I couldn't come up with a clever title to catch everyone's attention, so I'm just going to try this: PLEASE HELP ME......Please!!!!!!

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PKW said:
Ditto what everyone has said here, but one thing I do on my 200-500 is not zooming out to the full 500mm but keeping it a bit less, like 460-480 which seems to sharpen things up more than when fully extended. Might be a peculiarity with my copy of the lens and I lose a bit of zoom capability but worth it to me for the results.
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Oopps...interesting observation.
Although reviews of zooms, especially tele zooms reagularly show that there are significant differences in IQ across hte folcal length range, I would not have expected that a minor step-back from the long end would make a considerable differences in this way.
 
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I would echo Whiskeyman’s question – how are you sharing your photos – are they screen shots?

I think shutter speed is the primary issue. The best focus shot above was taken at SS 1/400. Even with the focal length reciprocal rule, 1/500 would be recommended as Ado said. I would be using at least 1/640, possible 1/800 if the hawk is moving.

Sassy said weather conditions were ‘Weather: sunny and beautiful. Not hot, 70 degrees (shouldn't be any heat distortion)’. At this distance, under these conditions, I don’t think heat distortion over a non-reflective (straw) surface would be a problem.
 
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txstone said:
I would echo Whiskeyman’s question – how are you sharing your photos – are they screen shots?

I think shutter speed is the primary issue. The best focus shot above was taken at SS 1/400. Even with the focal length reciprocal rule, 1/500 would be recommended as Ado said. I would be using at least 1/640, possible 1/800 if the hawk is moving.

Sassy said weather conditions were ‘Weather: sunny and beautiful. Not hot, 70 degrees (shouldn't be any heat distortion)’. At this distance, under these conditions, I don’t think heat distortion over a non-reflective (straw) surface would be a problem.
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Atmospheric distortion does not matter what the outdoor temp is. All that matters is the differential between the ground and the air above it (usually 1-5ft above it and typically just 1-2ft). It can happen over water, grass, sand, dirt...basically anything. This time of year with cooler overnight temps and then clear mornings is probably the worst time of year for this type of thing.

These photos look like they were shot from downhill from the hawk. That exacerbates problems even more. Add onto that the longer shooting distance and air turbulence is magnified. Air currents move so you can always find a few sharper shots in a given burst or outing. But these images have the textbook look to subject and OOF areas of air issues.
 
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I would advise the OP to go out on a cloudy morning when the morning temp hasn't changed much from the overnight temp. Find some subjects and test. The problem will likely be gone.
 
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txstone said:
I would echo Whiskeyman’s question – how are you sharing your photos – are they screen shots?

I think shutter speed is the primary issue. The best focus shot above was taken at SS 1/400. Even with the focal length reciprocal rule, 1/500 would be recommended as Ado said. I would be using at least 1/640, possible 1/800 if the hawk is moving.

Sassy said weather conditions were ‘Weather: sunny and beautiful. Not hot, 70 degrees (shouldn't be any heat distortion)’. At this distance, under these conditions, I don’t think heat distortion over a non-reflective (straw) surface would be a problem.
Click to expand...

Arbitrage is correct, this is textbook heat distortion worst case scenario - if you haven't watched Steve's video on the topic, I'd highly recommend it. I used to ignore that factor before he got me on the right tracks and I can go back to hundreds of pictures that got ruined by temperature haze and I didn't understand why they were just not sharp. Now that I know what to look for I even see it in the viewfinder and I usually decide to not take the shot.
 
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I'm sure your responses are independently held and well thought out, but what would you recommend for shutter speed?

arbitrage said:
Atmospheric distortion does not matter what the outdoor temp is. All that matters is the differential between the ground and the air above it (usually 1-5ft above it and typically just 1-2ft). It can happen over water, grass, sand, dirt...basically anything. This time of year with cooler overnight temps and then clear mornings is probably the worst time of year for this type of thing.

These photos look like they were shot from downhill from the hawk. That exacerbates problems even more. Add onto that the longer shooting distance and air turbulence is magnified. Air currents move so you can always find a few sharper shots in a given burst or outing. But these images have the textbook look to subject and OOF areas of air issues.
Click to expand...
FB101 said:
Arbitrage is correct, this is textbook heat distortion worst case scenario - if you haven't watched Steve's video on the topic, I'd highly recommend it. I used to ignore that factor before he got me on the right tracks and I can go back to hundreds of pictures that got ruined by temperature haze and I didn't understand why they were just not sharp. Now that I know what to look for I even see it in the viewfinder and I usually decide to not take the shot.
Click to expand...


