p.6 #1 · Official Nikon Z 180-600mm f5.6-6.3 VR Image Thread
ilkka_nissila wrote:
Nikon tends to ship out initial batches of lenses evenly across stores that ordered them rather than allocating them according to the number of preorders for each store. I.e.
Let's say that a large New York City store got 10000 preorders, and a local store 3. Nikon at first sends out 1 lens to each store. If you are in the line at the big store, you'll most likely have a longer wait ahead of you, until supply catches up with demand (which could be a long time from now). You also need to know which stores are in good standing with Nikon, if you want your lens to be delivered among the first. These are basic skills that you learn as a Nikon user. ;-) Or you could just wait for the rush to be over and get the lens at a lower price. ...Show more →
Both my orders and the order I was referring to are from Nikon USA, so no secondary retailer to get involved. These are direct from Nikon orders.
p.6 #3 · Official Nikon Z 180-600mm f5.6-6.3 VR Image Thread
Hmmm... I have to admit the sharpness measurements are giving me a bit of pause, though it's difficult to know if this is a pre-release lens, a production lens, or is representative of what one would expect. In contrast, here are their measurements for the 800 PF and 100-400:
p.6 #5 · Official Nikon Z 180-600mm f5.6-6.3 VR Image Thread
rscheffler wrote:
Hi all, just wandered over from the Canon board through a link. This lens looks like it could be really compelling for daytime sports on a Z8. Wondering if anyone is doing so (field sports like football) and finding the AF and wide open sharpness is acceptable, particularly at the long end of the zoom range when subjects are not filling the frame? (Some lenses seem to fall apart in respect to sharpness at longer distances.) I'm currently using the Canon 200-400/4 with internal 1.4xTC often engaged to give me 560/5.6. So 600/6.3 isn't much of a 'downgrade' in respect to maximum aperture. The compromise is more being stuck at f/5.6 on the wide end, but also not so bad....Show more →
Not sure that I could say and I haven't heard of anyone using the 180-600 for this application. As you know, the bokeh takes a hit when shooting at f/6.3. When I used to be shooting football, one body had the 400 f/2.8 + 1.4x TC and I was always shooting at f/4 or 4.5, and typically had a 70-200 f/2.8 on the other body (or sometimes wider).
Just to illustrate how much the field has changed, I recently had the opportunity to be on the sidelines for a B10 game and the number of agency or freelance photographers has dwindled down to a handful. The rest of the shooters are young people hired by the respective programs who are handed vests and cameras. After watching them for a few minutes it was clear that they've been given minimal training and had little experience. Interestingly, there were a couple big whites and at the particular game it was 2/3-3/4 Canon and about 1/3rd Nikon. I didn't see any Sony shooters at all. Many of the youngsters were sporting EF 100-400 IS II f/4.5-5.6 lenses, which were released about a year after I stopped shooting sports commercially. I saw one or two 200-400's too.
p.6 #6 · Official Nikon Z 180-600mm f5.6-6.3 VR Image Thread
Jman13 wrote:
What is giving you pause? The fact that it's only a little bit softer than the outstanding 800mm, and better than the 100-400 when at 400mm?
1750 wide open at 600 mm would give one pause for a WL photographer where stopping down might not be an option. Also, some are considering adding a TC to this set up as well. Quite candidly, from what I've seen the images appear much better than what this static test indicated and again, it is not clear whether this was a pre-production lens, an aberration, or an accurate representation of the lens' performance. Their review was highly complementary and the images, like those I've seen elsewhere appeared sharper than their static tests would suggest?
For comparison, my beloved 100-500 f/5.6-7.1 rocked...
p.6 #8 · Official Nikon Z 180-600mm f5.6-6.3 VR Image Thread
Everyone comparing things on Digital Camera World seem to have utterly forgotten what we’ve known for decades:
1. Imatest MTF50 numbers are NOT COMPARABLE ACROSS SYSTEMS. This is the absolute basics of lens reviews, and if you are honestly still making this mistake in 2023 then please do yourself a favor and stop even looking at these numerical results.
2. They are also not comparable across different bodies or processing chains even in the same system.
3. Any review site that does not specifically tell you what body they tested on is not fit to present this data in the first place (DCW seems to fit into this category, I can’t find this specified anywhere but perhaps it is just well hidden).
