Nikon 180-600 Z lens test shots

[Patty]

Got my 180-600 lens a few weeks ago and have not been impressed with its backyard sharpness. Had it tested and recalibrated by Nikon and took a couple of shots today in bad light (and when it stopped raining for a short while here in Oz.)
I am a bit happier with it now but more work to be done. The two images attached are straight out of the camera (RAW converted to JPEG in LR) but cropped. No other processing. Hand held and in VR Sports mode.
Hopefully some better light and more practise will get me nearer to (but not the same as) my 500PF.

I would be happy with those shots. I hope you aren't pixel peeping. I've had a bad habit of doing that. I agree with Steve. You may want to review your technique and check conditions. For me, and this is my opinion, longer focal lengths are a bit less forgiving. I can't tell you how many times I missed focus on dogs running toward me on a 70-200mm lens at 200mm. I really had to work on my technique. It also helped to put VR in sport mode. Yes, when I worked on my technique I got better keeper rates. I just got the 180-600mm and I'm liking it so far. Just did a couple of test shots but plan on doing more soon.

 

[LynnO]

Judging the focusing ability of any lens seems futile when using BIF as a subject. Wouldn't it be better to make the analysis using a "fixed" target on a tripod with adequate illumination and a remote shutter? Otherwise it's like trying to calibrate a scope on a rifle by shooting at a running rabbit. Without Fo-Cal calibration on my D500 and D850 I would have been very frustrated, whereas after tuning my lens/camera combinations were spot-on and that was before Nikon added fine tuning with near/far calibration ability. I've used Fo-Cal on Z8 and the amount of fine tuning was minimal. Again, using BIF as targets-there's too many variables.

 

[SCoombs]

Judging the focusing ability of any lens seems futile when using BIF as a subject. Wouldn't it be better to make the analysis using a "fixed" target on a tripod with adequate illumination and a remote shutter? Otherwise it's like trying to calibrate a scope on a rifle by shooting at a running rabbit. Without Fo-Cal calibration on my D500 and D850 I would have been very frustrated, whereas after tuning my lens/camera combinations were spot-on and that was before Nikon added fine tuning with near/far calibration ability. I've used Fo-Cal on Z8 and the amount of fine tuning was minimal. Again, using BIF as targets-there's too many variables.

I think this is true, but I don't think anyone in this thread has talked about using BIF to judge focusing ability unless I missed it, which is definitely possible!

I would also say that I think the ability to focus well on BIF is itself a particular characteristic of a lens which, if one wants to do BIF, is worth evaluating a lens for. Some that are very good at focusing in general just don't do BIF very well because of a variety of reasons not particular to focus.

 

[SCoombs]

I went to the pond again today but got held up at home so I didn't make it until around 11 AM, resulting in a good of distortion - or what I think was - but not as bad as the last time I went. I did get some decent shots, but there also a LOT of poor ones and it seemed like the issue was going in and out seemingly unpredictably.

However in lookin over the results at home I did notice something I've not seen before that has me questioning. Take a look at this seagull shot, which is relatively sharp but is in fact a bit soft if you look closely.

You can only see EXIF info for this image if you are logged in.

This was not the peak level of sharpness I saw today, but it was one I'll keep. HOWEVER, look at the following shot, which I've cropped into the head for a reason that will soon be clear:

You can only see EXIF info for this image if you are logged in.

These were part of a burst, so I just had the AF-on button held down and subject detection was focusing on the eye. I was shooting at 10fps. These were two shots apart in the sequence, so 0.2 seconds separated them. The first thing one might notice is that this is much softer, but more than that look at the catch light. Here's the first, better photo cropped in the same way for comparison:

You can only see EXIF info for this image if you are logged in.

That's what the catch light is "supposed" to look like, even if still a tad soft. In that other shot, though, notice that the catch light seems to have a ghost image. It's doubled up, and if we look at the overall photo it's not unreasonable to think that the softness we're seeing here is basically just a ghosted image slightly misaligned from the first. I took the first image into Photoshop, copied the image to a second layer, moved it slightly, and changed the opacity to 50%. The result looks a bit like the bad shot from that sequence, though not entirely. For instance, the real bad shot does not have ghosting on the beak as my experiment does, but it does on the eye.

You can only see EXIF info for this image if you are logged in.

So this raises for me a host of questions!

Is this effect consistent with what some kind of atmospheric may do? I suppose I can imagine water vapor in the air diffracting light to cause something like this, and we do have snow evaporating today.

