MagnusW

No real life experience, as I have held back from buying it because of two things: 1) Focus motor issues where the linear motor can stop working, due to the mounting of a coil being sub-par (a blob of glue). Newer Sony lenses don't suffer from this design mistake. 2) The 55/1.8 has outright bad bokeh at wider apertures (visible in some, but not all, circumstances). OK, so 50-mils aren't generally known for great bokeh, but the 55/1.8 is worse than most due to irregularities in the circle of confusion likely caused by the aspherics (on the other hand, the same aspherics are responsible for the sharpness of the lens, right out in the corners. Can't have it all!). Apart from these two points I have never heard anything bad about it. As you note, it's small and light, and it also is remarkably sharp and has good flare control.

Firstly: Lenses very rarely have exact, rounded focal lengths, or the FL printed on the lens; "70-200" is more referring to a class of lens, the numbers are an approximation. Sometimes the "error" can be significant, like 10%. In your specific case, however, the lens can go to 200mm, but it likely has a very sensitive sensor for focal length. If you look at this review: https://www.australianphotography.com/gear/review-sony-70-200mm-f/2-8-gm-oss-ii ...you will see that several of his shots also have 197mm as a EXIF number, but also some at 200mm. It's likely that 197mm is the number you get when not actively pushing the zoom ring against the stop position, making the ring back down somewhat. Don't worry about it. Some lenses may even say 200mm, but secretly be 185mm. 🙂

A 200/2 would be more useful (especially as a halo lens) than the announced 300/2.8, methinks. A light-weight 200/2.8 (even a remake of the old Minolta design) is also a more useful lens than many might think -- the problem is probably that it wouldn't be a great seller? Perhaps it could be remade in an APS-C version? I very often use my old Minolta 200/2.8 with LA-EA4 on the a6000 as a very lightweight 300mm alternative. Quality is great.

I agree with Caroline. TCs always add optical aberrations of their own; they cannot make anything sharper, just upsize the center of an image. Cropping a high-res sensor, or even shooting with an APS-C camera, is better than a TC. In my case I use the a6000 as a backup to my a7iii and can thus use it as a simple "TC". The main disadvantage is roughly the same (light loss per pixel) but with no extra optics in the light path, quality should actually be better.