In my case, I would prefer to

- make my observations on a larger, higher resolution image, a JPG would be fine
- try first things first, and shutter speed is an obvious one to try right away
- look at the OPs AF setup

I would try several things before racking up the perceived lack of sharpness to 'heat distortion'. Where, can you see the straw ahead of and behind the bird, in the focal plane of the bird? We would expect heat distortion to be all pervasive in the focal plane, correct? Can you enlarge the image to analyze if the extent of the focal plane is distorted?

As you can see, I don't agree with your diagnosis of 'heat distortion' with so little evidence to go on. I would suggest experimenting with a few other settings first.
 
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Woodpecker said:
Oopps...interesting observation.
Although reviews of zooms, especially tele zooms reagularly show that there are significant differences in IQ across hte folcal length range, I would not have expected that a minor step-back from the long end would make a considerable differences in this way.
Click to expand...
Yes, not sure why that is. I’ve even fine tuned the lens at 500mm on a D500 but I still get better photos not racked out to 500.
 
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Sorry to add misery but I have had three copies of the 200mm-500mm. The first was sharp such that I bought a second (for my wife). Hers exhibited all the issues you are experiencing. At first I thought it must be her technique (perhaps too heavy, inadequate shutter speed, poor holding stance etc etc). Unfortunately the new purchase period was one of extreme rainfall here in UK and it was difficult to test properly. Consequently it was 40 days (after purchase) before the final result was that this second lens just could not resolve a sharp image! Return to WEX Photographic UK as 'Not fit for purpose' as handled very badly and since then I have done little business with them. They refused to immediately replace it as it had 'passed' the 30 day legal limit despite protestations regarding weather preventing testing. As such I accepted a 'repair'. Now in the UK Nikon repair has a terrible reputation but WEX use their own sister company to 'fix' lenses. Being an anal type of person this lens was packaged in its original packaging (including outer box) and then in another box with what really was excessive shock absorbing materials (UK courier delivery is similarly rough with items). The courier picked it up (paid for by WEX so their agent legally. After about a month I pressed WEX as it had not been returned nor had I been sent any updates. The agent at WEX I spoke with got in contact with their repair people and then came back saying it was nearly ready and the bill was nearly £400 (about $500+)! Flabbergasted, I stated that this was a lens 40 days old how could their be any charge? I was told the lens foot bracket had been broken and that we (my wife and I had done it)!!! This was clearly untrue. and I believe it had been dropped at the repair centre. After extended wrangling including threatened legal action WEX reluctantly replaced the lens with a third copy. This was and is perfect years later. Clearly Nikon had a slip up in quality control and this may be your issue? I would go on to detail a 300mm PF F4 that had 60 step back focus (Nikons allow a maximum of 20 adjustment)! Nikon repair sent that one back as nothing wrong with it? Clearly quality control and quality assurance is all over the place. My wife (with her new lens) now takes batter and sharper shots than me!
 
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txstone said:
I'm sure your responses are independently held and well thought out, but what would you recommend for shutter speed?





In my case, I would prefer to

- make my observations on a larger, higher resolution image, a JPG would be fine
- try first things first, and shutter speed is an obvious one to try right away
- look at the OPs AF setup

I would try several things before racking up the perceived lack of sharpness to 'heat distortion'. Where, can you see the straw ahead of and behind the bird, in the focal plane of the bird? We would expect heat distortion to be all pervasive in the focal plane, correct? Can you enlarge the image to analyze if the extent of the focal plane is distorted?

As you can see, I don't agree with your diagnosis of 'heat distortion' with so little evidence to go on. I would suggest experimenting with a few other settings first.
Click to expand...
Shutter speed for a hawk sitting in the grass? 1/100 would be fine in my hands but I’d probably go 1/400 just in case.
 
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This is very representative of every time I shoot my camera. What am I doing wrong????? 😖😣

Thanks in advance for any guidance........
D.
[/QUOTE]
My 2cents on your issue 1) After using my brand new 200-500 lens for 4-5 months, I sent it in to Nikon service and just told them I was having focus issues. That I really didn’t know if it was a problem with the lens or me. They returned the lens to me after a couple of weeks and I immediately noticed I was getting a higher success rate. Out of 50 frames getting 2 or 3 in focus instead of 0 to 1. 2) Increasing my shutter speed to a minimum of 3200 and greater helped a lot. Sometimes I could now get a whole lot (up to 80 %) sequence in focus and 3) decreasing f stop f8 or smaller helped as well. You need to try and choose your backgrounds more carefully when working with smaller f stops but at least getting focus is a start.
 