4. Any review site that randomly selects bodies to test a lens on, rather than sticking to a single body across reviews within a system, are not fit to present this data either (E-Photozine is notorious for this, but at least they document they did it).
5. Properly running Imatest on a super telephoto lens is notoriously difficult to get right, even the quality review sites can have issues.
In this specific case the charts are screaming at us that the comparison data is largely useless. Note the F/22 center results. Every modern lens has identical performance by F/22 in the center - performance is well into being entirely diffraction limited here. Note how every zoom lens has all its results for various focal lengths converge by F/22 illustrating this principle.
Now note how for each DCW test of a different lens the F/22 results are not the same as other lenses - even in the same system. This is a huge red flag telling us comparing lenses by MTF50 results from Imatest on DCW is a fool’s errand. Don’t waste your time doing it.
EDIT: The above strikethrough text is invalid reasoning as pointed out down thread. Many lenses have irises that give misshapen apertures at F/22 affecting diffraction and MTF.
Now - the behavior of the curve within a single test may still be meaningful. For example, determining a lens’s “sharpest” aperture does not involve comparisons between reviews. Here we see the 180-600 gets sharper at F/8 than at F/6.3 which matches some reviewer’s field results. But that could of course still just be due to a focus error when DCW did their test. Since I couldn’t find any documentation on their test methodology we don’t really know if they depend on AF or do MF for their Imatest shots.
CameraLabs provides crops from their test charts instead for visual comparison. This of course is not without its own potential issues, but as linked earlier clearly their lens and test setup is getting a different result (F/6.3 is the sharpest aperture at 600mm) than DCW.
p.6 #9 · Official Nikon Z 180-600mm f5.6-6.3 VR Image Thread
Maybe getting a bit off topic but I find the sharpness charts very interesting as a wildlife photographer, will await some further tests like this from third parties, so far, not super impressed with the 180-600 at 600mm. It's half what I expected, even though I'd hoped to be wrong, still looks a great lens for those in the Nikon system. Off topic again, if those charts are accurate that 800pf sharpness looks impressive!
p.6 #10 · Official Nikon Z 180-600mm f5.6-6.3 VR Image Thread
kwalsh wrote:
Everyone comparing things on Digital Camera World seem to have utterly forgotten what we’ve known for decades:
Just need to use them as tools to assist with feedback from real world, then make judgements based on that essentially. I find them useful, also if trends begin to appear then you can begin to build up more of a picture.
p.6 #11 · Official Nikon Z 180-600mm f5.6-6.3 VR Image Thread
snapquacky wrote:
Maybe getting a bit off topic but I find the sharpness charts very interesting as a wildlife photographer, will await some further tests like this from third parties, so far, not super impressed with the 180-600 at 600mm. It's half what I expected, even though I'd hoped to be wrong, still looks a great lens for those in the Nikon system. Off topic again, if those charts are accurate that 800pf sharpness looks impressive!
You expected the 180-600 at 600mm to get over 3,000 on center sharpness (test results were 1750)? Even the primes don't get that high of a rating.
The 600mm TC gets 2700 wide open at F4
The 400mm TC gets 2,400 at 560mm F4
The 400mm 4.5 gets 1800/1900 at 400mm wide open, 2200 at F5.6
The 800mm 6.3 gets 2,600 wide open at F6.3
The 500mm PF gets 1400 wide open at F5.6
Based on the results of this website the 180-600 tested better than the 500mm PF, but slightly worse than the 400mm 4.5. That's an excellent result for a zoom at this price!
p.6 #12 · Official Nikon Z 180-600mm f5.6-6.3 VR Image Thread
snapquacky wrote:
Maybe getting a bit off topic but I find the sharpness charts very interesting as a wildlife photographer, will await some further tests like this from third parties, so far, not super impressed with the 180-600 at 600mm. It's half what I expected, even though I'd hoped to be wrong, still looks a great lens for those in the Nikon system. Off topic again, if those charts are accurate that 800pf sharpness looks impressive!
