Nikon 500 PF Review

[Music] hey everyone Steve from backcountry gallery here in this time around I have the full field review for the new Nikon 500 PF for this lens i did some local shooting and testing but i also took it on a whirlwind trip to custer state park in south dakota to yellowstone national park and then finished up with a couple days in Grand Teton National Park during this time this was the only lens I used so I really got a feel for both its strengths and its weaknesses also for the record I'm not sponsored by anyone nor did I receive any funding or discounts for the lens or for the trip itself everything was purchased at full price using my own funds so there isn't a sponsor out there somewhere swaying my opinion now with that in mind if you have liked up support these gear reviews the best way you can help is by passing my videos around to everyone and anyone who might be interested of course if you want to subscribe to my youtube channel and sign up for my free email newsletter at my site I'd really appreciate that as well so let's go ahead and get started build and features first let's talk build quality the lenses in my opinion the same pro quality you'd find in the larger more expensive primes it feels rugged and I accidentally discovered it can take some inadvertent abuse it's also fully weather sealed and when I was forced to put that to the test a few times it performed flawlessly as a side note the 200 to 500 does not have the same level of weather sealing the lens owes its small dimensions and light weight to the face for now element on the inside the for now lens element is sort of like a small-scale version of the for now lens you would see in most lighthouses it basically takes the light rays and shortens and compresses them and allows you to have a 500 millimeter focal length without the need for the lens to be physically 500 millimeters long as a quick comparison here's the lens next to the 200 to 500 the 300 PF the 600 f/4 and the 70 to 200 f/4 all without hoods let's take a closer look at the lens starting from the front we have the hood which locks into place when you attach it just press the button to release no worries about it falling off as often happens with 200 to 500 and even once it's my 300 PF the front element is next and it features a moisture and dust resistant flooring coating with a filter diameter of 95 millimeters next we have the function buttons these allow for a variety of customizable options that we'll discuss here in a moment going down the barrel we have the focus ring and it feels solid and smooth just like you would expect on an expensive prime minimum focus distance on the lens is three meters and you know I know that has caused some complaints out there on the Internet many people wish the minimum focus distance was a bit closer like the 300 PS 1.4 meters or the 200 500 s 2.2 meters I - we should focus to touch closer but it hasn't been an issue for me yet although I have been shooting mostly large mammals next we have an assortment of switches much like you'd find on a large prime I'm gonna go over them very briefly here but if you'd like a lot more info check out my ebook secrets to the nikon autofocus system I have an entire chapter that tells you everything about every switch and every button found on modern Nikon lenses and more importantly how to get the most from them for now here's a very quick overview starting at the top we have the AF option switch for most shooters I recommend the a / M option the m / option makes it too easy to accidentally bump the focus ring during AF operation and wind up in manual focus override mode the a / M option forces you to move the AF Ring much further before manual focus override engages next we have the focus limiter option with a choice of full or eight meters to infinity this is pretty standard although I really wish the Nikon would take a cue from the third-party manufacturers and put in another limiter position designed for close focus work that prevents the lens from heading out to infinity it would make working with small closed subjects much easier next we find our VR options normal and sport and we're going to talk about those options more in the VR section of this review finally we have a switch that we only see on higher-end lenses this switch controls what the function buttons do at the front of the barrel the first option is a FL and by default it locks your focus distance when you press any of the function buttons the front of the lens however on higher end cameras you can actually program this for a variety of functions such as using a preset focus point switching AF area modes disabling flash and a whole lot more on the other side we have AF on and this allows you to press any of the function buttons to engage autofocus I seldom have found any need for this but a it's there finally we have the middle option memory recall and that's the one I really like this option allows you to set in a specific focus distance and then press one of the function buttons to make the lens go back to that distance I find this incredibly handy when dealing with tough to focus subjects in those situations when you're focusing and