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by thom on Thu Sep 12, 2019 3:12 pm
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Mike in O wrote:
thom wrote:
SantaFeJoe wrote:The one thing he mentions near the end of the article about focus implies that he feels that Nikon focuses more accurately when motion is He also mentioned that he would have preferred the Sony 100-400 over the Nikon 500.

Joe
That's inaccurate. I mentioned that HAD I been shooting with the Sony, I would have likely used the 100-400mm. I do NOT prefer it over the 500mm. Moreover, that would be a strange apples-versus-oranges kind of comparison to start with (zoom versus prime, regular lens design versus PF).

Unfortunately, I have no experience yet with the Sony 200-600mm, nor does Sony have anything other than the 400mm as a serious wildlife prime. Thus the reason why I'd have picked the 100-400mm.

Just to be fair: Nikon's 80-400mm is quite weak these days. If it WERE a contest between picking it or the Sony 100-400mm, a more apples-to-apples comparison, I'd pick the Sony, and clearly so. Of course, if were to make it a contest between the Nikkor 180-400mm and the Sony 100-400mm, I'd probably pick the Nikkor, but again that's a bit of an apples-versus-oranges comparison. It's the quality at 400mm f/4 and instant TC that makes the Nikkor so desirable, but it's a bigger, heavier, more expensive lens than the Sony.
I guess you don't consider the 600f4 to be a wildlife lens?
Oh, it's a wildlife lens. But at the time I took that trip, and even today, I can't get one.
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by thom on Thu Sep 12, 2019 3:17 pm
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SantaFeJoe wrote:
thom wrote:
SantaFeJoe wrote:The one thing he mentions near the end of the article about focus implies that he feels that Nikon focuses more accurately when motion is He also mentioned that he would have preferred the Sony 100-400 over the Nikon 500.

Joe
That's inaccurate. I mentioned that HAD I been shooting with the Sony, I would have likely used the 100-400mm. I do NOT prefer it over the 500mm. Moreover, that would be a strange apples-versus-oranges kind of comparison to start with (zoom versus prime, regular lens design versus PF.
What you wrote was:

“I probably would have picked the Sony 100-400mm lens instead of the Nikkor 500mm, giving up some reach for flexibility.”

That has nothing to do with apples vs. oranges(lens quality wise), but rather flexibility of a zoom vs. a fixed lens(and maybe that’s apples to oranges if you think of it that way). At least that’s the way I interpret it.

Joe
And the context of that statement, which you leave out, is that if I had chosen to go with Sony mirrorless bodies. Perhaps I'll go back and rewrite that section so that it's totally clear...
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by thom on Thu Sep 12, 2019 3:22 pm
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E.J. Peiker wrote:Well now that we have Thom's attention ;)  I love my 500PF and would never travel overseas a traditional 600/4 or even 500/4 again unless they figure out how to make them 3lbs and am wondering how it performs with the FTZ adapter in AF-C tracking a moving subject?
Basically the same as it does on the Nikon DSLRs. A bit slower in focus acquisition than the 500mm f/4 on a D5, but it tracks fine. As I've noted elsewhere, there is that issue with the Z's still where if they lose contrast on the selected sensor and the subject is small in the frame, they will tend to go to the background.

