SONY E 55-210mm F4.5-6.3 Lens for SONY E-Mount Cameras (Black) (Renewed)

Product overview

Sony E 55-210mm F4.5-6.3 OSS: What to Know

This is the cheap reach option for an APS-C Sony body and three of its specifications are better than the price suggests. Internal focusing means nothing extends or rotates as the lens focuses, so the overall length stays constant and, critically, the focus ring does not rotate during autofocus. Sony calls that direct manual focus with a non-rotating focus ring, and the practical consequence is that you can rest a hand on the ring, tweak focus mid-sequence, and use a polarising filter without it being spun out of alignment every time autofocus moves. The Canon EF 75-300 in our DSLR guide fails on exactly this point.

Optical SteadyShot stabilisation is the second, and it is what makes a 315mm equivalent handholdable at f/6.3 at all. The third is a seven-blade aperture, which keeps out-of-focus highlights reasonably round.

The range is the attraction. Fifty-five to 210mm on APS-C frames like 82 to 315mm, which Sony positions for sport and nature, and that is the honest use: it is reach for subjects you cannot walk closer to. A minimum focus distance of 3.28 feet with a 0.23x maximum magnification ratio also makes it usable for larger close-up subjects.

Two caveats to weigh. F/4.5 to f/6.3 is dark, so this is a daylight lens, and it is an E rather than FE lens, so it crops a full-frame body. And this listing is a Renewed unit rather than new, with new listings for the same lens available on separate ASINs at a higher price. For a lens this inexpensive the saving on a refurbished copy is small relative to the warranty you give up, which is worth thinking about before clicking.

Key Listed Features