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Field Test Nikkor 200-500mm f/5.6E ED AF-S VR

18/1/2018

2 Comments

 
I have tried the 200-500mm f/5.6 AF-S VR on field during my trip to Costa Rica this winter. That was  the perfect opportunity to photograph nature and especially wildlife and see what this lens has in its . I have had a good time shooting with this lens and the quality of the images went beyond my expectations. I used it mounted on my D750 which shows excellent performance in low light conditions and thus was an excellent addition to the lens which has a relatively small max aperture of f/5.6. The pictures have been taken mainly in aperture priority mode. Iso values used are between 200 and 5000, so keep your attention on these numbers since they have an important impact on the overall image noise. The settings of each shot is shared in the captions and a crop is given to judge the sharpness and crispness of the pictures. If you want another field test of this lens, have look at the stunning photos taken by Roy Mangersnes in Svalbard, Norway:

https://roymangersnes.wordpress.com/2015/09/25/field-test-nikkor-200-500mm-f56e-ed/

For the persons interested, here's a short history of the lens:
Since 2014 Tamron and then Sigma offered interesting super tele with impressive reach (150-600mm f/4.5-6.3), but Canon and Nikon remained quiet with their semi-pro 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 L IS USM (II) and the 80-400mm AF-S VR respectively.
In august 2015, Nikon launched the 200-500mm f/5.6 AF-S VR,  which has everything to compete (and certainly beat) its competitors but not enough to cannibalise Nikon’s Pro range lenses because of the lack of tropicalization which is required to shoot in extreme weather conditions. 
In other words Nikon has launched a versatile optical weapon with an electronic comparable to pro lenses (AF-S and VR) but without the mechanical finish that characterise them (and that justify their high price). This is a great opportunity for wildlife and even sport photographer looking for a super tele with excellent sharpness and good focus speed and image stabilisation.
Let’s see the results on field.

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Northern Jacana @420mm 1/1250s, f/8.0, ISO 640
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100% crop
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Little Blue Heron @440mm 1/1000 s, f/5.6, ISO 640
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Green Heron @500mm 1/2500s, f/5.6, ISO 640
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Collared Aracari @270mm 1/100s, f/5.6, ISO 800
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Hermit Crab @500mm 1/500s, f/5.6, ISO 4500
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Central American Whiptail @500mm 1/500s, f/5.6, ISO 640
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Back-cheeked Woodpecker @420mm 1/500s, f/5.6, ISO 1000
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Green Iguana @500mm 1/500s, f/5.6, ISO 1000
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Spider Monkey @500mm 1/800s, f/5.6, ISO 1600
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Brown Pelican hunting @500mm 1/4000s, f/5.6, ISO 320
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Brown Pelican striking fish @500mm 1/4000 s, f/5.6, ISO 320
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Brown Pelican @380mm 1/4000s, f/5.6, ISO 560
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Brown Pelican starting its descent to catch a fish @500mm 1/s, f/5.6, ISO 250
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Slot climbing @500mm 1/640s, f/5.6, ISO 640
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Howler Monkey @500mm 1/500s, f/8.0, ISO 5000
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Brown Pelican at take-off @500mm 1/4000s, f/5.6, ISO 560
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Sungrebe (very rare) @500mm 1/160s, f/5.6, ISO 1000. This is the only bird specie where the male has two marsupial pockets under its wings to carry his chicks both on the ground and in the air.
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Variegated Squirrel @460mm 1/100s, f/5.6, ISO 1600
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Canal in Tortugero @200mm 1/160 s, f/10, ISO 200
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Jesus Christ Lizard @500mm 1/800 s, f/5.6, ISO 800
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Great Green Macaw @500mm 1/2000 s, f/8.0, ISO 1600
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Royal Terns @280mm 1/320 s, f/14, ISO 220
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Sanderling @500mm 1/2500 s, f/5.6, ISO 400
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crop 100%
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Black-throated Trogon @500mm 1/320s, f/5.6, ISO 1600
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crop 100%
2 Comments

Svalbard, Norway

16/11/2016

3 Comments

 
3 Comments

Tokyo: View on Sumida river From Tsukuda District

12/11/2015

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Shooting with Na'ama near the lake of bienne

16/10/2015

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siberia

14/8/2015

1 Comment

 
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Backstage shooting for L'Oréal Paris with Laeticia Guarino Miss switzerland 2014

16/6/2015

0 Comments

 
Backstage shooting of Laeticia Guarino at the L'Oréal Academy in Geneva one day before climbing the famous stairs at the Cannes Film Festival in May this year.
Laeticia Guarino at the Cannes Film Festival here (Getty Images)
More informations on www.miss.ch and www.miss.ch/fr/sponsors-2/
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Charlotte & Jeremy: Just Married!

