lens review Archives - Orion's Cold Fire

FE 100mm f2.8 MACRO GM Lens – Damn You Sony!

October 6, 2025October 5, 2025 photog Photography, Photography Reviews lens review, lenses, macro, macrophotography, Sony, Sony FE 100mm f2.8 MACRO GM Lens

Just when I think I’m immune to lens lust Sony drags me back in!

Alright, this is not an in-depth review because this lens hasn’t even reached the stores yet. It come out in early November. But it has already destabilized my photographic equilibrium with its compelling mixture of desirable features and the stellar reviews the experts are giving it.

So just to put my own spin on it, here are the features I find most exciting.

Fast autofocus. Okay, probably not blazingly fast because no macro lens can be. There’s just too much focus racking needed in a macro lens for that. But its four XD Linear AF motors make it orders of magnitude faster than my current Sony 90mm f2.8 macro.
1.4X magnification. That compares with the 90mm and its standard 1.0X magnification. This is a big deal. Filling the frame with your subject is what makes for better macro shots.
The reviewers stressed that the Optical Steady Shot (OSS) system actually did seem to work very well on macro shots. That’s always been a sore point for me with the 90mm lens. There’s nothing steady about the image unless I’m on at least a monopod. If this pans out it will be a major upgrade to my macro experience.
The reviewers also stressed that the images when using a 1.4X or 2X teleconverter were still very good which if true means that 2X and 2.8X magnification would be achievable. I’m most skeptical of this claim. Whenever I’ve used Sony teleconverters I’ve always noticed a very significant image quality degradation (especially with the 2X unit). If this turns out to be true it would be a very nice benefit.

Okay enough hyperventilating. So let’s give some of the bad news. It’s fifteen hundred bucks! And I’ve checked the resale value of my 90mm lens ($450). So I’d be forking over an extra grand or so. Gack!!!!

Oh, the pain, the pain. Well, Christmas is coming up. And I do have some rarely used lenses hanging around maybe I could shrink that grand down to five hundred bucks.

It’s funny just a few months ago I think I was saying how glad I was that I no longer obsessed about camera gear and lenses in particular. Sure I’m always interested in descriptions of the new odd-ball super-macros that the various Chinese lens manufacturers seem to create constantly. But I’m never too excited because these lenses tend to be not of the highest quality.

But here Sony has dropped this thing in my lap with basically everything I wanted except a 200mm focal length (and that would be compensated for if it actually does work as well as they claim it does with a 2X teleconverter). And here I am with my mouth hanging open, desperate to get my hands on this piece of photo kit. They truly are evil geniuses sitting there in Tokyo (or wherever the hell their corporate headquarters is in Japan) and saying, “Now we’ve got photog right where we want him.”

And they do. Damn them!!!

Laowa AF FF 180mm f/4.5 CA-Dreamer Macro 1.5X Lens

September 8, 2025September 8, 2025 photog Photography lens review, macrophotography, photography, Sony 90mm f/2.8 macro lens, Sony A7 IV

Regular readers of this site who read my photography reviews know that I am a macro-lens junkie of the first echelon. I have been trying to get Sony to upgrade all their cameras to allow my vintage Minolta 200mm f\4 Macro lens to perform like a lens thirty years younger.

Alas, that will never be. But in pursuit of a long macro (~ 180-200mm) I have always hoped that Sony or one of the third party manufacturers of lenses like Sigma or Tamron would one day produce an autofocus macro lens in this focal range. And autofocus is the trick because Laowa, a Chinese manufacturer has come out with macro lenses of various lengths but up until recently, they only made manual focus lenses.

But that has now changed. I saw this announcement:

Laowa AF FF 180mm f/4.5 CA-Dreamer Macro 1.5x Lens

It says this lens is coming out in a couple of weeks. And it’s even better than a 1.0X magnification. It’s a 1.5X. This is very exciting. If this lens autofocuses as well as my Sony 90mm macro it will provide a distinct advantage for things like hummingbird photos and dragonflies.