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You might consider pushing your shutter speed up. A 500mm lens on the D500 is a 750mmm equivalent at 1/400sec you need to be very very steady. It seems like you have plenty of light so shooting at 1/400sec at 750mm and ISO 100 is not the best settings. Try manual mode, with auto ISO, the widest f stop and push your shutter speed up. The biggest challenge I see many folks having with long lenses is they don't have good form holding the camera steady.
 
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sassyfox said:
As you might have guessed from the title of this thread I....AM.........FRUSTRATED!!!! I don't know what I'm doing wrong. First off: I'm shooting with a Nikon D500 and the Nikkor 200-500mm 1: 5.6E

I can't get anything in focus. I have read the Secrets to AutoFocus e-book, e-cover to e-cover. These photos were taken today and are very representative of a lot of my photos. Out of 44 photos:

CONDITIONS

Weather: sunny and beautiful. Not hot, 70 degrees (shouldn't be any heat distortion)
Subject: stationary
Camera mounted on Fotopro E6L w gimbal head.
All photos taken using the single auto-focus point.
43 have a confirmed locked AF square on birds face - only 1 was not locked


  • 8 - kinda sharp but a far cry from tack sharp:
    • all taken at - 1/400 sec @ f/5.6 ISO 100, 500 mm
    • example - this is the sharpest photo out of all 44:
    • View attachment 27267

This is very representative of every time I shoot my camera. What am I doing wrong????? 😖😣

Thanks in advance for any guidance........
D.
Click to expand...
Nikon quality control is great but once in awhile they have had a couple of poor 200-500mm lenses.
 
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sassyfox said:
As you might have guessed from the title of this thread I....AM.........FRUSTRATED!!!! I don't know what I'm doing wrong. First off: I'm shooting with a Nikon D500 and the Nikkor 200-500mm 1: 5.6E

I can't get anything in focus. I have read the Secrets to AutoFocus e-book, e-cover to e-cover. These photos were taken today and are very representative of a lot of my photos. Out of 44 photos:

CONDITIONS

Weather: sunny and beautiful. Not hot, 70 degrees (shouldn't be any heat distortion)
Subject: stationary
Camera mounted on Fotopro E6L w gimbal head.
All photos taken using the single auto-focus point.
43 have a confirmed locked AF square on birds face - only 1 was not locked


  • 8 - kinda sharp but a far cry from tack sharp:
    • all taken at - 1/400 sec @ f/5.6 ISO 100, 500 mm
    • example - this is the sharpest photo out of all 44:
    • View attachment 27267

This is very representative of every time I shoot my camera. What am I doing wrong????? 😖😣

Thanks in advance for any guidance........
D.
Click to expand...
Good advice from everyone - start from 1st principles to do fault diagnostics
1. check camera & lens focus combo in ideal conditions - do you use back button focus and AF-C focus mode?
2. use AF fine tune to fix front / back focussing ( good YouTube video ”green dot af fine tune”
3. Then go to field and perhaps use combinations of 25 and single AF point modes _ often the focus point is not exactly as displayed in viewfinder - might be active only on a side/ portion of the displayed AF.
4. Then all the other issues mentioned in the responses like filling frame, heat shimmer etc
 
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These were with the D7500 (baby D500) with the 200-500
for me, they’re sharp enough. I can only think that either your lens needs calibrating or, as mentioned, you’re getting g heat distortion.

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Patrick M said:
These were with the D7500 (baby D500) with the 200-500
for me, they’re sharp enough. I can only think that either your lens needs calibrating or, as mentioned, you’re getting g heat distortion.

View attachment 27519
View attachment 27518
Click to expand...

There is the third option which I mentioned. The lens was delivered faulty. This is NOT uncommon especially given Nikons terrible recent track record with QA.
 
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You will not get heat distortion in every image. Have you stabilized the camera and lens and manually focused? If so I agree with you it's faulty from the factory. I have a friend who got one when they first came out. Good luck.
 
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F lenses, and certainly the 200-500 may need calibration. My lens was like -5 at 200mm and +5 at 500mm or thereabouts from memory (signs may be reversed) (sold it last year) so I set it at the +5 because I was on that antarctic cruise (those pics in pst #44 above). Normally I’d not have bothered as it’s minimal, esp as in my use case I often shot at 200mm. In the Antarctic it was exclusively 500mm
 
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As mentioned in a few posts, it may be atmospheric, or may be technique. But, the 200-500 is notorious for having some bad samples out there. I've had a soft one and a tack sharp one. I would definitely suggest testing in controlled environment, ie inside with plenty of light, on a tripod, and shooting test for sharpness and AF similar to what you see Steve doing in most of his lens test vids. It will become apparent pretty quick if you are dealing with a lens QC issue.
 
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