To choose the best lenses for the Sony A6400, we strongly took into account size and price. We say the A6400 is one of the best Sony cameras because we think it has the best combination of features, versatility and price. It’s a compact and affordable camera – so surely its lenses should be as well.
We’ve used the Sony A6400, we’ve tested all these lenses, and if we were spending our own money, these are the options we would consider first. You can also check out our list of the best lenses for Sony A6000 cameras generally if you like, and many of the best Sony lenses will fit on the A6400 just fine.
We’ve tried to cover a range of interests, from travel to portraits to sports and wildlife. We’ve also taken A6400 video shooters into account as you’ll see from our comments, including a couple of affordable prime lenses which are great for stills photography but also give hassle-free gimbal shooting with lightweight and no zoom and no rebalancing for different zoom settings!
Above all, we’ve tried to balance suitability for the A6400’s size, good performance that can get the most from its 24MP sensor and value for money to reflect the A6400’s asking price.
When you’re buying lenses it’s easy to spend a lot more than you ever intended, and way more than the camera cost in the first place. With the A6400, we think it’s important to choose the right lenses for the job that deliver good results without costing a fortune.
Rod Lawton
Rod is an independent photography journalist and editor, and a long-standing Digital Camera World contributor, having previously worked as DCW's Group Reviews Editor. He has used practically every interchangeable-lens camera launched in the past 20 years, from entry-level DSLRs to medium-format cameras, so he has the expertise to select the best Sony lenses for you.
Think of this zoom as a ‘trinity’ telephoto with just a little range missing at the long end, making it small and light for the A6400. Read more below…
The f/1.4 aperture rating for this very affordable model means you can get some lovely blurred backdrops in your portraits. Read more below…
Best lenses for the Sony A6400 in 2024
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The Sony A6400 is usually sold with Sony's 16-50mm power zoom kit lens, which is very compact and convenient but optically a bit poor. If you want a step up in quality, one option is Sony's rather massive and expensive 16-55mm f/2.8 G, but we would pick this instead.
The Sigma 18-50mm f/2.8 DC DN offers a constant f/2.8 aperture, just like the Sony lens, with classic 3x zoom range for a standard zoom. The Sigma is smaller than you’d expect given its constant maximum aperture (our shot shows it fitted to our Sony A7R III, but you'll get the idea), yet the build quality is very good – and it’s weather-resistant as well. The autofocus system is super-fast and virtually silent, and we were impressed by the quality of the images.
Frustrated by the short focal range of the standard Sony 16-50mm kit lens? Get this! With an equivalent focal range of 27-200mm in full frame terms, the Sony E 18-135mm f/3.5-5.6 OSS is practically a superzoom, but remains compact, neat and affordable and – unlike almost every other long-zoom lens – it holds its performance even at full zoom.
What we like about this lens is its neat, cylindrical design, its fuss-free exterior, easy operation and in-built image stabilizer. Like a lot of modern mirrorless lenses, it does rely on digital as well as optical corrections, but the result is a long-range kit lens with far better image quality across the range than we would normally expect from a lens of this type.
Sony also makes an older E 10-18mm f/4 OSS lens, which is a little cheaper than this one and also worth considering. The 10-18mm has optical stabilization, which is good for stills photography, but this newer E PZ 10-20mm f/4 G has a power zoom, which is ideal for video, so take your pick.
The Sony E PZ 10-20mm f/4 G is especially good for vloggers who need to film themselves and their background, because it gives a wider angle of view than a regular zoom. It's also a great travel lens, ideal for narrow city streets, tall landmarks and spectacular interiors. None of the ultra-wide lens options for the Sony A6400 is cheap, but this is such a useful lens to have that we recommend it anyway.
A 70-200mm with an f/2.8 aperture is a must-have lens for most professional photographers - but this type of fast telephoto is just a bit too big to pair well with a small mirrorless camera like the Sony A6400. Tamron has therefore made this very slightly shorter 70-180mm, which is smaller and significantly lighter than the Sony FE 70-200mm f/2.8 GM OSS.
The Tamron has a responsive, near-silent autofocus system, and we rate its image quality highly. The diaphragm is based on nine blades, less than the Sony lens’s 11, but that’s still plenty to make a well-rounded aperture. Bokeh was lovely as long as we went down a stop. Be warned, though, that this lens makes do without an image stabilizer, so you will need to use a fast enough shutter speed to avoid camera shake.
For longer-range subjects you need a lens with big magnifying power, but also the optical quality for sharp results. So while there is a cheaper and smaller Sony E 55-210mm lens, this is the one we would recommend for sports and wildlife fans.
