Nikon 200-500 vs Nikon 300 PF - A Review And Comparison

hey everyone Steve from backcountry gallery here and today we're going to do a review and comparison of the Nikon 200 to 500 and the Nikon 300 PF now before we begin I want to mention that you can see the images from this video on the companion blog post at my site the link will be here in the video and in the description area over on YouTube now I get questions nearly every day on one or both of these lenses usually asking which is the better choice for wildlife photography I've been using the 300 PF for quite a while now and was just recently able to put my third copy of the 200 to 500 through its paces no don't rewind the video you heard that right I had to get three different copies of the 200 or 500 before I found one that was sharp the first two were not even close my initial thought was that I was just unlucky but then I read another review for the 200 to 500 and they ended up with a couple of poor copies as well so if you do decide to go the 200 to 500 round make sure you test the lens thoroughly during the return period so anyway which lens is the right choice for you well it really depends on what you're using the lens for I'll give some recommendations at the end of the video but for now let's go ahead and compare and review these two lenses size the first aspect is size now normally I don't linger too long on this because you know you can just look at the lenses and you can see the difference right well here's the thing there is a huge difference between these two in both bulk and weight and for some shooters this may be a critical consideration one of the biggest advantages to the 300 PF is the size it's about the same size as a 24 70 in weighs even less this is thanks to the phase for now lens technology used to reduce the weight in size of the optic the downside is that this Fornell lens element can cause some odd halos and flares around highlights but from a practical field perspective I just haven't seen it happen and it's been a non-issue for me thus far on the other hand the convenience of this lenses compact size just cannot be overstated the 300 PF is always my first choice when hiking or any time I need to go light heck it even stands upright in my backpack and on its side like my other telephoto lenses leaving more space for other gear beyond that however it's so much easier to use in tight quarters or when you need to pick your way through brush and trees and such nothing more annoying than trying to maneuver yourself and a large lens through a thicket when you're trying to stay quiet and stalk an animal this lens just makes you so much more nimble than a typical telephoto plus the lens is amazingly handhold Abul on the other hand the 200-500 isn't terribly huge at least not compared to my 600 f/4 and some of the other large glass I've used in the past I'd categorize it as a mid-sized telephoto the 200 to 500 could certainly be handheld when needed and I did quite a bit of that while testing it however I did find myself putting it on a tripod for longer shoots or when the light was lower much more so than I would have with the 300 PF build quality now I almost hate to talk about build quality since it's so subjective but I'm going to go ahead and do it anyway well not at the level of some of the big primes both of these lenses seem to have excellent build quality and neither feels cheap or to use the technical term plasticky the 300 PF feels like it's built to the same standards as optics like the 24 70 or the 70 to 200 very solid and the focusing ring feels great no complaints at all the 200 to 500 is maybe just a very small notch below that but not enough to worry about the zoom is very smooth as is the AF ring I have her complaints about the hood on the 200-500 falling off and I was unsure about those claims until my hood fell off when I was going through some brush it doesn't really lock in very well so definitely exercise caution so you don't inadvertently knock it off while you shoot I've even heard of some photographers using gaffers tape to help keep it in place the lens collar on the 200 to 500 is just okay in my opinion I've seen worse Nikon collars but I've also seen better rotation is more or less smooth if you get the tension just right so you can definitely use it on a gimbal head however since I'm always looking for an upgrade I purchased the Kirke replacement collar and gave that a try it's an upgrade in every respect but not a major upgrade overall if that makes sense everything about the Kerr collar is better just not world's better than the stock unit still I like the longer integrated arca-swiss mount the better knob the better build quality and the better overall stability so I'm going to go ahead and keep it speaking of collars the 300 PF does not come with a collar mostly because it doesn't need one people are accustomed to putting a collar on a telephoto lens but keep in mind this lens weighs less than both the 2470 and the 1424 and no one worries about putting collars