Now this is a big if. There is no guarantee that Sony will allow the autofocus of their cameras to work exactly as well with third part lenses as with their own. The only proof of the pudding will be when I have this lens in hand for a week or two of testing.

Now that’s not such a big deal. The Laowa lenses usually cost less than half of what Sony charges and renting one would even be cheaper still. So I think I have a plan to play around with this thing in the near future.

This unfortunately feeds into a long standing illness that I suffer from, namely; gear acquisition syndrome (G.A.S.). It’s been quite a while since I’ve had a flareup of this but apparently I am not cured.

To be continued…

Comment from TomD

I think the reviewer said that autofocus didn’t work at less than 1.5 meter distance. That being a little less than 5′, it won’t be useful for macro work.

I used to do a lot of studio macro work that I was paid for. I sorta specialized in gold and silver coin and numismatic photography. The attached picture was part of a series for an Australian coin distributor. These coins are all by The Perth Mint Perth Aus.

Most of my shots were with a Sony100mm 2.8 and shot with studio lighting.

Sony FE 200-600mm f/5.6-6.3 G OSS Lens – Lens Review – Part 1

June 16, 2020June 16, 2020 photog Photography, Photography Reviews lens review, photography review, review, Reviews, Sony FE 200-600mm f/5.6-6.3 G OSS Lens

Back in February I rented this lens for a Connecticut Riverboat ride to photograph bald eagles. Due to my rank stupidity the shutter speeds were too slow to compensate for the vibration and motion of the boat. But after the trip I tested out the lens and found it was sharp enough to warrant purchasing one at some point.

Well that point is now. It arrived yesterday and I took some shots of birds, hummingbirds, a blue jay and a swallow. What it showed me is that a600mm focal length is very unforgiving of vibration of any sort. This just a quick tease. Here are my very unserious first shots and comparison photo to show you the size. Actually for a 200-600mm zoom it’s pretty compact and not very heavy. But I ‘ll get into all the specs in the next post here’s just something to get my foot in the door.

Lens Review – Sony FE 100-400mm f\4.5-5.6 GM OSS Lens – Part 1 – First Impressions

July 9, 2019July 11, 2019 photog Photography, Photography Reviews bald eagle, lens review, Sony, Sony A7 cameras, Sony A7 III, Sony FE 100-400mm f\4.5-5.6 GM OSS Lens

Sony’s 100/400 is listed as a GM or G Master lens. That implies a premium or professional grade model. I will attest it is a very well made lens. It’s a metal construction unit and has plenty of heft to it weighing in at over three pounds. Playing around with the autofocus I noted that the A7 III and the 100-400 are well matched and focus on distant and close objects quickly and accurately with no hunting. And using a 400mm lens without a tripod (I used a monopod and sometimes handheld) I was impressed with how the image stabilization (IS) performed. Using the A7 III’s magnified view on close objects without a tripod maximizes the shake observed through the viewfinder but with IS engaged I was very pleasantly surprised to find that once the trigger was half-pressed the shake disappeared.

I tested the lens out as a dragonfly and butterfly chaser. Understand, it’s not a macro lens. Maximum magnification is only about .3 but with the electronic magnification in use I can focus on the eye of an insect to perfect focus without a problem.

I like the rotating tripod collar. It makes portrait shots easy and I used it to move the collar out of the way when I wanted to hand hold the lens.

And first impressions, the lens is very sharp from 100mm all the way to 400mm. I’ve always been a prime lens snob. But I have to admit that being able to zoom the lens to quickly frame the shot the way I want is very convenient and actually improved a number of my compositions. The colors look good (as far as my color blind eyes can tell) with nice rendering of the flowers I’ve been shooting. I’m very interested to see how the 1.4 and 2.0 teleconverters match up with this lens. I want to shoot the 100-400 with them to have something to compare to the new Sony 200-600 lens that’s coming out soon.

And here’s a very unfair test of the lens. This distance would have needed a 1200mm focal length to get any detail.