23/5/2015

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Behind the shot: Happy Landscape To you

5/4/2015

1 Comment

 
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Brügg (BE) Switzerland (2011), 17mm, f/4, 132s, ISO 200
This shot was an idea that came a cold summer evening in 2011.  I motivated a friend to come and help me preparing this apple tree with coloured ballons. Not a single cloud in the sky: the night was cold but perfect to catch the motion of the stars in the background. We walked in the fields during 20 minutes and arrived to the spot around 10pm (yes it was a late decision!). I took my photo material a Maglite torch for the light painting, a bag of balloons and a long string to attach the balloons to the branches. The night had fallen and climbing the tree was perilous due to the thin branches. We decided to go for a more radical way to "put" the balloons: we took a beetroot in the field behind, fixed the string with a half dozen balloons attached to it and threw it over the tree. A few ballons remained in the foliage and we repeated this a few times  (sounds easy now but our hands were already half frozen before starting to shoot).  We added a few balloons in the grass to get a nice composition and finally started to experiment the light painting. The painting was made by lightening the trunk of the tree and then its foliage. Short stops were made on each balloon to make them slightly brighter. The balloons in the grass were then lightened one by one by walking around in the scene.

Technical overview: I used my lens at its widest aperture f/4 (Canon 17-40mm f/4 L USM) to get a reasonable time of exposure (to see the stars motion, avoid to have too many blurry balloons due to the wind and to have the time to paint the whole scene with the torch) of approx. 2 minutes at 200 ISO. The 200 ISO is low enough to avoid noise. Even if the aperture is wide open, the depth of field (DoF) is infinite with a wide angle lens at 17mm for a subject at approx. 5m. Check this very useful link to calculate DoFs:
http://www.dofmaster.com/dofjs.html
1 Comment

Behind the shot: Boring

15/2/2015

2 Comments

 
Photo
Times Square (2011). 200mm, f/4, 1/100s, ISO 400
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When it comes to urban photography, NY is the perfect playground for the photographer. Take an ultra wide angle and make some random shots in the middle of Time Square: you will certainly take a few really nice crowdy images surrounded by impressive advertising lightenings. During my stay, I got a few interesting shots but I was wondering how I could get something different, with a completely other atmosphere than the typical rushy and blinky NY pics. To do so, I decided to wake up at early at
4am in order  to see NY wake up. I took a few interesting shots of NY streets with the aurora sky in the background and continued my walk to Times Square which was still completely empty. But the cleaning teams were slowly appearing in their red baggy onepieces and two of them started to clean the Times Square red stairs. The previous days I spotted a Hyunday advertizing in the background of the stairs. This advertizing was a mix of movie clips and a slogan written in huge white font. I tried to find some words that could add some intensity to the shot and one word came: an imposing BORING appeared on the screen behind one cleaning man! I just had the time to take two shots in burst mode to capture the moment.

Technical overview:  I used my lens fully opened at f/4 (Canon 70-200 f/4 L IS USM) and chose an ISO value high enough to have a non shaky picture at 200mm. In this case 1/100s was fast enough thanks to the image stabilization (I would have used 1/200 at least w/o IS). Knowing that the IS allows you two win approx. 3 fstops the minimum speed would have been 1/25s  but the risk of having the cleaning man blurred (especially his fast moving arms) would have been too high.



2 Comments

shooting with Kyoko

14/12/2014

0 Comments

 
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    Author

    My name is Raphaël Hoesli and I have a strong passion for photography. I am based in Bienne in Switzerland. I began photography at the age of 13 with my father's Canon AE1 camera. First attracted by Wildlife and nature photography, I progressively started with sport, events, city and people photography. This website should provide a good general idea of what I do.

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