refocusing sometimes the AF system misses and then hunts often causing a missed shot so what I do is focus at about the same distance my subject is I lock it in and then when the lens decides to go hunting I simply press one of the function buttons to get it back in the ballpark once focus is closed I find the camera is a much easier time latching on when I hit the AF on button to lock it in next is the collar and that's a bit of bad news as it turns out I don't think it's very well designed and if you're not careful you'll find yourself walking along with just the foot in your hand and your camera and lens on the ground in fact that's exactly what happened to me in Custer State Park luckily the lens and the d5 were fine but here's what happened okay I want to talk to you bout a little problem I found with this lens if you notice I have the foot in my hand right here my Wimberly quick release is on it but if you notice there's no lens attached to this anymore let me show you where the camera lens are they're down here at my feet the reason they're down there is cuz they fell down there I was carrying the lens by the foot and that's how you're supposed to carry any lens it as a foot you always carry it by the foot that means that the weight is supposed to be supported here and not by the camera mount so I was walking alone my fingers like this just carrying this camera and lens setup and this just and it just slipped right off the foot was right there and I just slipped right off onto the ground funny thing is I had one of my subscribers tell me that that was a problem that they had discovered so I tried to make sure the little safety knob here or whatever it's called was secure and I thought that I had it reasonably tight well I'm walking along and you don't even feel yourself doing that apparently my finger inadvertently hit this little foot release button right here and I didn't realize that I was walking along and it just slipped off hit the ground so my advice is to replace this sucker as soon as you can I'm sure really write stuff or Kirk enterprises or somebody's gonna come out with a much better engineered version of this and it'll have the arca-swiss thing built into it I would replace it as soon as you can because this one is is a little bit dangerous otherwise make sure that you really tighten this to an unreasonable amount and be very careful the other thing I would do is carry the camera like this maybe even leave the foot off if you don't need it and carry it by the lens and not by the foot because I say it mine just fell onto the ground I had another subscriber same thing happens so be careful with it finally wrapping up a build section we end up at the metal mount and you can see it features a rubber o-ring around the perimeter to help seal out dust and moisture between the body and lens handling the small size and weight distribution of this lens just begs for hand-holding and in fact very seldom did I put the 500 PF on a tripod it just doesn't need one if you have an adequate shutter speed which we'll talk about soon in the VR section however that's not the big story here what I really love about shooting this lens is just how fast you can get yourself into tricky positions and places often when you encounter wildlife you have to be fast if you want to get the shot with this lens I would time and again get myself into cool and unique positions just as the action started and consistently nail the shot the importance of this just cannot be overstated I think it's the best part of using this lens this lens is so quick and flexible in the field that I was getting shot after shot that i 100% knew I would have missed with my normal 600 f/4 mounted to a tripod setup in fact here's an example out in Yellowstone we were fortunate enough to have spotted a nice red fox as I shot I kept thinking that there was no way I could have managed to get into position as fast as I needed with my tripod mount at 600 f/4 time and again I had almost run to get into position and then get low and then fired just as he rounded the corner had I've been messing with a tripod I never would have captured as many shots had I've been hand holding the 600 millimeter I likely would have fatigued since it went on for so long of course I would have captured some great images with the 604 in that scenario too but I'm confident that I actually captured more images and more poses because of the speed that I can maneuver with the 500 PF like I say the flexibility of this lens just cannot be overstated and my opinion number one reason to have it the other thing I like about this lens is that I found myself taking it with me when I normally would never bring along a large telephoto it's small and inconspicuous enough that it's you know easy just to grab and take along in case you see something of course there were other circumstances during the trip where the 600 f4 would have been a much better choice but I have to say the versatility of this small lightweight handheld lens is the real reason and now has a permanent place in my bag however the 500 PF is not without its downsides the f56 challenge to me the major drawback with the 500 PF is the fact