In general, looking back it appears that Nikon was anticipating the mirrorless cameras. All of the recent E lenses seem to work quite well on the mirrorless bodies with the FTZ adapter. The 70-300mm AF-P even seems a little faster on the Z's than the DSLRs.
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by thom on Thu Sep 12, 2019 3:25 pm
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E.J. Peiker wrote:
Mike in O wrote:How well does the 500 PF take teleconverters?  Here is a thread on FM using 2x with the 200/600.  https://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/1612951
Optically it's fine, especially stopped down a third of a stop but as I said, the AF is compromised for lock-on and tracking a moving subject like a bird against a non-sky background compared to the 500/4+1.4x
Well, let's be clear. One reason the 500 PF is compromised in AF performance on the DSLRs is that apertures beyond f/5.6 limit the autofocus sensors that are active. That's not true of the Z's. That said, I don't like TCs at all, and try to avoid them.
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by thom on Thu Sep 12, 2019 3:29 pm
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Anthony Medici wrote:
Mike in O wrote: Compared to the Nikon boat anchor 600, the Sony is a full 2lbs. lighter and you don't need an adapter.
Then the Sony 600mm F4 would have only weighed in as much as both lenses he ended up bringing on the trip. That’s certainly better than the Nikon version yet it is still quite large, bulky and twice the weight the Nikon 500 PF that he used instead.
I'd just say this: there was only one time on the trip that I felt like I needed a 600mm lens. As Tony knows, I'm not a fan of that focal length at all. If you really need that much lens, you're usually just not close enough to the subject. And when you're not that close to the subject, atmospheric conditions start to be a real problem.

Moreover, since I had the 500mm on the Z7, at any time I could simply invoke DX crop and have a 20mp 750mm equivalent lens. That's enough for me.
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by thom on Thu Sep 12, 2019 3:35 pm
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Mike in O wrote:Can the Z's AF at f16?  I know my A mounts can't (6.7 max unless it is the 500 reflex which will focus at f8).
 Generally, yes, though focus systems are always going to be compromised with lack of light. In Sunny 16 conditions, the Z's focus just fine at f/16 (though they actually do the focus at f/5.6 or max aperture).

The reason why DSLRs have clear aperture limitations has a lot to do with the path and geometry of how the light gets to the focus sensors. Geometrically speaking, DSLRs are compromised at both ends (wide aperture and small) but have better discrimination, while mirrorless isn't aperture compromised and has worse discrimination. TNSTAAFL.
Thom Hogan, writer/photographer
author, Nikon Field Guide & Nikon Flash Guide
author, Complete Guides to 21 Nikon cameras
http://www.bythom.com
 

by Anthony Medici on Thu Sep 12, 2019 3:38 pm
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Mike in O wrote: That 500 PF is a sweet lens but being 5.6 can be limiting.
Any lens can be limiting since photography is the art of the compromise.

During the last year, I made the decision to move to the 500 PF rather than continue to using the 500 F4 VR. Most of that decision was a realization that I wan't getting any younger and the weight and size were now becoming more of a hinderance to me versus what I gained by being able to shoot at F4. And I did shoot at F4 almost exclusively during my last 2 trips with Thom when I used that lens.

Yet I know it was the right decision for me. After the previous trip where I was switching between the 500 F4 and the 200 F2 on two different bodies, my right shoulder hurt constantly after that trip until just recently losing some mobility with the arm. It took over a year to lessen. This trip I used the 500 PF and the 200 F2 during the two week trip and I didn't aggravate the right shoulder at all.

In looking at the images from the 500 PF, there were a few times that I could enough of a difference in the look of the images that I might have preferred the F4 version for that situation. Yet enough of the images show little enough difference that I know it was the right decision based on my health, rather than caring about my preferred style of shooting.

In terms of focus speed between the two lenses, I still prefer the 500 F4 VR in terms of speed of acquisition. In fact, I had to change the default mode I was using on my D850 to accommodate the sluggishness in speed between the two lenses. (For those interested, I switched from group to single point.) And there were still times I know I could have gotten images of certain birds in flight that I missed with the 500 PF.

Yet again, this is offset by the amount of time I could shoot while hand holding the lens rather than needing additional support in a lot of situations. Usually, the need for support limited my movement enough that I missed many opportunities anyway. So I don't consider the sluggishness of speed of acquisition using the PF to be a total downside.