on those lenses the only other net I have with the 200-500 would be the zoom ring itself normally jointed human simply cannot twist that thing from 200 to 500 with one smooth motion speaking of which I've heard of people just grabbing the front and using it like a push-pull lens that reminds me of some of my first jobs which were in camera stores where we'd see repairs and I feel like that's exactly the kind of behavior that might land your lens in the shop so I'd go ahead and zoom the way Nikon intended finally both lenses have the little rubber weatherproofing gasket around the lens mount and from what I can tell from Nikon it seems like they have some degree of resistance to water and dust infiltration but not at the level of the more expensive super telephoto glass also keep in mind that Nikon is always quick to remind folks that if you soak the lens and it breaks it's not their problem vibration reduction first off I have to say I don't have any foolproof way to test VR for you however I do have some info based on a few tests and some field observation for these two lenses so we'll start with the fact that Nikon claims 4.5 stops worth of VR goodness for both lenses so at least in theory they should be the same that said I actually think that 200 to 500 has better VR performance than the 300 PF does again all I can tell you is how these two lenses seem to perform and it just seems like I get more VR satisfaction with the 200 or 500 over the 300 PF in fact the main reason the 200 or 500 sees a tripod more than the other one is that I just get sick of holding it sometimes I think that with VR the 200 to 500 is generally very hand hold well for most people if you want to go that way now for the 300 PF I know that early copies of the 300 PF had some issues with VR at speeds between one sixtieth and one 200th of a second or so nikon has since time to fix for this however not so sure the 300 PF is a bit of an odd duck when it comes to VR the VR seems to perform differently on some camera configurations than others and there's been boatloads of talk about this on the Internet the general consensus seems to be the VR system sometimes create some sort of resonance between the lens and the body causing blur at the previously mentioned speeds in my own observations I've seen this as well on my d5 the VR on the 300 PF seems equal to the 200 or 500 however I can't say the same when it's on my gripped d500 and the shutter speeds are between one sixtieth and one 200th of a second with the grip attached to the D 500 I'm simply not able to get taxed sharp images in that shutter speed range in fact my hit rate is actually a little bit higher with the VR turned off however when I remove the grip things do get better although the VR still doesn't perform at the same level as the 200 or 500 my gripped d 7200 seems to do okay as well not as good as the d5 but better than the grip D 500 of course this could just be my lens but there are more than a few continuing reports about this on the Internet thankfully most of my shooting with a 300 PF tends to be at 1 250th of a second or faster so this odd little VR issue doesn't really seem to affect me too much however it can be frustrating if you're relying on VR to help out with slower shutter speeds so in my opinion this is a definite issue that should be considered with this lens if nothing else if you do purchase this lens make sure you test yours once a UPS man drops it off as for VR modes they both feature normal and sport modes think of normal mode as a general-purpose VR mode like when you have a more or less stationary subject sport mode on the other hand is designed to be used when you're tracking action and such my understanding is that while normal mode may slow down your AF and framerate sport mode will not although the VR in sport mode may not be quite as effective honestly I've played with both modes and in practice I don't really see too much difference however my experimentation with this has been admittedly limited and I do tend to use the modes as Nikon describes versatility which lenses the most versatile is actually a little tricky the 300 PF is incredibly Vergil in its own way it's compact size makes it super easy to pack and carry when a larger lens would be a hassle plus it takes a teleconverter really well turning it into a 420 millimeter F 5.6 there's just not a more compact option that can equal it however when it comes to versatility you really can't beat a zoom the 200 to 500 has an ideal range for most wildlife photographers and it's the lens I've been keeping next to me in the seat of my truck when I'm driving through target rich wildlife areas in practice I found the zoom exceedingly valuable when photographing animals at varying distances and frankly can track up quite a few shots that I would have missed had they been stuck at a single focal length the ability to zoom is a really valuable tool to your arsenal and should not be underestimated and although the 300 PF can also take a teleconverter I can promise you that