Or, is this more consistent with some kind of misalignment of the lens elements? If it is, what would explain that the effect comes and goes, even 0.2 seconds apart during a burst of shots when nothing about the position of the various lens elements has changed?

It is related to the topic discussed above of light reflecting around inside the lens assembly?

Or, might this just be the result of incorrect focus? I don't want to post them all due to image limits, but I have sequences from 10fps bursts which should be very low effort for the AF system of for instance a duck perfectly still, literally sleeping on the ground, with a relatively sharp shot followed by one that is badly out of focus where you can see the plane of focus has literally shifted several inches to the front of the subject before shifting back in the very next shot. The focus didn't shift just a little, but several inches. - AND I can say that when taking these bursts the green AF-eye detect box stayed solidly on the bird's eye. Here is the in between image. Look at the snow that is in focus several inches in front of the duck. In the shot in the sequence immediately before and immediately after this one, the focus is on the duck's face, so all without really... anything at all changing, including the location of the AF box which was locked on the eye as subject detection, the focus shifted a few inches forward and back again in a few tenths of a second.

You can only see EXIF info for this image if you are logged in.

So more fundamentally, are most of my soft/"thermal distortion" shots representative of this issue? Or these issues?

To be clear, I got sharpness like this today:

You can only see EXIF info for this image if you are logged in.

So the lens is capable of that. I don't doubt its sharpness anymore. I do however have no idea whether what I am seeing in terms of how it is focusing is normal or a consequence of some factor like the atmospherics or if it's indicative of some kind of problem with the lens or the camera or both.

 

[wassa1957]

My only comment is using the z 180-600 is way better than my z 100-400. I wish the originator well,In my neck of the woods, Rockhampton, rainfall is light for this time of the year in the tropics. It all evens out.

 

[ajrmd]

So, this morning I sat down, PP'ed a few images from a recent photoshoot at Stick Marsh where I captured spoonbills in light ranging from dawn through about 9am with both a 800 PF and the 180-600. The lenses were mounted on Z8 cameras and the images were shot alternating between the two bodies from respective distances to account for FL. No two images were "identical" though they were fairly representative of real-world shooting conditions and I chose images of similar landing poses. Afterwards, I printed a few out on some lustre on 17x22 paper (14x21 to preserve the 2:3 ratio) and in an unscientific sampling gave the images to two females to assess (my spouse and adult daughter). I had them rank the images based on sharpness, color, contrast, and overall best image. The unanimous best image was shot with the 186 and there was no clear winner with respect to the other factors.

What is one to take from this little Sunday morning experiment? I'll leave it to you to decide though I remain confident that in the right hands and settings the 186 can deliver excellent results and yield high quality output.

 

[jerrylwatson]

So, this morning I sat down, PP'ed a few images from a recent photoshoot at Stick Marsh where I captured spoonbills in light ranging from dawn through about 9am with both a 800 PF and the 180-600. The lenses were mounted on Z8 cameras and the images were shot alternating between the two bodies from respective distances to account for FL. No two images were "identical" though they were fairly representative of real-world shooting conditions and I chose images of similar landing poses. Afterwards, I printed a few out on some lustre on 17x22 paper (14x21 to preserve the 2:3 ratio) and in an unscientific sampling gave the images to two females to assess (my spouse and adult daughter). I had them rank the images based on sharpness, color, contrast, and overall best image. The unanimous best image was shot with the 186 and there was no clear winner with respect to the other factors.

What is one to take from this little Sunday morning experiment? I'll leave it to you to decide though I remain confident that in the right hands and settings the 186 can deliver excellent results and yield high quality output.

Selling the 800?

 

[MatthewK]

I went to the pond again today but got held up at home so I didn't make it until around 11 AM, resulting in a good of distortion - or what I think was - but not as bad as the last time I went. I did get some decent shots, but there also a LOT of poor ones and it seemed like the issue was going in and out seemingly unpredictably.

