Lens issue questions... Nikon 200-500.

[RAD2LTR]

Since I got the lens I've been really puzzled by my specific copy of the lens. I'm pretty darn smooth with my panning, but it seems like I have a possible focus issue with the lens. Sometimes there is no issue at all and I end up with monumentally tack sharp images, but then I end up with a lot of this sort of thing.

Settings were. 1/400, F5.6, 480mm. That should be plenty fast enough to capture a slow flying U2 at reasonably close range producing an amazingly sharp pic. I don't think it was too far away to need to worry about atmospheric distortion.


Direct link so you can see the exif info: https://www.flickr.com/photos/473099...posted-public/

What do you guys think? Obviously I know how to use a camera, and typically I shoot good sharp images, especially at this shutter speed. Clearly, this one is soft. Even at F5.6 there should be something that is in sharp focus, but there isn't. This is also the sort of result I was getting with a filter on the end of the lens (no filter for this shot). After doing a lot of searching for issues with the lens not working with a filter (I didn't actually find any info on that at all.) I did read enough reviews of the lens where the person doing the review had to send multiple ones back till they got a good lens. I don't want to blame my equipment for user error, but knowing my typical success rate with such shots, I really have to wonder if its the lens and not me. This should be an easy shot to take, the black on a lighter background gives good contrast for the camera to focus on, shutter speed is plenty high for a sharp pic. This should not be a soft focus shot.

Will

[wingman]

Re: Lens issue questions... Nikon 200-500.

You're right -- it should be sharp. I assume you have reviewed camera autofocus menu settings and such. You are on AFC, and know where the autofocus point was. Did you start the autofocus process on a contrasty point on the airplane, like a landing gear or an insignia. I don't suspect issues with any of that because it is close to sharp, and any major screw-ups would leave it more unsharp than this.

Did you use VR for this? VR is not designed for this kind of work and VR issues can be subtle.

Slight camera movement is a real possibility. 480mm is LONG on a small sensor body, and you are in an unsteady position shooting up like that. At 1/400 sec you are well under the old rule of thumb of shutter speed of 1 over the focal length (remember that your effective focal length here is 720mm). That rule of thumb was also thought up for static subjects and a solid stable handholding posture. In other words it seems like there are a number of physical factors here that COULD be issues.

I think your next step here is clearly some rigorous lens testing in a controlled environment. This should be at an appropriate distance to test for the kind of shooting you do. Camera and lens must be solidly unmoving -- heavy tripod with weight added to dampen vibrations, mirror locked up, remote release etc. Make sure VR is off, and test with both regular autofocus and live view to see if the two agree. This is a massive and tedious pain in the ass, but probably necessary to determine what you have. Given the problems you are having I'm not sure you have a choice. In addition try to get use of a somewhat comparable lens to give yourself a comparison point -- if a friend's Sigma 100-600 gives you better results on the same camera and test conditions, for instance, that tells you volumes. But conditions have to be the same -- if you go to the local airport with a buddy with a Canon Dwhatever and a Canon 100-400mm F4 and you both shoot handheld for two hours and come home and your buddy triumphantly claims his pictures are sharper it doesn't tell you anything, except that he was taking pictures next to you. Too many variables to make any conclusions at all.

Good luck coming to some conclusions, Will. Don't take any of this as me saying it's impossible that you have a bad sample -- Nikon quality control has not been the greatest over the last few years (nor has Canon's or anybody else's) and this is a complex machine designed to demanding specs. Your problem is just that there are so very many things here that could be issues.

All this makes me very happy to just be shooting cacti and stuff these days. It's nice to be able to focus (so to speak) more on the art and less on issues of technique/conditions/equipment.

Neal

[wingman]

Re: Lens issue questions... Nikon 200-500.

I just had a further thought, Will. Go back to your Monterey car stuff and have a really hard look at it, at 100% magnification in Lightroom or whatever you are using. If you can consistently read the print on the label of driver's harness at various focal lengths, then your problem is certainly not your equipment. You have indicated you were pleased with the car stuff -- if it's really consistently excellent, that tells you what you need to know about the lens.