that it's an f5 6 optic now I fully realize that an f4 version would likely cost more than the current 500 f4 and of course come in add a larger size and heavier weight you know I get all of that however at five six often has some serious drawbacks especially when compared to F 4 and F 2.8 glass and IV were missing this review if I didn't discuss those first of course is compared to f4 glass you have to shoot at one stop faster ISO for the same shutter speed I know many people dismiss the spec since today's cameras are so good and I would tend to agree if that difference never got any worse then maybe ISO 400 versus ISO 800 however when you shoot at the edge of day you often find f56 is the difference between something like ISO 32 and 6400 or sometimes even ISO 6400 and 12,800 so for wildlife shooters that step really is significant and by the way I wrote an article you can find at my site that discusses in detail why high ISO can't replace fast glass I think the reasons will actually surprise you I'll put a link in the card above to the article so you can check it out in addition the other thing I noticed immediately was the lack of subject isolation compared to my f/4 class and this is a big one at least for me sure when I was close to the subject it looked great in fact I really like the way this lens Rend however as I got further back that depth of field of course increased and I was definitely missing the subject isolation I normally have with my 600 f/4 this was especially true if the backgrounds were close to the subject they often look busier and more distracting than when I'm accustomed to with my f/4 glass another problem with subject isolation is if the critter was just a little bit too far away and I wanted to crop a little the increased distance meant ward up the field which looks okay with the 600 f/4 and it looks just kind of at the edge of acceptability with the 500 bf in my opinion in addition to what was just mentioned at five six was an issue with the 1.4 teleconverter as you'll see next teleconverter performance first let's get sharpness out of the way with the nikon 1.4 TC III attached Nikon claims there's no loss in sharpness and if you look at this test with the Bayer lens versus the lens plus teleconverter you'll see it really is quite close from a sharpness standpoint I wouldn't hesitate to use this lens with the 1.4 TC however there are several other problems I encountered while out in the field that I'd like to share the first most obvious is that if you're dropping to f/8 when you slap on a teleconverter in dim conditions this put your iso through the room however that's not really the worst of it first a little bit of background about me one of the biggest problems I encountered has to do with the way I shoot whenever I can before I choose my AF point I compose the shot and then I move the AF point to the eye or as close as I can making slight adjustments to the composition as needed and then I fire away this allows me to keep the AF point on the eye and with my AF button constantly engage any time the animal moves those slight movements are compensated for by the AF system and I get consistently sharp eyeballs I prefer this over using the center point and recomposing when I do the focus and recompose thing the animal often moves during the process resulting in a slightly soft eye the problem is that the AF system doesn't particularly care for f/8 maximum apertures first you can only use a limited number of AF points mostly located towards the center in fact any points that we're not designed for FA would cause it a hunt so frequently I almost went out and bought it an orange vest and a rifle in addition even with the FA compatible points I found the AF was noticeably slower and far less consistent than without the TC attached without the TC F was incredibly consistent and quick both on my d5 and D 850 in the end I missed enough shots with the TC that I started to avoid to choose often switching to the higher pixel density da 54 later cropping and I hate cropping so that really tells you something as a side note this is another reason why I like f4 faster glass you don't run into this AF issue when you attach a 1.4 TC since you only drop two at 5.6 there were more than a few times I almost grabbed my 600 millimeter just to get this shot but I wanted to force myself to find this lenses limitations and this is one of them now that's set in a pinch the TC certainly gets the job done with nearly no loss of quality especially if you're willing to focus in a recompose but it's definitely not my favorite way to go VR performance this lens features both sport and normal VR and which to choose can get tricky I usually a sport mode though and here's why I'm sure you've noticed that when you use VR the image in the viewfinder can sort of float around a little bit often jumping after you take the shot this is due to the movement of the VR lens group but it's more than just a quirky footnote the problem is when the image in the viewfinder is floating like that you don't know for sure if your F point is precisely where you think it is I often have people complain to me that they absolutely know the AF point was