And I gained a different benefit too. My 1.4x teleconverter isn't nearly as bad on the 500 PF as it was on my 500 F4. This seems counter intuitive since the 500 F4 VR should have been better. Yet I tried the 1.4x in enough situations over the time I used it with the 500 VR that I almost stop bringing it on my trips to Botswana as I rarely liked the images taken with the converter on. In reviewing this year's images, I'm finding that the converter worked well in most situations I put it in this year. Of course I shot both wide open. And although both were wide open, the 500 VR would be using F5.6 while the 500 PF is using F8. In terms of type of images I'm talking about, I used the combination for both birds soaring and for distant/closeup mammal images. I got keepers on this trip for both types of images. 

EJ, I haven't used the 500 PF enough on the Z6 to form an opinion on their combined use yet. I did get some wonderful images on the Z6 using a number of the lenses though and I know I need more practice with the camera to be able to use it up to its potential before I can decide which I prefer for which situations. Especially those situation involving flying birds.
Tony


Last edited by Anthony Medici on Thu Sep 12, 2019 4:18 pm, edited 1 time in total.
 

by Mike in O on Thu Sep 12, 2019 4:10 pm
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Anthony Medici wrote:
Mike in O wrote: That 500 PF is a sweet lens but being 5.6 can be limiting.
Any lens can be limiting since photography is the art of the compromise.

During the last year, I made the decision to move to the 500 PF rather than continue to using the 500 F4 VR. Most of that decision was a realization that I wan't getting any younger and the weight and size were now becoming more of a hinderance to me versus what I gained by being able to shoot at F4. And I did shoot at F4 almost exclusively during my last 2 trips with Thom when I used that lens.

Yet I know it was the right decision for me. After the previous trip where I was switching between the 500 F4 and the 200 F2 on two different bodies, my right shoulder hurt constantly after that trip until just recently losing some mobility with the arm. It took over a year to lessen. This trip I used the 500 PF and the 200 F2 and the two week trip and I didn't aggravate the right shoulder at all.

In looking at the images from the 500 PF, there were a few times that I could enough of a difference in the look of the images that I might have preferred the F4 version for that situation. Yet enough of the images show little enough difference that I know it was the right decision based on my health, rather than caring about my preferred style of shooting.

In terms of focus speed between the two lenses, I still prefer the 500 F4 VR in terms of speed of acquisition. In fact, I had to change the default mode I was using on my D850 to accommodate the sluggishness in speed between the two lenses. (For those interested, I switched from group to single point.) And there were still times I know I could have gotten images of certain birds in flight that I missed with the 500 PF.

Yet again, this is offset by the amount of time I could shoot while hand holding the lens rather than needing additional support in a lot of situations. Usually, the need for support limited my movement enough that I missed many opportunities anyway. So I don't consider the sluggishness of speed of acquisition using the PF to be a total downside.

And I gained a different benefit too. My 1.4x teleconverter isn't nearly as bad on the 500 PF as it was on my 500 F4. This seems counter intuitive since the 500 F4 VR should have been better. Yet I tried the 1.4x in enough situations over the time I used it with the 500 VR that I almost stop bringing it on my trips to Botswana as I rarely liked the images taken with the converter on. In reviewing this year's images, I'm finding that the converter worked well in most situations I put it in this year. Of course I shot both wide open. And although both were wide open, the 500 VR would be using F5.6 while the 500 PF is using F8. In terms of type of images I'm talking about, I used the combination for both birds soaring and for distant/closeup mammal images. I got keepers on this trip for both types of images. 

EJ, I haven't used the 500 PF enough on the Z6 to form an opinion on their combined use yet. I did get some wonderful images on the Z6 using a number of the lenses though and I know I need more practice with the camera to be able to use it up to its potential before I can decide which I prefer for which situations. Especially those situation involving flying birds.
Thanks for the detailed run down Tony.
 

by Mike in O on Thu Sep 12, 2019 4:18 pm
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Sony cameras shoot in crop mode also but they have a setting called clear image zoom (only with jpeg) that greatly enhance the photo with 1.5 or 2x crop. The algorithms used are quite good.
 

by SantaFeJoe on Thu Sep 12, 2019 4:58 pm
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thom wrote:
SantaFeJoeWhat you wrote was: wrote: “I probably would have picked the Sony 100-400mm lens instead of the Nikkor 500mm, giving up some reach for flexibility.”

