Petar Sabol has spent most of his photographic career capturing the beauty of wildlife, and in particular, the fascinating world of insects in close-up.

On a typical trip Petar will take a range of lenses so that he’s covered for any eventuality, from birds to butterflies, and this usually entails carrying both macro and long telephoto lenses. When we approached Petar to see if he’d like to try the new FE 70-200mm f/4 Macro G OSS II – a lens that can cater for both disciplines – he leapt at the chance and spent a week in his native Croatia, exploring the wildlife and pushing the lens as far as he could.

What was your first impression of the lens?

As soon as I took the lens out of the box, I was surprised how small and light it actually is! In fact, with the hood mounted, it’s the same size as it’s bigger brother, the 70-200mm f/2.8 GM OSS II without the hood. Straight away I liked the idea that by using this lens, I’m not just saving space in my bag, but a significant amount of weight. With such a light lens, there’s always a danger of an imbalance with the camera, but I found it felt equally at home with both my Alpha 1 and 7R V bodies. Hand-held shooting was comfortable for hours and the ergonomics of the lens are well thought out – every control fell to hand easily.

How did you find the lens sharpness and performance?

As I’ve said many times before, when it comes to sharpness, I never have to worry with Sony lenses. Even shooting wide open, the sharpness is superb and a long time ago I would argue with friends that compared to other manufacturers, with Sony lenses, you stop down the aperture for increased depth-of-field, not for sharpness. And this is certainly still the case with this lens. Even using it with a teleconverter, I lost nothing in image quality and gained so much more. I’ll come to this later…

How did you find the autofocus speed of the lens?

Autofocus performance was great. Paired with my Alpha 1, I really didn’t notice any slower performance compared to my f/2.8 G Master. It focuses incredibly quickly from the minimum focus distance to infinity, with almost instant focus lock wherever I point the lens.

What was interesting for me was that I used AF for the first time in macro photography, in combination with the Alpha 7R V. I turned on Insect Eye AF and it was amazing to work like this. As the butterfly moved, the autofocus would track its eyes in real time. This was a real eye-opener for me as I’ve always used manual focus for my macro work.

Knowing you’re a huge fan of close-up photography, how did you find the macro capabilities of the lens?

Now this is where things get interesting…

From a macro perspective, this lens is incredible. I have never seen another 70-200mm lens that lets you focus down to 0.4m – even at the 200mm end! I have used dedicated macro gear for years, but since trying this lens, I haven’t stopped thinking about the capabilities.

With this compact 70-200mm you get a telephoto lens that is very small, very light and extremely sharp with super fast autofocus. In other words, a great lens for travel, sports, wildlife, and portraits.

Then – you attach a 2x teleconverter and you not only have a 400mm lens that is still extremely sharp and focuses quickly, but you now have a macro lens capable of 1:1 reproduction – which is true macro – at all focal lengths. To have such a long macro lens is brilliant for insect photography in particular; having a long working distance means there’s little chance of scaring the creatures.

I was initially concerned about using a teleconverter on a lens like this and was fully expecting the sharpness to suffer – or at least have some chromatic aberration, but it’s just mind blowing how good it works as a macro.

The image above shows a single shot and the image below is a focus-stacked version to show how I use this method to extend the depth-of-field.

Did you find having an f/4 maximum aperture was a hindrance?

My usual 70-200mm is the f/2.8 G Master II so I’m used to a wide aperture lens. Saying that, in practice, I didn’t actually see much difference when shooting. For the bird photography with my Alpha 1, I had no issues in increasing the ISO by 1 stop to counteract the smaller aperture. And for the macro shots I stopped down to at least f/8 anyway – or used a focus stacking method – so in reality, I didn’t see that having a maximum aperture of f/4 was a problem.

The increased versatility that this lens offers with the macro features far outweigh the disadvantage of a slightly smaller maximum aperture. It’s the kind of lens I’ll take with me on a trip where I’m not sure exactly what I’m going to see, what opportunities are going to present themselves. But I’ll be happy knowing that I’ll be able to take the kind of pictures I like without worrying about having the right kit.