Merry Christmas!
Thank you! You, mysterious person!
Merry Christmas to me, indeed, again
so this is a new lens for my Sony aps-c cameras
it's the newly released 70-350mm, this in full-frame equivalent is 105-525mm
I've never had a telephoto lens with this reach so I'm very excited to try it
So this is the lens, as you can see it looks very, very nice
This is what it looks like on my a6500, very, very nice
It got here just in time, tomorrow I'm going on a hike with muy uncle
we're climbing the highest peak in the province of Lugo
I can't think of a better scenario to test out this telephoto lens
that's the plan for this video, I'm going to go on that hike, I'm going to take this lens with me
take photos, take videos and then I'll be back here talking about those images, those videos
giving you my first impressions, talking about why I got this lens
and maybe even comparing it to the other telephoto lens I have, the 55-210mm, a much smaller and cheaper lens
So, as I said, let's go on that hike, I'm going to be showing you now the footage that I'm going to capture tomorrow
and we'll talk after that, see you soon!
All right, so we are back from that hike
Just a quick note to my future self or to anyone who is like me
if you're going to hike to high altitudes in winter
it doesn't matter if it hasn't rained in days
it doesn't matter if the mountain looks pretty much fine from far away
it doesn't matter if the day is clear and sunny
it's very likely that you're going to find ice on the trail so be prepared and bring the proper equipment
This peak that we climbed was around 2,000m or 6,000-7,000ft, something like that
it wasn't a hard hike, I mean, it wasn't easy by any means but what made it much harder than it should've been
was the conditions that we found, the trail was very icy
and it was even icier on the last stretch, which was very steep as well
so the conditions were kind of sketchy and it took us a long time because we weren't prepared
because of those sketchy conditions I didn't use this lens as much as I thought I was going to
and this is one of the first things that I wanted to mention about it in this first impressions video
it is a lens that is going to stay in your backpack most of the time, that's what I did during the hike
I'd take it out only when we stopped to take breaks or when I saw something that was worth photographing
and if the conditions where I was stopped were safe
For what it is, and for what it offers, for the reach that it has here
It's not a very heavy or very big lens but it's big and heavy enough that I don't want to have it hanging from my neck
or from any other parts of my body
It is a smaller and lighter than its full-frame counterparts
I used to own the 70-200mm f/4, I sold that lens to replace it with this one
you can tell that it's smaller and lighter, not by a lot but still
One thing I liked about the 70-200, though, is that it came with a ring or an adapter
I don't know the name of those, but it's to attach the lens to the tripod instead of
the camera, those are very common with long and heavy lenses so the center of
gravity is more towards the middle, if you attach the camera to the tripod,
this combination is a little bit heavy on the front, so it tends to go down like this
and it's even worse when you have it extended all the way like this
so I'm going to look for one of those rings online
I might be able to find one that fits this lens, I should
I don't really understand why Sony didn't include one with this lens
The build quality is amazing, it's very nice, it's definitely the nicest lens I own
I don't own a lot of lenses and they are not that expensive, I am sure that lenses like the G master
lenses from Sony and some Sigma lenses are much nicer than this one, but this is
more than enough, it's actually almost too nice because now I'm kind of afraid
to take it out and to use it, I don't want to scratch it
when it comes to image quality, I still have to test this lens much more, for a longer period of time
I need to bring it with me to different conditions, different environments, and see what's able to do
what I'm able to create with it to actually be able to tell how the image quality is
So far, so good
One thing I did is I shot it along with the 55-210mm, I took a few shots to compare both of those lenses
the 55-210mm is not the best lens out there, but I was still able to create some of my best images with that lens
I'm going to show you a couple at least, like this one from the White Sands and this one of Mt Hood
I might be forgetting one somewhere, but yeah, that lens is not the best lens by any means
and this one is better, you can tell from the quick comparison that I did
this lens is definitely better, it's not a huge difference, in the center they are pretty similar
in the corners, though, there is no comparison and the 70-350mm is much better in every aspect
even in the center, the sharpness is pretty similar but the contrast and the colors are better with the 70-350mm
that's not a huge deal for me because I crop to square, so I'm just discarding the corners and the edges
of the image anyway, but if I wanted to reframe one, or to get a panorama out of one
the 70-350mm is going to offer better quality for that
I didn't buy this lens because of the better image quality, though
I didn't buy it because it's bigger and heavier either, of course
I bought it because of the extra reach that it offers, it reaches 350mm - a 525mm equivalent in full frame
so that is amazing, it's something that I've never had before, so this is going to allow me to create images
in theory, that I wasn't able to create before
some of my older images that I took with the 55-210mm, I had to severely crop them to get the actual frame
that I was envisioning, hopefully I'm not going to need to crop that much with this lens
and if I do crop I can reach even farther
I'm very excited to have a telephoto this long in my kit, before this lens there was really no option for
the sony aps-c system on the telephoto side of things other than the 55-210mm
but this lens only reached to 210mm, there was nothing beyond the 300mm that this lens offers
you had to go with full-frame lenses which are more expensive, heavier, and bigger than the aps-c lenses
and if you are like me, I'm not planning on switching to full-frame anytime soon, so this lens was perfect for me
I'd been thinking about getting one since it was announced back in August, and I found
a very good deal a few days ago, and that's when I pulled the trigger
so this lens retails for $1,000 in the US, but I guess this is due to the trade war or whatever
because it's much cheaper in other countries like here in Spain, the regular price is 850euros, including taxes
and the other day I found it for 700 on Amazon Spain, so I pulled the trigger and I bought my copy
and I couldn't be happier with it
This is all I have to say about this lens for now
If you have any questions about this lens or about any other piece of equipment that I use
please leave a comment down below and I'll do my best to answer that question
Thank you so much for watching and see you in the next one!