you can zoom much faster than fiddling with the extender in the end for versatility I have to give it to the 200 to 500 all the way maximum aperture okay I know this is obvious the 300 PF is at f/4 the 200 500 is a 5 6 the winner is clearly with the Rainer PF however I think far too many people are too quick to dismiss this one stop difference there are several major benefits with using f/4 over f56 now the first is obvious you get one more stop alight again many folks dismiss this but how much do you think Nikon would charge if they just came up with a new camera that was one full stop better than anything else on the market right now heck just look at the difference in price between the 300 F 4 and the 300 to 8 to see how much one stop can be worth to the right person this point was really driven home to me when I was sorting out my photos from the last trip that were taken with a 200 to 500 I'm accustomed to shooting f/4 lenses and all it took was a few minutes looking at all that extra noise from the 200 to 500 F 5.6 to really appreciate those f/4 optics however it goes beyond that - and that 4 lens is going to give you a brighter viewfinder which may not seem like a big deal but it's certainly something I noticed and welcomed every time I switch from the 200 to 500 to the 300 PF and f/4 lens is also going to give you cleaner backgrounds in an f56 well this backgrounds can be the death of a good photo so even if I don't need the extra speed I'll take f4 any day over f56 after all when it comes to wildlife the cleaner the background the happier you'll be that said I have to say that the 200 to 500 has some of the best background rendering of any f56 lens I've ever seen it may still be a little busy for my taste in some circumstances but at least it's not a totally unpleasant look but there's even more another aspect that seldom considered is AF performance the smaller that maximum opening gets the less effective your AF sensors can become for instance even in the D 5 and D 500 many of the cross-type AF sensors will revert to regular line sensors one couple of the lens that's f56 are slower this decreases both the lenses ability to lock onto a subject and its ability to stay locked on so generally speaking the faster the lens the better the AF performance will be of course if you add a teleconverter to the 300 PF you turn it into a 420 millimeter at 5.6 and it instantly levels the playing field between the two optics teleconverters both lenses could take a teleconverter really well however the 300 PF does seem to take my 1.4 TC a little better than the 200 to 500 s obviously the 300 a 4 becomes a 420 f5 6 so it does slow things down a bit but not too much in short well I still try to avoid using teleconverters whenever I can I will use one on my 300 PF when needed and without hesitation I did try my 1.4 TC 3 on the 200 500 and it does work and can't produce very sharp results however the AF isn't as reliable and it does slow things down a bit that said and the truth is f8 is just too slow for my taste I personally would not want to use a teleconverter on this lens unless absolutely necessary AF performance first let's talk speed we'll start with the 200 a 500 the first time I use this lens I thought the AF was the automotive equivalent of a little old lady driving slowly down the highway with her left blinker on it'll get you there just fine but it's not in a hurry on the other hand the 300 PF is very respectable and while slightly slower than some of my other glass it's still more than acceptable attach a teleconverter and it still seems a touch fan faster than the 200 to 500 without one to demonstrate this I used my iPhone to show you the relative AAF speeds the lenses are both set to 2.2 meters and then focused to nearly infinity here's the 200 500 now here's the 300 PF now the 200 to 500 again now the 300 PF with a teleconverter no matter how you slice it the 300 PF just has snappier AF now even though the 200 to 500 is a little sluggish in the AF Department it really is generally adequate and can get the job done the slower AF can be a problem for closer subjects since at close range the lens needs to move the focusing ring quite a bit in a very short amount of time and I can attribute some of my missed shots to this in many cases when I have a closed subject rapidly moving towards me my typical hit rate with this lens seemed lower than my faster focusing optics however at a normal distance when the lens didn't need to move the focusing ring very much between shots my hit rate was better although still not quite up to my faster f/4 optics I actually think this is a combination of slower AF speed coupled with the slower F 5.6 maximum aperture sapping away some of the AF sensors sensitivity however don't get the wrong idea this lens is certainly adequate for tracking birds in flight and you'll get plenty of keepers my seat-of-the-pants estimate was that I missed about 15 to 20 percent more action shots with a 200 to 500 then I do with my f/4 optics like the 300 PF that