I'd forgotten -- did you say you're using a D600? If so, then keep in mind that you are dealing with a step back in technology generation, and two steps down in autofocus sophistication from something like a D500 or D5. An excellent camera for most any application, but not the latest and greatest of sports cameras, either. Having said that I can show you dozens of technically near perfect Reno shots done with a D200, and many of them were shot just in jpeg. My consistency and percentage wonderful were not great, but the best shots are truly wonderful. Ultimately technique and luck will trump better equipment without technique and luck every time.

It's interesting that you and Joseph, and I think Connor, are all complaining about inconsistent results. I suspect that your results are not a lot less consistent and your percentage not a lot lower than any of the rest of us. I TOLD you that this air race stuff is not easy. I told you that your percentage of keepers might suck. That's just the nature of this particular shooting problem. This is not easy shooting. You don't see my rejects. You don't see Victor's rejects. We have a LOT of rejects. If you got 50 or 75 life greatest killer shots from Reno, spread across the classes, you're doing fine. Other than for ego gratification, why would you ever need more than 75 truly great Reno 2016 images? Nobody but you will ever sit through that many and really look at them anyway. Then, logic says that if you got 50 really killer images you probably got a couple hundred that are publication quality and even more that are web quality. The most images I ever had in one magazine article for one year was 22. They were all done with manual exposure manual focus lenses, and most on ASA 80 and ASA200 black and white film. They were fine for the purpose, though not nearly as good as I could do now with my D3 and fancy AFS 300, and usable ISO to 2500. BUT, those old shots would still be acceptable for magazine use today. Magazine work (much less newsprint work) does not require perfection.

So y'all obviously need to know your equipment is good, but if you're tossing half of your shots in the first sort it most likely doesn't mean your equipment sucks. It much more likely just means you've just come back from Reno...

Neal

[Florian]

Re: Lens issue questions... Nikon 200-500.

Hello Will,

I had to return my 200-500 lens three (!) times to get a relatively proper lens to work with, the previous lenses all had focal length depending front/backfocus problems this means for example no fine tuning required for 500mm but fine tuning required for 200mm (f.5,6) to have the sharpness where it should be. It was not acceptable for me to use different fine tuning values depending on the focal length currently in use. In addition to this several copies showed slight debalancing effects (left side and middle: sharp, right side: CA and more soft) even stopped down to f.8 AND already visible on a small frame DX body. Also my current copy show this effect but not so strong.
In addition to this I also observed at my lenses that they were very sharp at close distances when the focus set was OK but at long distances > 500m even at good conditions the sharpness slightly decreased, information about this effect I also found in several internet discussions.
To come back to your issue I also observed at all of my 200-500 lenses that most photos of passing airplanes or birds flying directly above me were slighty soft with exposure time range 1/500 - 1/1000s and VR activated, with deacivated VR I'm able to produce sharper photos in this special condition (angle between 60° and 90°). Maybe as Neal already mentioned the VR does not work properly under this condition, In your photo of the U2 there are slight double image effects visible which might result from user shake which had not been eliminated by VR system.

Best regards,
Florian

[jarrodeu]

Re: Lens issue questions... Nikon 200-500.

Looking at your picture, I don't see softness, I see movement. While 1/400 isn't particularly slow, I have a much harder time panning over my head, rather than if a plane is taking off.
I leave my VR/IS on all the time. Not sure how the Nikon VR works, but with the new Canon 100-400, there are 3 modes. 1 is for stationary, 2 is for panning and only compensates for vertical movement. The third is off, until the moment you press the shutter. That's what I use.
My guess is either you were not steady enough or the VR was fighting you. This is all just my opinion so take it with a grain of salt.

Jarrod

[wingman]

Re: Lens issue questions... Nikon 200-500.

Interesting input here -- especially Florian's experience with sample variation. This is really hard and time consuming to test for, but does seem to be an issue with this lens.

