Out on a dark, rainy afternoon with the a7 IV/100-400mm GM setup, critters were again few and results were again very pleasing. This followed a morning outing with the Voigtlander 75mm f1.5, where the lens really wowed me.
Sometime last year on these pages I mentioned that the 100-400mm on the a7r IV looked brittle sharp. It was the same on the a7r II. So it’s nice to see that it’s “just right” sharp on the a7 IV, no cooked sharpening that I can see. Although I haven’t yet had a chance to try it with the extender on critters in decent light, I suspect this will be the setup I reach for when doing dedicated bird photography.
The RF 100-400mm and R5 will still see plenty of use. And since I discovered that the zoom and extender are as good as the RF 600mm, it may get trundled off in favor of the 800mm, which–first time around on the R6—was a bit better lens anyway, just not as easy to manage in the field.
If anything gets shifted in the Leica stuff, it’ll likely be the 35mm ‘lux and the 60mm macro, which currently see very little use, to be replaced by Voigtlander VM glass, which can be adapted to any body. But that won’t happen until L-mount gets its post-discontinuation bump, as will inevitably happen, just as it’s happened with R glass.
Which reminds me: there was a blurb on one of the rumors sites that DJI has joined the L-mount alliance. It’ll be interesting to see where they fit in. I mean, I doubt we’ll be seeing a 50mm Summilux-SL on any of their drones anytime soon!
