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Sony 500mm f/4 G SAL500F40G

If you have a cool AU$17,000 to spare, perhaps this 500mm telephoto lens is worth your wad of cash.

Lexy Savvides Principal Video Producer
Lexy is an on-air presenter and award-winning producer who covers consumer tech, including the latest smartphones, wearables and emerging trends like assistive robotics. She's won two Gold Telly Awards for her video series Beta Test. Prior to her career at CNET, she was a magazine editor, radio announcer and DJ. Lexy is based in San Francisco.
Expertise Wearables, smartwatches, mobile phones, photography, health tech, assistive robotics Credentials
  • Webby Award honoree, 2x Gold Telly Award winner
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Lexy Savvides

In brief

Telephoto lenses of such extreme focal lengths always look the business. This new 500mm f/4 G lens from Sony most certainly fits the bill, weighing in at over 3 kilograms. It's the longest G series lens available and has an f/4 maximum and f/32 minimum aperture. The 500mm lens is compatible with Sony Alpha SLRs and could theoretically be mounted on NEX cameras with the A-mount to E-mount adapter — though we'd like to see someone struggle with such a hefty lens on a tiny camera.

We also need to establish that this lens is definitely outside the reach of most photographers, priced at AU$16,999 in Australia. It's a well-oiled professional machine with weather resistance on interlocking seals on the focus ring and the front and rear joints. It can be mounted on APS-C sensor cameras from the Sony range, which due to the crop factor involved would provide an equivalent field of view to a 750mm lens. This is also the first G lens from Sony to feature Nano coating that reduces ghosting from internal reflections. It comes with a carbon-fibre lens hood coated in black velvet to further reduce flaring. Expect the lens to be available from April, and to seal the exclusivity deal even further, it's built to order.