Jarrod's thoughts on VR may or may not be applicable to Nikon. I know absolutely nothing about Canon, but my experience with Nikon is that I have done considerably worse trying to use VR on the pylons than by turning it off. Other Nikon users have said the same. Panning horizontally or working with, for instance, taxiing airplanes seems to be a different matter. As far as I can recall I generally kept VR on for most work on the ground, even with relatively slower moving subjects.

One thing to be aware of (not totally relevant to the present discussion) is that Nikon VR takes a moment -- half a second to a second or so -- to stabilize the image. You cannot just put the camera to your eye and press the button -- it has to be a bit more deliberate than that to take advantage of Nikon vibration reduction.

Neal

[CJAM427]

Re: Lens issue questions... Nikon 200-500.

I don't think I had voiced any complaints about it yet, as the different rentals I have used never had this problem. Neal, you read my mind though, after going through most of my photos it does look like I experienced the same problem at a couple times. It's frustrating as hell because they're definitely not "blown shots" like you usually see when its user error (blurred in the direction its moving). The main subject is not blurred in motion, just slightly soft enough where its not sharp.

Since I've never had this problem before I figured it was just my lack of experience at this event or that its maybe atmospheric distortion. But at the same time I still did get some very sharp images in all the same places.

[RAD2LTR]

Re: Lens issue questions... Nikon 200-500.

Neal,
The stuff from Monterey was very hit or miss. I shot a ton of pics, and there was a pattern of sharp, soft, sharp, soft, that went through the whole lot of them. That was my first indication that there could be something a little off. I doubt I got 3 sharp frames in a row for the whole weekend with this lens. The D600 is a full frame camera so I'm shooting a true 200-500mm. Yes, the VR was on, but again, I've always shot with the VR on with all my lenses and never had a noticeable issue (24-85VR and 70-300VR). I shot with a center focus point only, and yes went for the contrasting area of either the intake or the main gear bay.

Yes, shooting at the pylons is hard, and I expected to shoot a lot of crap, but not in the form that this is. Heat distortion? Yes, totally out of focus from a bad pan? Sure, Half an airplane? Absolutely. The number of overly soft shots at (to me) high shutter speeds however, with a long tracking time to get everything sharp, that is what bothers me. I had the same thing with the stuff I shot at Monterey, and the same thing with the stuff I shot at a local autocross. I always expect to shoot some garbage, but with my other lenses, its been far less crap, and the crap has been far more obvious.

On a tripod, 500mm, F11, 1/1600, ISO 400, the moon looks amazing. The detail is mind blowing. I also had a good contrasting target, remote shutter release, and no wind or heat to worry about.


On a tripod the stuff looks amazing, but its all stationary stuff.

Will

[wingman]

Re: Lens issue questions... Nikon 200-500.

That's why you shoot LOTS of pictures, Connor, and why you keep going back to the best places time after time. My situation in recent years was great. Birgitta works harder than I'm willing to, and is much more social. I don't like crowds and hate the announcers. Birgitta would have a great time running around in the pits and hangars working her lovely behind off and get great ground and people stuff, and I would just hang out on the pylons all week and keep trying to get the perfect pylon shot. In the evenings I'd have a glass of Scotch and wander the pits socialising with all my favourite mechanics.

Great to have a partner, and great to have a lot of time to try to get the pylon thing right.

Neal

[wingman]

Re: Lens issue questions... Nikon 200-500.

I don't know what to suggest, Will. You have a very good camera, and if your tripod stuff is really solid it would seem you have a good copy of the lens. You understand technique. Your stuff at, say, 200mm to 250mm should be at least as good with the 200-500mm as with the 70-300mm. That should be a sweet spot for both lenses, and the longer lens should be better at focusing on moving objects.

I still think you should go onto Nikonians and start some conversations with some of the Sports and birds in flight folks over there. Unfortunately neither the motorsports nor aviation forums are very active these days, but the Sports and Wildlife forums are very active and full of superb action shooters. My knowledge is pretty limited but there are some much more experienced and technically astute people on that site.

Neal

[Idaho_cowpony]

Re: Lens issue questions... Nikon 200-500.

This is all great info for the board. Thanks guys!

- Joseph