thanks Hatch. Have you been before? You'll love it. So much more than cranes and geese. I'm just lucky my task master/she-boss allowed me three days there.
Fingers crossed you have good weather. A friend went a couple of weeks ago, 12 hour drive, but only had 4 hours in the park before it was closed due to huge snow storm. When we were here last month it was bone cold in the morning 16-18F, but by afternoon I was in shorts at 54F.
Just spent some more time going back and forth between a number of lens/TC combos to try and get a subjective impression of the speed and hunting of each when going from near to far and far to near. My ranking is as such:
1) 300PF and 300PF/1.4TC. Really quick and never did a small second racking movement coming from far to near.
2) 500 FL also never did any racking
3) 500PF
4) 300PF/1.7TC and 500FL/1.4. Those two were similar, probably slight edge to the FL. Sometimes they would do a second motion coming into a near target depending on how far away the previous target was.
5)500FL/1.7TC Just a bit better than below
6)500PF/1.4TC. Noticeably the worst.
The 300PF impressed. Even with a 1.7 it wasn’t far behind the 500PF bare. Really 1 through 3 above are going to get the job done reliably. You will certainly be missing some shots with 500PF/1.4TC.
Light level was 1/400 5.6 2500 ISO to expose dark foliage in the middle of the histogram. Tests done on D850. AF-C. Group AF.
arbitrage wrote:
Just spent some more time going back and forth between a number of lens/TC combos to try and get a subjective impression of the speed and hunting of each when going from near to far and far to near. My ranking is as such:
1) 300PF and 300PF/1.4TC. Really quick and never did a small second racking movement coming from far to near.
2) 500 FL also never did any racking
3) 500PF
4) 300PF/1.7TC and 500FL/1.4. Those two were similar, probably slight edge to the FL. Sometimes they would do a second motion coming into a near target depending on how far away the previous target was.
5)500FL/1.7TC Just a bit better than below
6)500PF/1.4TC. Noticeably the worst.
The 300PF impressed. Even with a 1.7 it wasn’t far behind the 500PF bare. Really 1 through 3 above are going to get the job done reliably. You will certainly be missing some shots with 500PF/1.4TC.
Light level was 1/400 5.6 2500 ISO to expose dark foliage in the middle of the histogram. Tests done on D850. AF-C. Group AF. ...Show more →
Thanks, I think I will have to start using the 300PF plus 1.4 or 1.7x TC before I buy a 500PF :-)
I guess D500AF would behave similar to D850 with these lenses? I know that on Canon the body has a huge influence, e.g. I keep reading from "pro" users that AF with the 100-400II is "very fast" but with my 80D it is glacially slow compared to some other lenses like the 2.8/200, and the combo can only keep up with e.g. relatively big/slow BIFs (with 1.4TCIII added even worse, and with a bit lower light levels almost zero chance of acceptable AF / tracking).
technic wrote:
Thanks, I think I will have to start using the 300PF plus 1.4 or 1.7x TC before I buy a 500PF :-)
I guess D500AF would behave similar to D850 with these lenses? I know that on Canon the body has a huge influence, e.g. I keep reading from "pro" users that AF with the 100-400II is "very fast" but with my 80D it is glacially slow compared to some other lenses like the 2.8/200, and the combo can only keep up with e.g. relatively big/slow BIFs (with 1.4TCIII added even worse, and with a bit lower light levels almost zero chance of acceptable AF / tracking)....Show more →
Yes I would say they are very similar on D850/D500. Supposedly the D5 takes things up a notch...not sure if it really drives the lens faster but supposed to have a higher hit rate.
And that again is where my tests of just the apparent AF speed really doesn't correlate into consistency when tracking a subject. It does have some relevance to how quick you can react to a bird landing on a branch. After the testing I've spent the time trying to nail kinglets dancing around the cedar trees....this is when you cannot afford even a slight hesitation in the AF when trying to react to the kinglet showing up on an outer branch for a split second.