That has nothing to do with apples vs. oranges(lens quality wise), but rather flexibility of a zoom vs. a fixed lens(and maybe that’s apples to oranges if you think of it that way). At least that’s the way I interpret it.

Joe
And the context of that statement, which you leave out, is that if I had chosen to go with Sony mirrorless bodies. Perhaps I'll go back and rewrite that section so that it's totally clear...
OK. To be fair, here is a more complete excerpt:


“Prior to setting off on this trip with the Nikon mirrorless gear, I heard from several friends about all the "negatives" I was about to experience.......
...
.....

The Sony mirrorless would be better. Nnyaa (in Setswana). It would only be go sa tshwane(different)I probably would have picked the Sony 100-400mm lens instead of the Nikkor 500mm, giving up some reach for flexibility. In my experience I'd probably also have many more "almost perfect focus" in capturing motion with the Sony instead of the "dead on focus" shots like I got with the Nikon”


Joe
Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.  -Pablo Picasso
 

by thom on Fri Sep 13, 2019 10:35 am
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Mike in O wrote:
Anthony Medici wrote:
Mike in O wrote: That 500 PF is a sweet lens but being 5.6 can be limiting.
Any lens can be limiting since photography is the art of the compromise.

During the last year, I made the decision to move to the 500 PF rather than continue to using the 500 F4 VR. Most of that decision was a realization that I wan't getting any younger and the weight and size were now becoming more of a hinderance to me versus what I gained by being able to shoot at F4. And I did shoot at F4 almost exclusively during my last 2 trips with Thom when I used that lens.

Yet I know it was the right decision for me. After the previous trip where I was switching between the 500 F4 and the 200 F2 on two different bodies, my right shoulder hurt constantly after that trip until just recently losing some mobility with the arm. It took over a year to lessen. This trip I used the 500 PF and the 200 F2 and the two week trip and I didn't aggravate the right shoulder at all.

In looking at the images from the 500 PF, there were a few times that I could enough of a difference in the look of the images that I might have preferred the F4 version for that situation. Yet enough of the images show little enough difference that I know it was the right decision based on my health, rather than caring about my preferred style of shooting.

In terms of focus speed between the two lenses, I still prefer the 500 F4 VR in terms of speed of acquisition. In fact, I had to change the default mode I was using on my D850 to accommodate the sluggishness in speed between the two lenses. (For those interested, I switched from group to single point.) And there were still times I know I could have gotten images of certain birds in flight that I missed with the 500 PF.

Yet again, this is offset by the amount of time I could shoot while hand holding the lens rather than needing additional support in a lot of situations. Usually, the need for support limited my movement enough that I missed many opportunities anyway. So I don't consider the sluggishness of speed of acquisition using the PF to be a total downside.

And I gained a different benefit too. My 1.4x teleconverter isn't nearly as bad on the 500 PF as it was on my 500 F4. This seems counter intuitive since the 500 F4 VR should have been better. Yet I tried the 1.4x in enough situations over the time I used it with the 500 VR that I almost stop bringing it on my trips to Botswana as I rarely liked the images taken with the converter on. In reviewing this year's images, I'm finding that the converter worked well in most situations I put it in this year. Of course I shot both wide open. And although both were wide open, the 500 VR would be using F5.6 while the 500 PF is using F8. In terms of type of images I'm talking about, I used the combination for both birds soaring and for distant/closeup mammal images. I got keepers on this trip for both types of images. 