What could you have possibly expected? This is a 100% serious: Look at the female mallard that CanadaMark posted and the fist two pages of photos from Kasper in this thread, and tell us what you think is lacking. And please point to a lens that would have shown materially more detail and better bokeh at the same aperture.
p.6 #13 · Official Nikon Z 180-600mm f5.6-6.3 VR Image Thread
That makes no sense. The 500 PF produces prolific moire on 45 MP sensors at f/5.6 in my experience (when using a sturdy tripod and EFCS) and thus it produces a lot of detail at higher frequencies than the 45 MP sensor can sample correctly. I am guessing they didn't use the same cameras for all those tests or did some other blunder invalidating the results. E.g. maybe the mechanical shutter was used. Or something else to throw the results off for that lens.
I could not find much detail about the testing carried out at DCW. The description of methods is basically like an influencer self-promotion piece and gives not much detail about the test procedure. Not a site I would trust.
For long-lens testing I like Nasim Mansurov's tests at photographylife. He uses flash to ensure there is no vibration affecting the MTF50 measurements with long lenses. Also in some cases they test several copies.
Cameralabs is good in that they also give a long distance test result in addition to the test charts.
BTW I don't agree that all lenses are the same at small apertures. Most Nikon lenses don't hold up well when stopped down to very small apertures (such as f/11, f/16 or smaller) when compared to some other brands (e.g. Zeiss). This can be shown experimentally.
maverick777 wrote:
You expected the 180-600 at 600mm to get over 3,000 on center sharpness (test results were 1750)? Even the primes don't get that high of a rating.
The 600mm TC gets 2700 wide open at F4
The 400mm TC gets 2,400 at 560mm F4
The 400mm 4.5 gets 1800/1900 at 400mm wide open, 2200 at F5.6
The 800mm 6.3 gets 2,600 wide open at F6.3
The 500mm PF gets 1400 wide open at F5.6
Based on the results of this website the 180-600 tested better than the 500mm PF, but slightly worse than the 400mm 4.5. That's an excellent result for a zoom at this price!...Show more →
p.6 #14 · Official Nikon Z 180-600mm f5.6-6.3 VR Image Thread
groob wrote:
What could you have possibly expected? This is a 100% serious: Look at the female mallard that CanadaMark posted and the fist two pages of photos from Kasper in this thread, and tell us what you think is lacking. And please point to a lens that would have shown materially more detail and better bokeh at the same aperture.
Canada Mark's Mallard is on page three, for those searching.
Its hard for me to imagine much better than many images on this thread, I think people get a little too carried away in charts.
p.6 #15 · Official Nikon Z 180-600mm f5.6-6.3 VR Image Thread
Max Power wrote:
Canada Mark's Mallard is on page three, for those searching.
Its hard for me to imagine much better than many images on this thread, I think people get a little too carried away in charts.
Yes, and there are images on the same page of wires and and other fine detail at the edge of the frame against strong backlight showing acutance and a paucity of CA that other brands could only dream of.
I'm afraid this thread has followed the same path as all recent Nikon Board discussions of new product releases by Nikon; it gets hijacked by the usual suspects, spittle-flecked advocates of another brand, who comb the internet for spurious data showing the Nikon product in a poor light. Usually augmented by their own dodgy "tests" and idiotic declarations of x% inferiority. For goodness sake when will the asinine juvenile nonsense stop?
When we look at the images from competent photographers on these pages and read thorough and credible reviews from the likes of Camera Labs, it is clear that Nikon has once again produced a superior optic.
p.6 #16 · Official Nikon Z 180-600mm f5.6-6.3 VR Image Thread
maverick777 wrote:
You expected the 180-600 at 600mm to get over 3,000 on center sharpness (test results were 1750)? Even the primes don't get that high of a rating.
The 600mm TC gets 2700 wide open at F4
The 400mm TC gets 2,400 at 560mm F4
The 400mm 4.5 gets 1800/1900 at 400mm wide open, 2200 at F5.6
The 800mm 6.3 gets 2,600 wide open at F6.3
The 500mm PF gets 1400 wide open at F5.6
Based on the results of this website the 180-600 tested better than the 500mm PF, but slightly worse than the 400mm 4.5. That's an excellent result for a zoom at this price!...Show more →
Something must have gone wrong with their 500pf measurement
armd wrote:
For comparison, my beloved 100-500 f/5.6-7.1 rocked...