on the eye of their subject but when they look at the info display showing the F position it's not quite there that's because when you look through the viewfinder your VR group was engaged and it did appear as if the F point was where it should have been however when he pushed down on the shutter release the VR Group re-centers shifting the image to a slightly different position sport VR helps keep that movement to a minimum for better AF point precision however it's not a set it and forget it setting at least not with this lens in my testing and field work I found that under 1 250th of a second I was way better off with normal mode and it was only when I got above one 250th of a second that I was able to really utilize sport mode and by the way be our modes are thoroughly covered in my night a book if you'd like more info now let's look at some of those VR tests now as it turns out this is the trickiest part of the review at least for me I had heard internet rumblings about the lens having an issue with VR around the 125th of a second mark and that there was some concern about it underperforming so I did a series of tests where I tried a variety of different configurations and shutter speeds I'm gonna simply summarize the results here though since they were well over seven hundred shots involved in addition I used we are almost constantly in the field as well so I think I have a handle on it also keep in mind that since this is a VR test there is a variable at play and that's my ability to hold the lens steady what works or doesn't work for me may not fully apply to you also during these tests I compared the 300 PF and 200 to 500 zoom it's kind of get an overall idea of how this performs I started with a number of back-and-forth tests with different targets and one stop increments from one thirtieth of a second to one 500th of a second in both normal and sport VR modes my hit rate at one thirtieth of a second was a big fat goose egg with every lens and every VR mode I just can't keep any things steady hand-holding at those speeds period now let's talk about the shutter speeds everyone is worried about the 160th to 125th of a second range I could tell you that between one sixtieth and 125th things get better with all the optics over what I was seeing at one thirtieth of a second the thing is I was getting okay sharpness at those speeds but not quite the biting sharpness I was seeing at higher speeds now I think part of it might be that it's just a little bit difficult to handle a 500 millimeter lens at that speed but I think there also might be slightly more to it as well I tried the same shutter speed test but from a tripod with a loose gimbal head in those tests with VR set to normal I found a head actually more sharp images at one sixtieth then 125th of a second and the opposite should be the case the difference in sharpness was slight but the overall trend was kind of evident when set to sport mode with the tripod setup I found that the one sixtieth an 125th of his second range were about the same that said with VR turned on in the lens mounted to a loose gimbal head my keep rate was far higher than I can get by just hand-holding even when I'm braced firmly against something so I think movement on the part of the photographer at least plays a small role here in that shutter speed range so I hate to be all inconclusive with this but my feeling about it is that there just doesn't seem like there's like a super-big 160th to 125th of a second problem in that shutter speed range certainly not like what we saw with a 300 PF now once I got to 1 250th of a second things started to get better and this jives with what I found out in the field careful hand-holding at one 250th of and higher for me put a bunch of sharp images on the card well field-testing I also noticed the VR system in this lens seems to work well even if your shutter speed is high with a 200 503 and opf I've noticed that if I allow the shutter speed to climb over one 500th of a second I frequently see some of the images display a loss of acuity and sharpness with this lens and coincidentally my 600 f-4e I find that I don't see it nearly as often especially in sport VR mode in fact I actually never saw a drop in sharpness once in the high-speed Test series with the 500 PF where I saw it multiple times with a 200 a 500 and 300 PF with VR engaged hover in the field I think there were maybe a few times that a higher speed with VR cost me just a touch of acuity but I want to stress that was only very occasionally the reason being able to shoot high stutter speeds with VR manners is that when a static scene turns into an action scene and you crank up your shutter speed real quick it's very easy to forget about VR I do it all the time but with this lens you'll still grab a boatload of crazy sharp images to me this more than outweighs the possibility maybe a little bit of erratic performance in the VR system in the 160th to 125th of a second range by the way my advice with this lens is just to try to keep it at one 250th of a second or faster when hand-holding and just use sport VR when you need it I use manual Plus auto ISO so I simply set my f-stop to where I want it