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 p.83 #4 · Official 800PF image and discussion thread | |
nmerc_photos wrote:
Thank you for the extremely well thought out and detailed post Mark!
I may have to give my 800PF some more testing before I let it go.
I'm guilty of having owned all of the Z telephotos released thus far, and still working to narrow down my ideal kit.
I haven't used the 800PF a ton since I got it, because it seems I usually favor the 400TC - regardless of subject distance. At close distances, the 8' MFD has yielded better results than 16.4'. At far distances, it seems the 400TC has better resolving power - so the end result is still better even after accounting for the 400mm difference in focal length.
I'm still very new to the small birds, and my first real test was Magee Marsh - in which the boardwalk would make an 800PF useless. I need to do some testing in local areas and see if it is common to have the small birds that close, or if the 800PF may still have a home.
Cheers,
Nick...Show more →
You're welcome!
Yeah I feel like it depends a lot on the wildlife in your area and if they will actually let you get close. For me, that is a big problem. I find the smaller the bird, the more skittish they are. Or, if you are in an area where everything is closer than 16.4ft, the 800PF is going to be a non-starter (like maybe your boardwalk).
Your 400/2.8 has a maximum magnification of 0.17x at 8.21ft where the 800PF is 0.16x at 16.4ft, so they are essentially the same in terms of magnification except you can be twice as far away from your subject and get the same framing on the 800PF.
From what I have seen anyway, sharpness wise, the 400/2.8 (naked) is a hair better than the 800PF, with the 1.4TC engaged I don't think there is a material difference and with the 2.0TC on the 400/2.8 to match the focal length, the 800PF (naked) is definitely sharper. Of course with the exotics it's usually splitting hairs anyway and the biggest difference is towards the edges which is what you start to lose first when using a TC. The 800PF is also slightly sharper than the 600/4 TC with TC engaged, but a hair less sharp than the naked 600/4. So it kind of hovers around the two most expensive exotics from Nikon (400 & 600 TC) depending on what exact configuration it's being compared to. If you want 800mm there is nothing better, but it lacks the overall flexibility of the 400 and 600 (especially the 400), so everything is as usual a trade off 
If you are finding the 400mm to have better resolving power than the 800PF at distance, after cropping, and without the TC, that's the only part that doesn't quite match my experience. If you can crop all the way into 800mm and still feel you are coming out ahead, that would mean cropping a Z8/Z9 file down to 11MP and still getting a better result than the 800PF at a full 45MP, as well as taking into account the fact that you could still down-sample that 45MP file to match the 11MP which would further improve quality with the same framing. Long lenses are tricky in general though, with heat haze, atmospheric distortion, etc. things can change in a split second while shooting and field comparisons I feel like are very hard to do with the big primes except over very long periods of time. I've come home with hundreds of ruined photos before from heat haze because things like that are more of a problem at 800mm than any other lens (not saying that was the case with you, just in general).
Of course, use whatever works best for you. You are very fortunate to have some awesome lenses to choose from (more than one exotic), so it's hard to go wrong  I imagine it's hard to put down that 400/2.8.
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Only because my 600PF is into Nikon for repair (3 full weeks now 
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