However in lookin over the results at home I did notice something I've not seen before that has me questioning. Take a look at this seagull shot, which is relatively sharp but is in fact a bit soft if you look closely.View attachment 84955

This was not the peak level of sharpness I saw today, but it was one I'll keep. HOWEVER, look at the following shot, which I've cropped into the head for a reason that will soon be clear:

View attachment 84957

These were part of a burst, so I just had the AF-on button held down and subject detection was focusing on the eye. I was shooting at 10fps. These were two shots apart in the sequence, so 0.2 seconds separated them. The first thing one might notice is that this is much softer, but more than that look at the catch light. Here's the first, better photo cropped in the same way for comparison:

View attachment 84959
That's what the catch light is "supposed" to look like, even if still a tad soft. In that other shot, though, notice that the catch light seems to have a ghost image. It's doubled up, and if we look at the overall photo it's not unreasonable to think that the softness we're seeing here is basically just a ghosted image slightly misaligned from the first. I took the first image into Photoshop, copied the image to a second layer, moved it slightly, and changed the opacity to 50%. The result looks a bit like the bad shot from that sequence, though not entirely. For instance, the real bad shot does not have ghosting on the beak as my experiment does, but it does on the eye.

View attachment 84961

So this raises for me a host of questions!

Is this effect consistent with what some kind of atmospheric may do? I suppose I can imagine water vapor in the air diffracting light to cause something like this, and we do have snow evaporating today.

Or, is this more consistent with some kind of misalignment of the lens elements? If it is, what would explain that the effect comes and goes, even 0.2 seconds apart during a burst of shots when nothing about the position of the various lens elements has changed?

It is related to the topic discussed above of light reflecting around inside the lens assembly?

Or, might this just be the result of incorrect focus? I don't want to post them all due to image limits, but I have sequences from 10fps bursts which should be very low effort for the AF system of for instance a duck perfectly still, literally sleeping on the ground, with a relatively sharp shot followed by one that is badly out of focus where you can see the plane of focus has literally shifted several inches to the front of the subject before shifting back in the very next shot. The focus didn't shift just a little, but several inches. - AND I can say that when taking these bursts the green AF-eye detect box stayed solidly on the bird's eye. Here is the in between image. Look at the snow that is in focus several inches in front of the duck. In the shot in the sequence immediately before and immediately after this one, the focus is on the duck's face, so all without really... anything at all changing, including the location of the AF box which was locked on the eye as subject detection, the focus shifted a few inches forward and back again in a few tenths of a second.

View attachment 84966

So more fundamentally, are most of my soft/"thermal distortion" shots representative of this issue? Or these issues?

To be clear, I got sharpness like this today:

View attachment 84965

So the lens is capable of that. I don't doubt its sharpness anymore. I do however have no idea whether what I am seeing in terms of how it is focusing is normal or a consequence of some factor like the atmospherics or if it's indicative of some kind of problem with the lens or the camera or both.

Uniform softness = atmospheric.

 

[SCoombs]

Uniform softness = atmospheric.

What about this ghosting, though?

 

[BlackRockArt]

I went to the pond again today but got held up at home so I didn't make it until around 11 AM, resulting in a good of distortion - or what I think was - but not as bad as the last time I went. I did get some decent shots, but there also a LOT of poor ones and it seemed like the issue was going in and out seemingly unpredictably.

However in lookin over the results at home I did notice something I've not seen before that has me questioning. Take a look at this seagull shot, which is relatively sharp but is in fact a bit soft if you look closely.View attachment 84955

This was not the peak level of sharpness I saw today, but it was one I'll keep. HOWEVER, look at the following shot, which I've cropped into the head for a reason that will soon be clear:

View attachment 84957

These were part of a burst, so I just had the AF-on button held down and subject detection was focusing on the eye. I was shooting at 10fps. These were two shots apart in the sequence, so 0.2 seconds separated them. The first thing one might notice is that this is much softer, but more than that look at the catch light. Here's the first, better photo cropped in the same way for comparison:

View attachment 84959
That's what the catch light is "supposed" to look like, even if still a tad soft. In that other shot, though, notice that the catch light seems to have a ghost image. It's doubled up, and if we look at the overall photo it's not unreasonable to think that the softness we're seeing here is basically just a ghosted image slightly misaligned from the first. I took the first image into Photoshop, copied the image to a second layer, moved it slightly, and changed the opacity to 50%. The result looks a bit like the bad shot from that sequence, though not entirely. For instance, the real bad shot does not have ghosting on the beak as my experiment does, but it does on the eye.

View attachment 84961

So this raises for me a host of questions!

Is this effect consistent with what some kind of atmospheric may do? I suppose I can imagine water vapor in the air diffracting light to cause something like this, and we do have snow evaporating today.

Or, is this more consistent with some kind of misalignment of the lens elements? If it is, what would explain that the effect comes and goes, even 0.2 seconds apart during a burst of shots when nothing about the position of the various lens elements has changed?

It is related to the topic discussed above of light reflecting around inside the lens assembly?

Or, might this just be the result of incorrect focus? I don't want to post them all due to image limits, but I have sequences from 10fps bursts which should be very low effort for the AF system of for instance a duck perfectly still, literally sleeping on the ground, with a relatively sharp shot followed by one that is badly out of focus where you can see the plane of focus has literally shifted several inches to the front of the subject before shifting back in the very next shot. The focus didn't shift just a little, but several inches. - AND I can say that when taking these bursts the green AF-eye detect box stayed solidly on the bird's eye. Here is the in between image. Look at the snow that is in focus several inches in front of the duck. In the shot in the sequence immediately before and immediately after this one, the focus is on the duck's face, so all without really... anything at all changing, including the location of the AF box which was locked on the eye as subject detection, the focus shifted a few inches forward and back again in a few tenths of a second.

View attachment 84966

So more fundamentally, are most of my soft/"thermal distortion" shots representative of this issue? Or these issues?

To be clear, I got sharpness like this today:

View attachment 84965

So the lens is capable of that. I don't doubt its sharpness anymore. I do however have no idea whether what I am seeing in terms of how it is focusing is normal or a consequence of some factor like the atmospherics or if it's indicative of some kind of problem with the lens or the camera or both.

Hi Shane, do you have the NEF files to share ? Were you shooting behind some grass ? I noticed some yellowish haze around the duck, I wonder if that's the cause.

Thanks for sharing the pictures.

Oliver

 

[SCoombs]

Hi Shane, do you have the NEF files to share ? Were you shooting behind some grass ? I noticed some yellowish haze around the duck, I wonder if that's the cause.

Thanks for sharing the pictures.

Oliver

There is grass behind the duck, but the duck photo was provided as an example of how the lens can capture sharp photos. I don't see anything wrong with the duck photo here.

 

[Len Shepherd]

Or, might this just be the result of incorrect focus?(snipped)

View attachment 84966


To be clear, I got sharpness like this today:

View attachment 84965

So the lens is capable of that. I don't doubt its sharpness anymore. I do however have no idea whether what I am seeing in terms of how it is focusing is normal or a consequence of some factor like the atmospherics or if it's indicative of some kind of problem with the lens or the camera or both.

A solution might be accepting that auto focus cannot correctly focus on everything!

AF needs decent contrast, reasonable detail, a reasonable size subject and a reasonably level of light under the AF point to work to a good standard.

In the first image the eye and surrounding feather detail lacks much or even any detail for good AF - the AF probably failed to accurately detect what you wanted - and probably stopped trying - out of focus

In the second image, much bigger in the frame, with good contrast etc needed for good AF - AF worked well

Splitting hairs the first image failure is 99% likely not so much "incorrect focus" as auto focus not been able to reasonably detect the particular low contrast subject.

With a static subject, which the first image seems to be, it is easy to learn to press the image magnify button just below the body OK button even hand holding to check if AF is accurate.

Digressing, not everybody, especially if older, has eyesight good enough to read the smallest print in newspaper small adverts, or on an opticians reading test measure.

For those still with good eyesight, the degree of unsharpness in the first image could have been easy to detect in the viewfinder.

In the second image, although the birds bill is slightly outside the depth of field, resolution is good enough to detect the barbed area "teeth" on the lower bill that this duck uses to filter water when feeding.

As a next challenge you could
1/ try a higher ISO to achieve a smaller aperture to help get the bill within the depth of field. With a lot of modern post processing software most noise effects are easily dramatically reduced at even 10,000 ISO.
2/ perhaps start to keep notes of subjects where AF is likely to work to a good standard.
3/ As you seem to spend a lot of time photographing this type of bird; by developing your skill level you could well achieve even better results than the second image.

 

[madone]

@Len Shepherd @Nimi What do you think about the ghosting image @SCoombs has in the image he posted

NZ8_3928.jpg​

There is something going on in that one. Can you take a look at that one and give us your thoughts? Is this a lacking coatings thing? Element misalignment? VR/IBIS?

​

 

[SCoombs]

A solution might be accepting that auto focus cannot correctly focus on everything!

AF needs decent contrast, reasonable detail, a reasonable size subject and a reasonably level of light under the AF point to work to a good standard.

In the first image the eye and surrounding feather detail lacks much or even any detail for good AF - the AF probably failed to accurately detect what you wanted - and probably stopped trying - out of focus

I understand that AF can have a hard time with darker and low contrast subjects, however the example you're talking about here is a case where the AF was able to identify the subject just fine and reported a strong lock, AND where other shots in the sequence were in focus.

Here is the shot that immediately followed this one in the 10fps burst from that morning, edited only to increase exposure/shadows to make it easy to see that the focus is on the duck.

You can only see EXIF info for this image if you are logged in.

Here is the shot that immediately preceded it. This one I had previously edited more seriously because I actually liked the shot!

You can only see EXIF info for this image if you are logged in.

To reiterate then and be clear, I understand the possibility of and am not surprised at the AF momentarily losing perfect focus so that an image or two in the middle of continuous shooting might be soft or slightly out of focus. The reason I posted this example was because the degree to which the AF suddenly shifted was much more extreme than that, AND because during shooting the AF reported very firm and steady focus on the eye.

In other words, I have experienced it plenty of times where during shooting the AF subject detection box "stutters" and shifts slightly on the eye, or where it will go in and out of focus on the eye vs enlarging and dropping back to "head detect" as the AF wavers slightly, or even where it loses AF to the degree that it turns from green to yellow, indicating it is having trouble. I expect a few slightly off shots when this happens, though often I have been pleasantly surprised that they are still fine. However in this case, the camera didn't do that. In this case the camera put that green box on the eye and it stayed there without dancing or wavering or stuttering or anything (snap below taken just to show exactly what the AF looked like in the viewfinder the entire time, though it was of course green), and yet the focus was several inches away from that point.

You can only see EXIF info for this image if you are logged in.

In the second image, much bigger in the frame, with good contrast etc needed for good AF - AF worked well

The second image was a carefully chosen example to demonstrate that the actual optical quality of the lens is good. It shouldn't be taken to indicate that the AF functioned consistently without any difficulties on subjects with such contrast and lighting.

Splitting hairs the first image failure is 99% likely not so much "incorrect focus" as auto focus not been able to reasonably detect the particular low contrast subject.

With a static subject, which the first image seems to be, it is easy to learn to press the image magnify button just below the body OK button even hand holding to check if AF is accurate.

Digressing, not everybody, especially if older, has eyesight good enough to read the smallest print in newspaper small adverts, or on an opticians reading test measure.

For those still with good eyesight, the degree of unsharpness in the first image could have been easy to detect in the viewfinder.

As I reiterated above, that degree of unsharpness was visible only for 1/10 of a second and was bracketed by much greater sharpness on either side, so I think it unlikely that most people would have seen this. That is, to restate, the reason I have posted this as an example is NOT because it's unsharp, which I would expect to see with some shots, but because it's a clear case of focus jumping from where it should be by a large margin within a small fraction of a second.

In the second image, although the birds bill is slightly outside the depth of field, resolution is good enough to detect the barbed area "teeth" on the lower bill that this duck uses to filter water when feeding.

As a next challenge you could
1/ try a higher ISO to achieve a smaller aperture to help get the bill within the depth of field. With a lot of modern post processing software most noise effects are easily dramatically reduced at even 10,000 ISO.

I am not worried about high ISO and I know how depth of field works, but one would not necessarily want to have the bill entirely in focus here. Regardless, this was already f9 and EXIF reports a depth of field of almost 8 inches (based on a subject distance of 12 meters), so unless the camera's measurements were drastically in error it seems unlikely that there was a depth of field problem here.

2/ perhaps start to keep notes of subjects where AF is likely to work to a good standard.
3/ As you seem to spend a lot of time photographing this type of bird; by developing your skill level you could well achieve even better results than the second image.

One can always improve one's skill level and I consider myself to have a lot of room for doing so, but I do not believe it is reasonable to believe that my skill level is at issue. I invite you to click the link to view the gallery on my website to better understand my current skill level. While I don't think I'll be threatening Steve's career or the careers of a lot of other well known users here any time soon, I also think my portfolio should demonstrate that skill level is unlikely to be the most limiting factor at play here. Please understand that I'm not trying to be snarky here. Any effort to improve one's skill has as a prerequisite confidence in one's equipment. I am trying to establish this.

 

[Len Shepherd]

I u

I invite you to click the link to view the gallery on my website to better understand my current skill level.

Thanks for the link. In your wildlife portfolio, all the subject posted, have a good level of subject detail and contrast.

 

[Nimi]

@Len Shepherd @Nimi What do you think about the ghosting image @SCoombs has in the image he posted

NZ8_3928.jpg​

There is something going on in that one. Can you take a look at that one and give us your thoughts? Is this a lacking coatings thing? Element misalignment? VR/IBIS?

​

That's one rabbit hole I ain't climbing into!

 

[Len Shepherd]

On lens flare in images - sorry - it is a long thread - and I have not found the particular image.

In several of the duck images there is snow a few steps brighter than the brownish coloration of the duck.
A fairly dark subject against bright, directional light or white snow tends to be potentially a relatively high flare bird subject.

The makers of most multi coating (see Nano below) rarely mention that it only works well at a relatively narrow angle parallel to the optical axis.
Big telephone lenses generally have a near flat front element a long way from the optical axis.
In this type of situation with very diagonal side lighting to the glass surface multi coating can occasionally be little better than useless - with obvious lens flare.

A gotcha for relative novices new to telephotos with long hoods is that when the sun is at an angle of about 120 to 150° it can reflect off the inside of the lens hood into the lens - inducing distinct flare.

Digressing, reading Steve's reports on his trips to Costa Rica et cetera, when he sees something he would like to photograph he often works out the best time of day to get the best lighting effect and to return - maybe with a low risk of lens flare.

Specifically Nikon Nano coating - Nikon say it was a spin-off from Nikon's manufacture of semi-conductors.
A principle advantage is it works at significantly wider angles from the glass surface than "normal" multi coating.
The 180-600 has it despite its relatively low price
Edit - I looked apt the 600 Spec in error
Edit - Without nano it is likely to be more prone to flare in high flare situations than either 6009mm S pri me
I found a significant flare handling improvement upgrading to the 24-70 f2.8 F with Nano from the 28-70 F a few years ago.
I do not know which if any other brands have a coating that does what Nikon Nano does - and consider it a feature definitely worth having when available.

 

[SCoombs]

Specifically Nikon Nano coating - Nikon say it was a spin-off from Nikon's manufacture of semi-conductors.
A principle advantage is it works at significantly wider angles from the glass surface than "normal" multi coating.
The 180-600 has it despite its relatively low price
I found a significant flare handling improvement upgrading to the 24-70 f2.8 F with Nano from the 28-70 F a few years ago.
I do not know which if any other brands have a coating that does what Nikon Nano does - and consider it a feature definitely worth having when available.

Where do you see that the 180-600 has Nano coating? I don't see this mentioned on any of their marketing, and it's not listed in the specifications on Nikon's website.

 

[Len Shepherd]

Where do you see that the 180-600 has Nano coating? I don't see this mentioned on any of their marketing, and it's not listed in the specifications on Nikon's website.

Thanks
My mistake
I looked at the spec for a 600mm in error - 3 times
It does not have Nano - and in consequence is more likely to have flare in high flare situations than either 600 S prime.

Perhaps a case of not getting what you do not pay for.

A plus of this forum is the ability to update a posting error after someone has replied identifying a mistake.

 

[ajrmd]

My apologies for reviving this contentious thread, though when I was shooting this morning some of my images were subpar and it made me think of this thread. Again, we have not ascertained whether your lens is sharp and functioning properly. The first step as we all suggested was to shoot some static tests in good lighting and controlled conditions. Assuming that your lens is ok, then many of your issues could easily be ascribed to atmospherics. Yes, you posted shots over water, snow, and a few in trees. This morning was a beautiful day with sunny and very clear skies (to the human eye). The temperature was 26 deg F and rapidly increasing to the mid-40's once the radiant warmth of the sun started having an effect. And, oh how that messed with the photography. I've posted two images for you from my Z8/800 PF. It's a stellar lens and I have produced gorgeous images with it on numerous occasions. If I were to judge the quality of the lens based on these images alone (and not knowing why they are terrible), it would have been sent back. Ignore the subject, composition, shadow, etc., but this morning was yielding images like this... a beautiful haze all due to atmospherics. It sure didn't appear that way to the eye and not all atmospherics have to look like a mirage in the desert. In fact, it's this time of the year in my area that atmospherics are sometimes at their worst due to the temperature differentials which are occurring.

You can only see EXIF info for this image if you are logged in.

You can only see EXIF info for this image if you are logged in.