Doesn’t this show that all these lenses rock? If you’d create an overlay here there doesn’t seem to be much difference. No 600mm to compare. No 500mm to compare on 180-600, but it should be sharper than at 600mm measurement also being stopped down a bit if you want to consider the 7.1 aperture.
p.6 #17 · Official Nikon Z 180-600mm f5.6-6.3 VR Image Thread
ilkka_nissila wrote:
BTW I don't agree that all lenses are the same at small apertures. Most Nikon lenses don't hold up well when stopped down to very small apertures (such as f/11, f/16 or smaller) when compared to some other brands (e.g. Zeiss). This can be shown experimentally.
Actually that’s a very good point. Some lenses have horribly misshapen apertures when stopped down to F/22 and that does make diffraction and thus MTF worse than expected.
Worth noting such iris issues are of course very copy dependent as well.
p.6 #18 · Official Nikon Z 180-600mm f5.6-6.3 VR Image Thread
groob wrote:
What could you have possibly expected? This is a 100% serious: Look at the female mallard that CanadaMark posted and the fist two pages of photos from Kasper in this thread, and tell us what you think is lacking. And please point to a lens that would have shown materially more detail and better bokeh at the same aperture.
Plain and simple I wanted Nikon to go all in, no better time for them, I feel they didn't, my opinion of course. Here was their chance to beat the Sony 200-600 in all areas, in my heart I knew they wouldn't, mostly to protect their primes, again, personal opinion. Could they have made it sharper than the Sony, maybe, could they have added faster focus motors, of course, better tripod mount, yes. It is what it is, I own Nikon primes and zooms, I've shot thousands of mallards, static and in flight. When Sony produced the 200-600 they had nothing to lose and everything to gain, it showed in the end result.
Not hating on Nikon here, annoyed that they didn't do better, I've used them for many years now. They will sell like hot cakes no doubt, good luck to them I say.
p.6 #19 · Official Nikon Z 180-600mm f5.6-6.3 VR Image Thread
maverick777 wrote:
You expected the 180-600 at 600mm to get over 3,000 on center sharpness (test results were 1750)? Even the primes don't get that high of a rating.
The 600mm TC gets 2700 wide open at F4
The 400mm TC gets 2,400 at 560mm F4
The 400mm 4.5 gets 1800/1900 at 400mm wide open, 2200 at F5.6
The 800mm 6.3 gets 2,600 wide open at F6.3
The 500mm PF gets 1400 wide open at F5.6
Based on the results of this website the 180-600 tested better than the 500mm PF, but slightly worse than the 400mm 4.5. That's an excellent result for a zoom at this price!...Show more →
£1800 zoom match a £6000 prime, of course not, I expected it might show as being sharper than the Sony offering, it appears not on the charts and based on user feedback - chart shows Sony being around 25% sharper, that is significant if accurate. The 800pf was simply a comment on how sharp that lens was, in isolation, not comparing to 180-600.
Sorry, hijacking the image thread with test chart discussions, roll on more images, look forward to seeing them...
p.6 #20 · Official Nikon Z 180-600mm f5.6-6.3 VR Image Thread
maverick777 wrote:
You expected the 180-600 at 600mm to get over 3,000 on center sharpness (test results were 1750)? Even the primes don't get that high of a rating.
The 600mm TC gets 2700 wide open at F4
The 400mm TC gets 2,400 at 560mm F4
The 400mm 4.5 gets 1800/1900 at 400mm wide open, 2200 at F5.6
The 800mm 6.3 gets 2,600 wide open at F6.3
The 500mm PF gets 1400 wide open at F5.6
Based on the results of this website the 180-600 tested better than the 500mm PF, but slightly worse than the 400mm 4.5. That's an excellent result for a zoom at this price!...Show more →
The 400mm 4.5 gets 1800/1900 at 400mm wide open, 2200 at F5.6
The 800mm 6.3 gets 2,600 wide open at F6.3
The 500mm PF gets 1400 wide open at F5.6
Anyone with a modicum of experience shooting these 3 lenses will tell you these numbers are nonsensical.
