Well, the joys of home ownership got in the way of my shooting (testing) yesterday.
Wound up dialing 'er in at -1 based on this crop from 40 yds. Grabbed a couple of
sick overheads workin' the AF...seems to agree with the D500. More to come
BushHawk w/ the assist
Thern wrote:
Thanks for your firsttime impressions Will, looks very promising for my daughter. (She wants a 200-500 or 150-600S at the moment, but to be honest I'm not really thrilled by that lenses as a whole)
This lens however looks like it ticks all the boxes too me.
Some questions hope you don't mind.
1-Did you allso shoot the lens at its max aperture and how did it perform?
2-How does it perform shooting at infinity?
3-How is AF speed compared to the other long zooms you own(ed)?
4-Do you have to adjust focus while zooming?
Roger, some findings...
1) 600 is actually best at f6.3 300 to 500mm appears to prefer f8 but still quite sharp wide open
2) I went out ~285 yds capturing an old cottonwood snag for Redtails, no problem
3) Equal to or slightly better than the 150-600 Sport. Definitely more brisk than the 200-500
4) Appears to be par-focal provided the limiter is in the Full position and one stays
beyond the MFD. Nice feature...@200mm it allows close focusing to just under 2'
HTH, Will
Very nice to read Will, coming from you it's a no brainer to me, so one of the 6 girls in my household will be happy with Santa this year.
Thanks for sharing!
The xxx-600 lenses require good technique to get the best out of them. At 600mm depth of field and insufficient shutter speed can lead to a lot of angst over softness when it is not a weakness of the lens. I find shooting at 1/1000 minimum, more often 1/2000, improves sharpness a lot. Similarly atmospheric distortion can upset AF and sharpness again, all leading to false conclusions of whether the lens is 'sharp' or not. Once upon a time slow lenses requiring these exposures would have been problematic purchases, but the high ISO capabilities of recent cameras have overcome all that.
I doubt in real world shooting if one could see the differences in images taken with any of the xxx-600mms.
True, but there's a lot more involved to distinguish between lenses.
Params like AF speed, accuracy and consistency are some very very important ones.
OS, IF or not, internal zoom or not, fysical length, diameter and weight (balance) are others.
Welldesigned lensfeet or crappy ones, zoomlocks, the presence or absence of weathersealing, choice of materials, ed or fld elements, coatings applied, features like AF buttons, focuslimiters aso aso
Then last but not least there's max aperture MFD, focusbreathing and the range of FLs covered by a lens....
(I didn't name CA, flare, coma, vignetting and ghosting, some are easily corrected, others in a lesser degree or not, but you may learn to avoid shootingcircumstances)
Like I said before my daughter was debating the Nikon 200-500 or Sigma 150-600S, both absolutely nice lenses but I don't really like those as a whole.
The Monkeylens (sorry Will ) ticks certainly more boxes than the other offerings in this superzoom category.
transientgolf wrote:
As others have said, its really impressive they can get this performance out of such a wide zoom range. Thanks for sharing the samples Will!
Thanks for posting, Joel. The build is something to behold as well.
I've found it sharp wide open at all FL's thus far. Need to get out more...
How's focus speed compared to the 200-500. Quite a bit quicker I'm hoping.
Nice shots. ~J
Hey, Jim
It IS quicker out of the box (but I'll customize it like I did my other Sport)
Still working on AF point selection, so far loves Group...like my 150-600S did. Thx.
Here's one for Thern IIRC your daughter has a D750.
Impressed with the tracking, won't have the keeper rate of
a D500/D850/D5 but if you do your job...Group AF, handheld.
rick_reno wrote:
Beautiful shots Will. Wondering how it would work here (N Idaho) where we might not see sun until May.
Appreciate it, Rick...I'm spoiled with sweet light 80% of the time. Have seen some
great static shots with OS in less than ideal conditions. I'm pretty sure I'd prefer my
500 f4 shooting in Idaho. Use it here early/late but the "one lens solution" wide open
makes this a keeper lens for just about anything I'll encounter. 28 or 35 in the pocket
for indoors/available light and I'm good.
My testing of the lens shows the MFD to be 8.25 ft at 600mm, but that requires a manual override to get the last few inches... about 8.5ft w/ AF. Focus breathing at MFD is pretty significant with a resulting FOV of ~ 525mm. And it remains less than 600mm until ~ 30ft. FWIW, from what I have read the focus breathing is comparable to the other long zooms available.
The lens is also near perfectly parfocal; the focus does not shift notably when zooming to/from either extreme... which is very nice.
My comparison testing is relative to the 400/2.8 and the 120-300/2.8 w/ TC's as that is what I would otherwise use. I also have the lens set up to hyperactive/spastic (C1), slow/accurate (C2), and defaults (Off).
Compared to the 400/2.8 with the 1.4x the lens hunts more in low light/contrast situations. Set to C1 it will blow right past the point of focus repeatedly and very quickly (i.e. AF is very fast, but less accurate). Set to the minimums (C2) it hunts much less, but it is also much more accurate and slower (as expected). Defaults put it somewhere in between and somewhere close to the 400/2.8 + 1.4 in terms of speed/travel.
I suspect that the f/6.3 max aperture is just starting to vignette the f/5.6 AF points. But if you keep a more central composition using the f/8 AF points, or have good light/contrast, then the accuracy is greatly improved with much less hunting with any settings.
Resolution at 600/6.3 is very good... comparable to the 400/2.8 +1.4 @ f/5.6. But more importantly to me is that it is better than the 120-300/2.8 and 300/4 + 2x at any aperture. My best estimate is a resolution of 50-60lp/mm at 30ft. But that is for a recorded jpeg... reduced sharpening/contrast/etc settings, but some was still applied. I think at least the 40lp/mm from a raw file is quite probable from my copy (as tested/reported by lenstip.com).
So far I have not done any AF fine tuning w/ the dock... critical testing was done using CDAF on a tripod. But handheld results using AF have been equally impressive right out of the box w/o really trying hard.
(sorry Will 
) ticks certainly more boxes than the other offerings in this superzoom category.