aside the biggest problem with the slower F really isn't the ability to track it's the ability to initially acquire it or reacquire focus with the 300 PF I can point out a bird flying by and it's in focus so quickly that I barely even notice however the 200 500 and to a lesser extent the 300 PF with a teleconverter attached will make you wait a bit longer sometimes causing you to miss the shot before you can really lock on the other issue is re acquisition when I lost my lock on my flying subjects with the 200 to 500 again to a lesser extent with the 300 PF and the teleconverter it was a bit more difficult to reacquire that lock than it is with the faster 300 PF now all that said keep in mind I'm talking about birds and flight for slower or stationary subjects this is a nine issue and the AF speed with a 200 500 or the 300 PF a teleconverter is absolutely fine also note that both lenses have a focus limiter when shooting subjects at a normal distance I turn this on so the lens doesn't have to cycle all the way through the entire range when it's trying to get a lock it did make a difference especially on the 200 500 and I recommend you limit the AF on that lens just don't forget you turned it on if a closer subject pops up finally one thing I really like about both of these lenses is that they have really close minimum focus distance --is this is a huge advantage for photographing smaller subjects and in my opinion something special that the big exotic Prime's sometimes can't compete with sharpness okay you probably notice there was a wardrobe change here the reason for that was as I was putting this video together I thought of a few more points I wanted to make in this section so I ended up just reshooting it first off I want to say the both lenses are very sharp and I use them both without any reservations they're both capable of delivering tack sharp results even wide open and so far I don't really feel any need to stop them down to improve sharpness now let's look at some details I did a number of sharpness tests between the two lenses and what I saw from actual shooting corroborated the results I saw in the tests the first test I did was an indoor set up for a very controlled test of sharpness so we'll start with a 300 PF and then the 200 to 500 set to 300 millimeter as you can see in this comparison both lenses perform really well but unsurprisingly the prime does have an edge next I added a teleconverter to the prime and set the zoom to 420 millimeter once again the results are very close although this time the zoom seems to be a touch sharper than the prime with the teleconverter in my opinion both lenses are close enough in sharpness that under most conditions it really doesn't make too much difference and I'm happy with the level of sharpen as I see across the board next we have some tougher outdoor tests I wanted to do these to verify what I've been seeing in the field these tests were deliberately shot at midday a at a greater distance over my sunny lawn the reason for this is that there's a bit of heat distortion in the scenario and I wanted to see how each lens handled a less than ideal situation I did this test on two different days to double check and verify my results also for each lens I shot a series of five images from a tripod mirror up refocusing by a live view between each image now I know the Sun will argue that this isn't a fair test since I was deliberately shooting under poor conditions however the last time I checked the outdoors wasn't always ideal as wildlife and telephoto shooters we have to sometimes deal with less than ideal conditions and I think it's important to see what our lenses can do under those circumstances so let's take a look at the 300 millimeter results in this first image you can see the 300 PF looks pretty good and in fact pretty much all the images from the 300 PF in this series were around this level of sharpness however the 200 to 500 didn't fare as well out of five different shots this was actually the sharpest on the second attempt a few days later there wasn't quite as much heat distortion present and the two lenses are much closer in sharpness as you can see here with the 300 PF still keeping an edge over the zoom now let's look at 420 millimeter in this first test you can see the 200 503 MPF with teleconverter look pretty darn close in fact I don't see a significant difference between the two in the second test image you can see that the three enter with teleconverter actually looks just a touch better however I discovered the biggest takeaway isn't what you see here in the side-by-side images it's the consistency of each optic when trying to pick the sharpest image from each set of five images I noticed it was always harder to pick the ones from the 300 PF the images were generally very close at sharpness with only one or two being maybe slightly less sharp on the other hand it was a bit easier to pick the sharp one with the 200 to 500 since a larger percentage of those images were actually soft in fact I think that's