My Nikon 200-500mm arrived this morning and I was able to spend about 15 minutes in the backyard with a few of our resident Anna\'s Hummingbirds. AF is FAST on my D810, I am easily tracking hummingbirds with center point AF-C. Here\'s an example of one, note this is a heavy crop in the shade under clouds and underexposed to keep my shutter speed up (though 1/800 is far slower than I usually shoot hummers, I\'m usually up closer to 1/1600-1/3200 with the sun out). I\'ve included uncorrected version and then one with a little post processing applied...exposure corrected, a little noise reduction and a little saturation to bring back the color lost in the shade.
I don\'t really understand how others are measuring AF speed...it seems they are using the Ken Rockwell measurement of how fast it takes to rack focus from MFD to infinity which to me is not a realistic way to do so and only done by people who do not shoot moving objects...which is the whole point of AF speed. Ironic, right? Going from defocused to a moving hummingbird is instantaneous even with center point only, it is probably faster with GRP, D-9 or D-21 though I was using only center point for accuracy to keep the eye as sharp as possible. My D810 is set to AF lock setting #2, everything else AF related is as-is from the factory.
Looking forward to getting out to the local state park for some Ospreys this week.
FYI I had to host these to imgur as they are over this site\'s 750kb limit:
