Lens comparison on weavers

[Squawk]

A friend of mine graciously let me loose on his 200-500 the other day and so I thought I’d see how I liked it against some of my kit so for half an hour a day over 3 days I gave a different set up a go. Everything was on a D500, and the lenses were the 200-500, 400 f2.8 and 70-200 f2.8 +TC1.4 III. It’s not a great well-structured test and I used each set up as I would in normal life, but did keep the speed constant at 1/2000, and f 5.6 (6.3 on the 70-200).
Firstly 100% crops on the face

200-500	400 f2.8	70-200+TC1.4
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[Squawk]

And then some flight shots. The 200-500 was slower than the 400 f2.8 (surprise surprise) but still managed. The 70-200 gave me much less than I expected. The 400 f2.8 I love.
200-500

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400 f2.8

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70-200 (this was the best I could get so not exciting)

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Main point is that the 200-500 which is a fraction of the price of the 400 is really quite a nice bit of glass

 

[Callie]

Nice weavers, Peter. Nice images too, great light and exposure. I used to shoot the 400 f/2.8 with a 2x TC 95% of the time. Nice lens but heavy

 

[Squawk]

Nice weavers, Peter. Nice images too, great light and exposure. I used to shoot the 400 f/2.8 with a 2x TC 95% of the time. Nice lens but heavy

Now that's a surprise. I use a 1.4TC and I keep hearing the 2x has issues with the image quality. What's your take?

 

[Callie]

Now that's a surprise. I use a 1.4TC and I keep hearing the 2x has issues with the image quality. What's your take?

I shot the 400 with the TC iii. The TC ii was useless. But I only had the D3S, sold the 400 F/2.8 for the 600 F/4. I have 1000's of bird images that is great, especially white chickens, and I have not forgotten the Funky Chickens, I will get to them.
This is an MK D3S with 400 F/2.8 +2x TCiii; F/5.6; 1/5000; ISO 800 - I might today pp it differently but the quality was good.

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[Hawkeshead]

Great weavers and an interesting experiment. The 200-500 is really underpriced / excellent value for money for what it can produce. This will be one of the classic must have lenses. They just need to fix the lens hood.. it goes to show that there is a lens for all budgets and that you can get great images once you know the limitations of the kit.