Long time no see and no post, I know. I still owe you part III of my "On Photo Sharing" series, I know. It's in the making (and it will be a killer article of course - grin) but here's an interim post about telephoto lenses and stuff.
Because I'm not really happy with the reach of the 70-300VR on the D700 and because I was curious, I rented the "Bigma" (Sigma 50-500 OS) for a whale watching cruise.*
500mm on full frame? Sounds damn good. But to jump to the conclusion of this post right away: I'll rather use the 70-300VR on a crop sensor camera (namely, Shuwen's D90:) instead in the future if I need that reach.
Why?
The Bigma is, well... big, of course. And heavy. The build quality is really convincing, and the sharpness at 500mm is good for the "low resolution" 12 megapixel sensor of the D700. But you can't really use it hand-held (and you shouldn't - I think the thing is heavy enough to cause serious strain on the lens mount of the camera, and when you're using that combination handheld, it will happen that you hold it on the camera body - if only for seconds, but still).
I've been using it on my monopod since I don't have a tripod head that suits these telezoom lenses. The monopod is also versatile and unobtrusive enough to use it on a boat, like on our whale watching cruise**. There would have been no way to set up a tripod on that boat.
When the cruise was over, some fellow photographer asked me about the lens. He had the 70-300VR on a D60. It was then that it dawned on me that he had a reach of 450mm (and the 50mm difference between 450mm and 500mm is really neglectible IMHO) with a fraction of the weight.
Yes I know, 300mm is 300mm even on a crop sensor, it's just the angle of view that equivalents 450mm, I could just crop my D700 image, yada-yada-yada... to which I reply: resolution. If I crop that D700 image, I probably end of with an OK 5 megapixel image (that's the resolution of the D700 if the sensor was DX size). Compared to a 12 megapixel image from the D90 that is maybe a little less sharp (at 300mm, the 70-300VR isn't that much of a performer) with some room for cropping, I'll end up with a rather good 6-8 megapixel image. See what I mean?
So for me, who only occasionally makes wildlife photos that need these long zoom lenses, it really makes more sense to use the slow and lightweight 70-300mm on the 12 megapixel crop sensor instead of the slow and heavy 50-500mm on the 12 megapixel full frame sensor. (And I didn't even mention the money.) Use the latest Nikon body like the D7000 with it's excellent high ISO image quality, and it's even less of a question for me.
*) I am not too excited about these photos; you can find the album in my Picasa Web account at the moment. FWIW, a photo that I really liked to show is on my main website.
**) it attracted enough attention for the captain of the boat to ask if I would share the photos with him.
Hi Alex, you just replied a few questions that I have been asking myself recently :-)
ReplyDeleteI experienced similar softness with the Nikkor 70-300 (on a D90 body) when at full length. Even in full daylight conditions (shooting at 1/1500 s) at f/8 everything at the far end looks slightly out of focus to me. I also found some horrible blue-fringing that no post-processing would get rid off, like the one at the end of the wings in this photo:
http://jlopez.ende.cc/?p=596
For a while though on getting a longer/sharper lens, but I then thought that wouldn't fit very well with my "backpacking for a week while shooting" style.
I take note on the tip about the monopod, I guess it takes considerably less weight and space than a traveler tripod. Do you have any particular suggestions on this area? I need something sturdy enough to survive a week of trekking in the Alps, you know what I mean ;-)
Hello Javier, my monopod is a Manfrotto, made of aluminum (not that much lighter than a carbon fibre tripod I must admit), and I'm using the Manfrotto 234RC swivel/tilt head with it.
ReplyDeleteAs for the sharpness of the 70-300VR... at 300mm, it seems to be a problem for the camera to accurately lock focus. It's pretty much impossible to determine that in the viewfinder of the D90, and still very hard with the viewfinder of the D700. I can get surprisingly sharp photos even at 300mm, but only if focus is really spot on.
If your camera/lens combination is still in warranty, you might want to consider having the focus adjusted by Nikon.
As for the fringing... your photo looks like a quite extreme crop to me, could that be the reason why the fringing is so pronounced? I never found the CA of the lens very hard to fix. The "Bigma" has very strong CA too.
How does cropping effect the fringing? The vulture was spot-on the middle of the frame, I did crop quite a lot of sky around it, but why would that create more chromatic aberration? Normally (when looking at pictures at 100% size) I get a fringing of about half the width of this one, usually of the red type, and a slight correction in Lightroom gets rid of it. This is the first time I've got purely blue fringing, but it might be due to some extreme light condition :-/
ReplyDeleteMy Nikkor is 10 years old (not the new VR one), so I don't think it is still covered by warranty :-(
Well, what I meant with the cropping was just that it becomes more visible because you "zoom in", to say so.
ReplyDeleteI don't know much about the old 70-300, I never used it.
gostei muito das fotos, principalmente as das baleias
ReplyDeletetambém tenho um picasa, que te convido a visitar
http://picasaweb.google.com/lugaresedatas
:-)