The Sony E 70-350mm f/4.5-6.3 G OSS is a fairly big and expensive lens, but it sports a 5x zoom range, equating to 105-525mm on a full-frame body, so it's practically in super-telephoto territory. It might not have an ultra-fast maximum aperture, but the modest f/4.5-6.3 aperture rating enables a much more compact, lightweight build, and it does have Sony's OSS optical image stabilization system. It's a biggish lens, but offers huge range at an affordable price.
I said in the introduction that I wanted to include a couple of prime lenses, and this is the first. The Tamron 20mm f/2.8 Di III OSD M 1:2 is actually a full-frame lens, so if you decide later to upgrade to a full-frame Sony, this lens will work just fine.
On a full-frame camera it's a wide-angle prime, while fitted to a Sony A6400 it's equivalent to a 30mm lens – perfect as a semi wide-angle 'street photography' lens, in other words. Not only that, its 1:2 close up capability means it's halfway (literally) towards a full macro lens, so it does two jobs, not one. Best of all, it's not too big and not too expensive, despite first-rate optical performance, so it's a great buy for Sony A6400 owners.
This is both a ‘nifty fifty’ and an affordable macro lens with 1:1 magnification. It’s not a Zeiss or a G Master, so it’s designed as an affordable workaday lens for amateurs and enthusiasts. That’s not to say it’s a poor performer – far from it – but with no aperture ring and a modest f/2.8 maximum aperture, we would characterize this more as a macro lens than a 50mm (even though that is the focal length).
If what you want is a fast 50mm prime for regular use, you would probably cross this off the list – but a great choice if you want to photograph insects, flowers or anything else where you want to get in really close for big magnification. Be warned that this lens is showing its age in terms of its autofocus performance!
An 85mm-equivalent portait lens for Sony APS-C cameras
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Super-fast f/1.4 maximum aperture
Reasons to avoid
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No image stabilization
Portraiture and still-life can be a struggle with a crop-sensor camera, especially if you want nice creamy bokeh, giving a sumptuous smoothness to defocused areas. With an ‘effective’ focal length of 85mm on a Sony A6400, this becomes a classic lens for portrait photography.
The f/1.4 aperture rating of this Sigma 56mm f/1.4 DC DN | C lens gives you full control over depth of field, allowing to create beautifully blurred backgrounds, to isolate your subject, at a very competitive price. In our tests, we remarked that it’s a compact lens, so it goes well together with a mirrorless camera. Build quality is solid despite its lightness. We also enjoyed the speedy autofocus and tremendous images.
The A6400, like all A6000-series cameras, uses the Sony E lens mount. Sony’s own E-mount lenses have either FE or E in their model names: all work on the A6400. Very broadly speaking, an FE lens will be heavier and more expensive than an equivalent E lens, but deliver better image quality. E lenses (again very broadly) will tend to be smaller and lighter.
For shooting at shorter focal lengths and wider angles of view – specifically kit lenses or ultra-wide zooms – you are probably better off with an E lens. The APS-C crop factor of the A6400 means that FE lenses offer a reduced angle of view, curtailing their wide-angle capability with the smaller sensor.
If you are buying a third-party E-mount lens, check whether the lens is designed for use with APS-C Sony cameras like the A6400, or with full-frame Sonys.
The lens experts in our testing lab run a range of tests under controlled conditions, using the Imatest Master testing suite. Photos of test charts are taken across the range of apertures and zooms (where available), then analyzed for sharpness, distortion and chromatic aberrations.
We use Imatest SFR (spatial frequency response) charts and analysis software to plot lens resolution at the centre of the image frame, corners and mid-point distances, across the range of aperture settings and, with zoom lenses, at four different focal lengths.
There's more to it than just the technical side, though! Beyond the lab, our reviewers test lenses in real-world environments – and sometimes on professional shoots! We work with lenses both indoors and outdoors, in studio conditions and in natural light, with as many different subjects as is possible (or appropriate – there's no point testing a landscape lens' ability to shoot a portrait!).
We take into account everything from handling and ease of use to speed of autofocus and the overall quality of the images produced.
Rod is an independent photography journalist and editor, and a long-standing Digital Camera World contributor, having previously worked as DCW's Group Reviews editor. Before that he has been technique editor on N-Photo, Head of Testing for the photography division and Camera Channel editor on TechRadar, as well as contributing to many other publications. He has been writing about photography technique, photo editing and digital cameras since they first appeared, and before that began his career writing about film photography. He has used and reviewed practically every interchangeable lens camera launched in the past 20 years, from entry-level DSLRs to medium format cameras, together with lenses, tripods, gimbals, light meters, camera bags and more. Rod has his own camera gear blog at fotovolo.com but also writes about photo-editing applications and techniques at lifeafterphotoshop.com