what happened in the first test I never actually captured a sharp image with a zoom due to the heat distortion and I shot another 5 frames I may have captured one that was closer to the prime however in the real world we don't always have the opportunity to shoot a ton of shots in order to get one shot one so I think this is a definite advantage for the 300-millimeter the 200 500 just doesn't seem to cut through heat induced atmospheric distortion as well as the 300 but of course no lens is perfect in that scenario with the teleconverter attached the consistency of the three and of PF was closer to the performance of the 200 to 500 but still had a slightly higher number of relatively sharp images compared to the zoom now I really really really want to stress that under normal conditions both lenses perform very well and I find the consistency of the 200 to 500 to be just as good as the 3 to PF in the vast majority of situations I just thought it was interesting that when faced with heat or atmospheric distortion the 300 PF seems to do a bit better again from a sharpness standpoint under normal conditions in the real world the two lenses actually are really close also remember you can do these sample images on the companion page at my site I'll put a link here in the video or you can get it from the video description over on YouTube recommendations after shooting with both of these lenses it's hard to say which one is the best choice and I encourage you to consider the points in this review and choose the optic that seems best suited to your particular needs also note that I am impressed enough with both lenses that I'm not planning on selling either one that's set I'm going to go ahead and give you some of my thoughts on the subject first if you're a full frame shooter doing wildlife it's not even a contest go for the 200 to 500 well I love the three otter PF it's just not long enough on a full frame camera for most wildlife use so it would be married to a teleconverter all the time for crap body shooters it's a little tougher choice I use my 300 PF all the time on my D 500 without a teleconverter and it's faster and sharper than the 200 to 500 a 300 millimeter plus it does take the 1.4 teleconverter pretty well giving you an ultra compact lightweight 420 millimeter lens it's my first choice for hiking through the woods and has worked out amazingly well for me when I want a handhold well lightweight setup during four mile plus hikes interestingly the smaller optic seems less intimidating to wildlife and I finally can generally get a bit closer with it than with my larger glass still although I love the little threaded PF I have to say that after using both lenses I really think that for the majority of wildlife shooters who just want a single lens that 200 to 500 is probably the way to go it's extreme versatility and added focal length really make it a slightly better choice for most people additionally the 200 or 500 is an incredible bargain and that really needs to be taken into consideration as well right now it's $600 cheaper than the 300 PF and you don't need a $500 teleconverter to get to 420 millimeter and beyond that said keep in mind that while it's an impressive lens it's also not about to replace the big f4 and 2:8 primes I mention this because I have seen the discussion come up from time to time with the thought that maybe this lens is just as good as say a 500 millimeter f4 as someone who has shot a 500 f4 now shoots a 600 f4 I could promise you that's not the case the big primes are not only faster both aperture and a half but there's also a very real difference in rendering contrast and to use another technical term pop the 200 500 is really good but you do have to be realistic with your expectations the good news is that you probably can't go wrong either way both optics can definitely get the job done however there is more to getting the image on your memory card than just having the right lens you also need the right technique and that's where my ebook secrets to studying wildlife photography comes in its 290 pages that will teach you all of my very best tips tricks and techniques for putting award-winning images on your memory card check it out at my site and join the thousands of others who are already putting the advice to work each time they're out shooting also make sure you stop by my site and sign up for my free email newsletter so you never miss a video or an article and of course I'd love it if you'd subscribe to my youtube channel thanks so much for watching and have a great day you

Channel: Steve Perry

Views: 384,048

Rating: 4.9057503 out of 5

Keywords: photography tips, photography help, Backcountry Gallery, Steve Perry, nature photography, Nikon 200-500, nikon 300PF, nikon 300 VR, nikon 300mm, nikon 200mm-500mm, nikon 200-500 review, nikon 300PF review, Nikon 300 VR review, nikon 300 PF vs nikon 200-500, nikon 200-500 or nikon 300 pf

Id: l1obqCxg52Q

Length: 24min 57sec (1497 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 23 2016