After a late lunch (and a couple of margaritas) in Haleiwa, I proceeded to photograph surfers near Pipeline on the northshore. I purposely arrived late in the day to see how the Nikon D500 and 200-500mm lens perform in less than ideal lighting. At this time of the year the sun sets behind the surfers. Conditions were OK, not great so the surf images are nothing special. However ...
... IMHO the camera and lens are a superb combo and the D500 may be the best camera on the market for surf photography. Not a single out of focus shot out of over 1000 images. And after boosting shadows on the surfers, I am more than pleased with the IQ. Hope you enjoy a few photos below.
trenchmonkey wrote:
Need to bump up your SS as well. Sharp grass w/motion blur
on the critters....that's a 750mm FOV you're handholding.
Go4Long wrote:
No...no...just no.
Of all the claims of things that are affected by crop vs full frame, this is a bizarre one.
If you take a sharp image and crop 1/3 off it, you've still got a sharp image. Crop sensor is not actually influencing the image being projected by the lens, so while it very well may be a "750mm FOV" it's still not a 750mm lens, and as such the lens technique would be the same as would the shutter speed required (in theory) to net a sharp image.
The AF truly is amazing...I took a couple thousand motocross images this weekend, no matter what frame rate you're shooting at it's just keeper after keeper.
trenchmonkey wrote:
Need to bump up your SS as well. Sharp grass w/motion blur
on the critters....that's a 750mm FOV you're handholding.
Laslo Varadi wrote:
Thanks. SS was too low. Especially for me.
Guess I'm going to hell, for that comment
Let me rephrase it: 500mm on a crop body is going to prefer
a tad more than 1X FL when handholding stuff that moves.
That's a rule of thumb, not set in stone...some of us are more
steady than others. Your latter shots with 1/1250th are sharper.
With heavy glass like the 500mm prime I'm often at 4X FL. GL
Go4Long wrote:
I don't know what's going on there...I've tried it a couple different ways and it looks weird. It looks good in PS and in Lightroom...I dunno.
trenchmonkey wrote:
Guess I'm going to hell, for that comment
Let me rephrase it: 500mm on a crop body is going to prefer
a tad more than 1X FL when handholding stuff that moves.
That's a rule of thumb, not set in stone...some of us are more
steady than others. Your latter shots with 1/1250th are sharper.
With heavy glass like the 500mm prime I'm often at 4X FL. GL
Thanks Trenchmonkey I understand and agree with you. I think the one of the deer was with a monopod and higher shutter speed because of the good lighting. The one of the fox was handheld and early evening with the sun all gone, so yes faster shutter speed is needed.
Joe Marquez wrote:
After a late lunch (and a couple of margaritas) in Haleiwa, I proceeded to photograph surfers near Pipeline on the northshore. I purposely arrived late in the day to see how the Nikon D500 and 200-500mm lens perform in less than ideal lighting. At this time of the year the sun sets behind the surfers. Conditions were OK, not great so the surf images are nothing special. However ...
... IMHO the camera and lens are a superb combo and the D500 may be the best camera on the market for surf photography. Not a single out of focus shot out of over 1000 images. And after boosting shadows on the surfers, I am more than pleased with the IQ. Hope you enjoy a few photos below.
Very nice series! And great to hear about such an in focus success rate: 100% out of more than 1000 shots sounds almost unbelievable. I suppose the photographer must play a large part here
