I'm unimpressed with the Sony 55-210mm lens.
Didn't encounter any of the wild horses this weekend, but that's to be expected with an 8 year old boy along the hike, constantly throwing rocks or swinging sticks at stuff and otherwise making a ruckus.
I caught this hand-held at 200mm with the new lens as the boy was whittling at a piece of bamboo, from probably 8-10 feet away. The OSS is certainly a nice feature.
I liked the detail on that one and for longer range portrait or mid-range action/sports things it seems like an okay lens, but if I want wildlife detail it seems to be a bit lacking. For instance, I was about 25 feet from a dragonfly resting on some submerged greenery just poking out of the surface of the water. I put the camera on a tripod and manually focused on the dragonfly.
If you zoom in on the subject in the picture, it's just lackluster. Yeah, it's only a 2-inch dragonfly, at 25 feet. There's too much glow/bleed being thrown off of it when I zoom in on the only photo edit suite I have right now, Capture One (got this for free with the camera, trying it out before I commit to On1 or Lightroom). I took the picture in aperture mode with no adjustment so it prioritized light a bit too highly, closing the aperture a little more it would probably be sharper, I think. Not sure. I never took a photography class and I'm several years removed from having a camera where I can play with these settings.
Last week I took this pic with the 16-50mm kit lens:
At the same location this weekend, with the 55-210 Sony lens:
55mm:
210mm:
This 55-210 just feels dull, especially when I compare it to what my other new lens can do, the 18-50mm Sigma F2.8. And it's still lacking in how tight I want the angle of view to be.