usually five six then I set my shutter speed somewhere at one 250th of a second or faster and then I let the camera bloat the eye so that way I never have to worry about the shutter speed dropping too low plus I find that one 250th of a second is like a nice safe shutter speed when the animal is less than perfectly still AF speed and accuracy another online concern with this lens and one of my concerns as well is AF speed the good news is that it's way better than you think from a field standpoint I never once thought it was too slow as I often notice when shooting my 200 or 500 I always found it up to the task even for action once I got home I found out why I did some side by side speed tests and I have to say the results were very surprising in these tests I captured a video of the Ephron's moving on the various lenses and then counted the frames in the video where the focus ring was in motion to determine the actual time it took to focus in addition I did two different tests the first test was the entire focal range for each comparison lens this simulates the kind of time it may take if the lens starts hunting I also did a test at 5 meters to infinity to see how close the speeds are if you maybe need to switch from one subject to another at some of the typical focus distances we encounter with wildlife let's go over those results for the 500 PF versus the 600 f-4e it was neck and neck all the way for the full range test both lenses ran the entire range in point four seconds for the 5 meter to infinity test but 500 PF actually scooted past the 600 f/4 with the time of 0.3 3 versus 0.4 seconds of course you gotta remember the 600 f/4 had to compete starting from its minimum focus distance giving the 500 PF a slight head start still that was more than a little impressed with those results next I pitted it against the 300 PF for the full range test the 300 PS pulled it off in exactly 0.5 seconds coming in behind the faster 500 PF type of just 0.4 seconds the 300 PF does focus a bit closer however so that may have influenced it for the 5 meter to infinity tests things were reversed with a 300 px time coming in at point 1 6 seconds versus the 500 PS time of 0.33 seconds next the 500 PF versus the 200 a 500 for the full range test once again we have 0.4 seconds for the 500 PF and that 200 to 500 comes in at over double that speed at point 8 3 seconds coincidentally this is slightly slower than the 500 PF with a 1.4 teleconverter attached where the 5 meter to infinity test once again the 500 PF comes out on top with the time of 0.33 seconds versus the 200 500 time of 0.5 seconds if you are wondering if there was a difference in amp speed between the 500 PF and the 200 and 500 there absolutely is and it's very noticeable in the field for the other optics they were too close to really tell the difference in the field at least for me now the other aspect of this is AF accuracy speed is nice accuracy is better and this lens doesn't disappoint I was very happy with this lenses ability to quickly obtain a positive precise AF lock over and over it seemed as good as my 600 f4 in this respect and after shooting in a few days I was confident that if I had an AF lock and I had sufficient shutter speed that I'd have a tack sharp image on the card this proof true over and over during the test basically it just gets the shot sharpness comparison and rendering ok now the part you've been waiting for the sharpness testing for these tests I compared the 600 f4 the 300 PF the 300 PF with a teleconverter and the 200 to 500 all wide open first let's get one thing out of the way these are all fantastic optics and Center sharpness between all the optics is very close try as I might I just don't see what I would call a significant difference between these optics in the center of the frame if you're only concerned about Center sharpness then I'd consider them pretty much all equal the real story starts when you head towards the side of the frame as you can see the 600 f4 and the 500 PF are so close I'm just gonna go ahead and call it a tie here this mears what I thought in the field is well especially for close subjects for further subjects in the real world I still kind of feel like I'm getting a touch better sharpness with a 600 f/4 but only by a very small margin the 300 PF is next and in this case the 500 PF does seem to have a small advantage also note that my 300 PF is slightly be centered so the right side is sharper than what you see on the left still overall I think the 500 PF does enjoy a slight edge next add a TC to the 300 PF and the 500 PF easily pulls ahead not only is the 500 PF but it's also not showing the chromatic aberration we see with a 300 PF + TC combo so if you're thinking of a 300 PF and a TC versus like a 500 PF I'd say go 500 PF if you think the TC is gonna be used more than 50% of the time finally the 200 or 500 the first thing I noticed when testing this lens is that it exhibits some focus breathing at close range when I first did these tests I placed the 200 or 500 on the tripod I had just used with the 500 PF and as you can see it has less magnification from that distance of course the 200 or 500 focuses a bit closer so if