Handholdability is a big qualifier. I personally have no interest in handholding any 500 or 600mm f/4. Very happy with a gimble mount with these big lenses.
I am not sure what you mean by your second comment. When talking about any of the Nikon or Canon big telephoto primes over the last 2 generations (and likely further back) image quality is astounding.
Jerry
speedmaster20d wrote:
I am talking about hand held BIF, the old Nikon 600 was too heavy for hand holding.
Also, any camera even an iPhone CAN capture a BIF, when I talk about BIF, I mean certain types of photographs with certain quality only...
gdsf2 wrote:
Handholdability is a big qualifier. I personally have no interest in handholding any 500 or 600mm f/4. Very happy with a gimble mount with these big lenses.
I am not sure what you mean by your second comment. When talking about any of the Nikon or Canon big telephoto primes over the last 2 generations (and likely further back) image quality is astounding.
Jerry
I hand hold my lenses 100% of the time, because the type of shots I am interested in are very difficult if not impossible to get on a tripod, thus the very heavy lenses have no value to me (and many others like myself). I agree all the old lenses are sharp too, but that's not my point.
I have had my 500PF for a couple of months now, and must say that I am very much in agreement with your review. I shoot with D500's myself, and this is a great combination. For reference, I also have the 300PF, 200-500 f5.6 and the VRII version of the 600f4, they all have their place.
To the folks who are concerned about "gray days", I live in Washington, the state, gray days have not been an issue at all. I just took a 6 hour river float trip in pouring rain, and was pleasantly surprised with how well this lens performed.
One other finding I have made, just because I wanted to try it, was to attach the 1.7TC, f9.5. I was very surprised and pleased that AF actually worked. Yes, it was slower, but in a pinch it is usable.
Nice review, Arash. While this lens is certainly not the "least expensive" around, i like it's price far better than the latest 500f4, 600 f4 :-).