EJ, I haven't used the 500 PF enough on the Z6 to form an opinion on their combined use yet. I did get some wonderful images on the Z6 using a number of the lenses though and I know I need more practice with the camera to be able to use it up to its potential before I can decide which I prefer for which situations. Especially those situation involving flying birds.
Thanks for the detailed run down Tony.
I would add to this that Tony and I had long and heated debates about the 500mm f/4. Some of that had to do with whether or not 500mm and f/4 were really going to make a difference in rendering. I personally believe the sweet spot is 400mm f/2.8. That's a lot of lens, and that large aperture does indeed give you the ability to do isolation shots that can be dramatic. 500mm and f/4 was always to me sort of a no man's land in that respect. I suppose I really need to shoot and map out the actual differentials at various distances to see if empirical data matches my perception, but 500 and f/4 didn't feel the same to me as 400mm f/2.8 or 600mm f/4.

I'm with Tony on the 500mm f/5.6 PF: there have only been a few times when using the PF lens that I wished it were f/4. I'm currently trying to figure out whether that's a personal subjective thing about how I use a 500mm lens or whether there's something else going on there (e.g. does the PF element impact out of focus areas in some way?). But I've been very happy with the results from the PF lens. Now I want a 400mm f/3.5 or f/4 PF ;~).

Tony's also correct that the 500mm f/4 focuses faster (at least in terms of initial acquisition; not 100% sure about tracking). If you need absolute max performance, it's a D5 and 500mm f/4 for sure.

Tony also mentions he found a converter difference. Again, I need to work on trying to nail this down, but I have a theory. On a D5 generation DSLR with the 500mm and a TC1.4x, you can focus using any sensor, but only the five columns in the center are cross sensors (and things get far worse with the TC1.7x and TC2x). If you're using anything other than Single Point in those five columns, you have to watch out for "weak sensor" issues as you select the various group AF combinations. This can subtly throw off where/how focus is achieved if you're not careful (e.g. the camera wants to focus on the sixth+ column due to tracking advice but doesn't find enough contrast there due to a single line sensor being used, so falls back. In other words, with BIF, you'd need to make sure the head is basically centered in the frame. The Z's don't have this limitation (though they're all single axis sensors, which means you might want to dutch cant your shots just a bit in some cases where you don't have clear horizontal detail that can be resolved by those sensors).
Thom Hogan, writer/photographer
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author, Complete Guides to 21 Nikon cameras
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by thom on Fri Sep 13, 2019 10:36 am
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Mike in O wrote:Sony cameras shoot in crop mode also but they have a setting called clear image zoom (only with jpeg) that greatly enhance the photo with 1.5 or 2x crop.  The algorithms used are quite good.
I've found those algorithms unpredictable. At times they do a very good job. At other times they add clear and difficult to deal with artifacts.
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author, Complete Guides to 21 Nikon cameras
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by Scott Fairbairn on Sun Sep 15, 2019 3:56 pm
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Out of curiosity, does the Z6 focus better than the Z7? The reason I ask is that I've tried the Z7 with small birds, or larger birds in flight and I find it unreliable, or I should say, that it gives very poor results. Whether it's viewfinder lag or general sluggishness compared to say a D500, I find it pretty hopeless for bird photography if they are moving at all. That's using the 500PF lens.
Using the Sony A9(or D500) is a walk in the park in comparison. For general wildlife, the Z7 seems fine.
 

by Mike in O on Sun Sep 15, 2019 5:33 pm
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thom wrote:
Mike in O wrote:Sony cameras shoot in crop mode also but they have a setting called clear image zoom (only with jpeg) that greatly enhance the photo with 1.5 or 2x crop.  The algorithms used are quite good.
I've found those algorithms unpredictable. At times they do a very good job. At other times they add clear and difficult to deal with artifacts.
On your blog, maybe you could show examples where CIZ fails to satisfy you.
 

by ricardo00 on Sun Sep 15, 2019 7:03 pm
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Mike in O wrote:Sony cameras shoot in crop mode also but they have a setting called clear image zoom (only with jpeg) that greatly enhance the photo with 1.5 or 2x crop.  The algorithms used are quite good.
 
  Just curious, how would this compare to processing a JPEG or RAW image with a program like Topaz's Gigapixel AI?
 

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