you can move up it's not an issue at a distance the two lenses are pretty darn close as for the sharpness tests no surprise here as you can see although the 200 to 500 isn't bad it just can't stand up to the prime and again that's not a surprise it's not bad but the prime easily beats it as you get towards the sides and the 200 or 500 is also showing some degree of chromatic aberration as well right you can see it right along these black edges now many people who are quick to dismiss these edge problems since the subject is often more towards the middle anyway however dead-center compositions get boring pretty quickly if you like to do things like compose your photos or you know shoot verticals then you'll probably welcome the additional sharpness towards the edges that the 500 PF brings to the equation especially if you're shooting full frame as for rendering I know that's a very subjective quality in the field I felt that for the most part I like the way this lens rendered backgrounds and handled the transition between the sharp and soft areas of the photo this was especially true for closer subjects in fact up close I think I like the rendering of this lens every bit as much as my 600 f/4 now I've also had a lot of people asked for comparisons between the background rendering of this lens versus the 200 or 500 so I did a few tests all wide open in going over these images you know I'm not seeing a huge difference side-by-side I can definitely pick out the 500 PF and the background looks just a touch smoother and nicer to me however it's very close to be sure recommendations although the lens isn't perfect I think the benefits far outweigh any shortcomings I personally plan to use this lens in conjunction with my 600 f-4e I'll use it as my quick shot lens in the truck for what I need to jump out and grab a shot now likely is it when I'm doing longer hikes and I don't want to lug around that 600 f-4e and the tripod and have that over my shoulder for miles on end however it certainly won't replace the 600 e I'll probably still use that lens for 70 to 80 percent of my shots however when you need something faster to use this lens is a no-brainer so if you're a fast prime shooter I wouldn't ditch your big glass for it nor would I buy this instead of what are the big lenses the only exception of course is if maybe you simply can't physically handle the larger optic for big prime shooters I think of this more as an addition than a replacement now I think there's another group of people looking at this lens and they're also looking at the 200 or 500 and wondering if this lens is worth the extra money now based on my experience with both I take this lens just about every time over the 200 or 500 it's more rugged it's fully weather sealed it includes the function buttons which I find incredibly useful has faster AF is sharper towards the edges is lighter smaller and in my opinion it's just more fun to use of course the 200-500 is also a zoom so if you need a zoom for what you do that's probably a better way to go if you're considering this versus a three or four three or PF with TCS I'd say it depends on both the type of camera crop or full-frame and the distance to your typical subject if you're shooting full-frame I'd say pretty much go for the 500 PF and don't look back but 300 PF is often a bit short on full frame and ends up married to the teleconverter however if you're shooting a crop camera and frequently fine 300 millimeter to 400 millimeter is enough then the 300 PS is likely a better choice plus one stop faster when you don't have the teleconverter attached but again this all depends on your subject distance okay so there you have it so as you can tell I definitely like the lens I've enjoyed using it and I do actually highly recommend it I think it's a really great little optic now if you've enjoyed this video make sure you check out my educational materials as well I just recently came out with a video that shows my noise reduction method and honestly for a noise reduction I just used Photoshop and Lightroom take a look at it I think you're gonna like it there's a lot of tips and in there also make sure you check out my ebook secrets to setting wildlife photography and secrets to the nikon autofocus system both are jam-packed with information I know you're gonna love it we have thousands of people who've already bought these books that are using the techniques in them every day out in the field and finally make sure you subscribe to the YouTube channel and head over to my site sign up for my free email newsletter love you have you on there thanks so much for watching have a great day you

Channel: Steve Perry

Views: 201,059

Keywords: photography tips, photography help, Backcountry Gallery, Steve Perry, nature photography, Nikon 500PF, nikon 500 pf, 500mm pf, 500mmpf, 500mm F/5.6, nikon 500 pf review, nikon 500mm pf review, nikon 500pf for wildlife, nikon 500pf vs nikon 200-500, nikon 500pf vs 300pf, nikon 500mm pf for widllife, wildlife photography lens, nikon 500 PF VR, nikon 500 PF sharpness, Nikon 500 pf af speed

Id: 5sWXqfO2th4

Length: 29min 27sec (1767 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 08 2018