lens whereas the a6500 is an APSC body.
This means you need to add 50% onto the focal lengths of the lens to convert from Full-frame to APS-C.
This would mean the 100-400 would be equivalent to 150-600mm in APS-C

Does that answer mean the lens is really not good to use on my camera? If not, could some answers please explain in non jargon language what it means.

 

[Roland]

Your lens will work great on your 6500 and you will get amazing pictures. Financially you could have purchased an APC lens for less money but if you in the future upgrade to full frame, you don’t have purchase the lenses all over again.
That is what I did, way back than, before I went overboard with the full frame cameras.
Lenses are a better investment than cameras, since technology changes more slowly and you will keep them longer, if not forever.

 

[Roland]

Forgot this.
Your 100-400mm lens will be a 150-600mm equivalent.
Nothing to worry about it. Just the mm count will be off. If you shoot a subject and you use the full zoom, it would be at 600mm. I don’t know, if it reflects that in the Meta data, since I don’t have a Sony 6500 to test it. Either way, will be so much better than the kit lense.

 

[iamdlewis]

Any e-mount lens will work with any Sony e-mount camera. Since Sony hasn't made anything other than an e-mount cameras over the last 10+ years it means any new lens you get will work with any new camera. That said it should be noted that there are a couple things to understand.

Sony makes cameras with 2 different sized sensors, Full Frame and APS-C. The APS-C sensor is the smaller of the two, not worse just smaller. The smaller size difference means that if you wanted to replicate an image that was taken on a Full Frame camera you would need to do math in order to match apature and focal length, this is what they call "FullFrame equivalent". There are other differences that youtube videos can explain but for you right now the physical size difference is the important thing.

Since there are two sized sensors there are two different sized lenses. APS-C lenses are physically smaller lenses than Full Frame lenses because they only need to focus light onto an area half the size as a Full Frame sensor. You using an APS-C sensor camera will not notice a difference between using an APS-C or Full Frame lens but someone using an APS-C lens on a Full Frame camera would have about half the image be black because the light is only hitting half the sensor.

The 100-400GM lens is fantastic, I own one and love it but I have a Full Frame camera. You with an APS-C camera have the option to use the 70-350G lens which is a great lens designed for APS-C cameras meaning it is smaller (142mm vs 205mm length) and lighter (625g vs 1395g) plus it is half the price (at least in the US).

 

[iamdlewis]

Forgot this.
Your 100-400mm lens will be a 150-600mm equivalent.
Nothing to worry about it. Just the mm count will be off. If you shoot a subject and you use the full zoom, it would be at 600mm. I don’t know, if it reflects that in the Meta data, since I don’t have a Sony 6500 to test it. Either way, will be so much better than the kit lense.

It will not.

 

[Slug]

I use a similar arrangement with my A6700 and 100-400 G lens. The results are very good with birds and wildlife.

 

[PhotoRon]

Your kit lens is the full frame equivalent of about a 35-100mm lens, so if you get the 100-400, you would start off at the 100 mm end with a field of view that is a little closer/larger than what you see now at the 100mm end of you kit lens. If you think most of your photos are too far away, (subjects are too small) or if you want to give wildlife or sports photos a try, then the 100-400 will be great, but be aware that it may be quite a handful mounted on the relatively small camera body you have. At the 400mm end, you have the greater magnification equivalent to a 600mm lens, and will need to hold very STILL or use a support to minimize camera movement and subject blur due to the greater magnification.