Good midnight everyone…
Sunday Funday, weather was nice, no wind, cloudy and a giant softboxed sun. Perfect for the 400/4.5 outdoor portrait session testing. Me and my wife took chances experimenting. We immediately got stunned from the quick and snappy auto focus. Z9 was set to AF-C (with focus priority) and Auto-Area people.
This lens is EXTREMELY sharp. Actually, its too sharp! The Bokeh is a dream!! Oh my is that nice! Just put whatever you want behind the subject and the bokeh is gorgeous. The Hudson River, a long trail, empty landscape.
Another great thing about this lens is the VR. We were shooting with it like we would shoot the 70-200 literally. Wide open f/4.5 ISO 64 while the shutter speed was the same as we use it in studio, 1/160 for tack ultra sharp results. I can’t say the same for the 500pf which needed a shutter of 1/500 to get tack sharp images.
We reviewed the images later in our editing room, we were disappointed of the sharpness… too sharp… even more so from the 105 MC. We had to dial down the contrast, dial back the sharpness to get the skin looking pleasing, then it looked too unnatural, we had a hard time dialing it in. It captures the skin with microscopic detail. Not literally microscopic, but you get the point.
Which brought me to question the purpose Nikon had when designing this lens. Certainly not for human faces. Sports? That also includes human faces. Wild life? Birds? What was the purpose of this lens? To use it with a TC to soften it?
I brought along the 1.4 TC just didn’t get to test portraits with it. Besides 560mm is too much backing up to frame a human subject.
We were looking forward using this lens for outdoor portraiture, because customers liked the bokeh of the 500pf. but this is way sharper. its too sharp. Too much tiny skin details, like macro shooting a face… the 500pf didn’t resolve that much details.
I’m not returning it… I need it for water fowl, birds, etc. which I didn’t get a chance to try yet. But I would like to know what was Nikons intention when designing it.
Thank you
Sunday Funday, weather was nice, no wind, cloudy and a giant softboxed sun. Perfect for the 400/4.5 outdoor portrait session testing. Me and my wife took chances experimenting. We immediately got stunned from the quick and snappy auto focus. Z9 was set to AF-C (with focus priority) and Auto-Area people.
This lens is EXTREMELY sharp. Actually, its too sharp! The Bokeh is a dream!! Oh my is that nice! Just put whatever you want behind the subject and the bokeh is gorgeous. The Hudson River, a long trail, empty landscape.
Another great thing about this lens is the VR. We were shooting with it like we would shoot the 70-200 literally. Wide open f/4.5 ISO 64 while the shutter speed was the same as we use it in studio, 1/160 for tack ultra sharp results. I can’t say the same for the 500pf which needed a shutter of 1/500 to get tack sharp images.
We reviewed the images later in our editing room, we were disappointed of the sharpness… too sharp… even more so from the 105 MC. We had to dial down the contrast, dial back the sharpness to get the skin looking pleasing, then it looked too unnatural, we had a hard time dialing it in. It captures the skin with microscopic detail. Not literally microscopic, but you get the point.
Which brought me to question the purpose Nikon had when designing this lens. Certainly not for human faces. Sports? That also includes human faces. Wild life? Birds? What was the purpose of this lens? To use it with a TC to soften it?
I brought along the 1.4 TC just didn’t get to test portraits with it. Besides 560mm is too much backing up to frame a human subject.
We were looking forward using this lens for outdoor portraiture, because customers liked the bokeh of the 500pf. but this is way sharper. its too sharp. Too much tiny skin details, like macro shooting a face… the 500pf didn’t resolve that much details.
I’m not returning it… I need it for water fowl, birds, etc. which I didn’t get a chance to try yet. But I would like to know what was Nikons intention when designing it.
Thank you