Nikon 180-600 Z lens test shots

[SCoombs]

The duck image looks great to me, especially for 1/2000 sec. The goose image is a little too heavily processed to tell much but I suspect the shape the bird has adopted in that frame has confused the AF and it has lost the location of the eye.

Are you suggesting that you'd expect such a shot to require a faster or a slower speed?

Fwiw the goose is so processed precisely because it was a poor shot and I was just trying to demonstrate what they tend to look like. However, I wouldn't say it's from the AF losing track or getting confused: generally I find it tracks geese pretty well.

 

[SCoombs]

I am not familiar with these species, but perched birds rarely are still, especially when they are feeding. Constant small quick movements of the head. FWIW to me, this is what these images look like. The shutter speed is nearly enough to freeze the movement but not quite. In these circumstances I will usually take a burst of images and mostly get one critically sharp where the subject is perfectly still, sometimes using a slower shutter speed depending upon circumstances.

I partially agree that this seems probable to be a factor BUT in the past I've had success at slower speeds with these sorts of birds. Also, I went out a few more times today testing higher speeds like 1/3200 and while they were slightly more consistent it still left a lot of misses.

 

[Alistair]

Are you suggesting that you'd expect such a shot to require a faster or a slower speed?

Fwiw the goose is so processed precisely because it was a poor shot and I was just trying to demonstrate what they tend to look like. However, I wouldn't say it's from the AF losing track or getting confused: generally I find it tracks geese pretty well.

I am suggesting that for single shot shooting, a slightly higher SS is a good insurance policy.

 

[madone]

I partially agree that this seems probable to be a factor BUT in the past I've had success at slower speeds with these sorts of birds. Also, I went out a few more times today testing higher speeds like 1/3200 and while they were slightly more consistent it still left a lot of misses.

I have tried this as well. Very high shutter speeds with still no luck, speeds that should freeze any motion. But they still lack of sharp focus even when having very tight eye focus (as reported in NX, I know that red box is not always accurate)

 

[Nimi]

We would need an optical engineer to explain the nuances though there are many factors in play including lens and element design, composition (what it is made of), coatings, etc. All of this affects light transmission, and every factor has the potential of introducing optical aberrations. The aberrations can affect color, contrast, acutance, etc. In general, a greater number of surfaces increases the likelihood of aberrations and when one has those elements moving in space (as in a zoom as opposed to a prime lens) the challenges increase. When designing a lens, the engineer has to contend with physics, budget, production limitations, etc. The 180-600 is a comparatively inexpensive lens and likely includes a lot of compromises. Short answer from a photographer with a background in engineering, but I am by no means an expert in optics.

I'm one. Well, was one.

One of the causes of loss of sharpness is intra-lens reflection. Basically, instead of passing through cleanly and simply bending at the surfaces of each lens, a small amount of light is reflected back, and eventually exits slightly off where it was supposed to be. Multiply the effect by the number and thickness of the elements. Coatings are primarily there to reduce that reflection, allowing more of the light to pass in first pass. Ditto the quality of the glass.

 

[kaiserkudo]

I've had some inconsistent results from my 180-600Z - however I'm only using a Z5 , so more chances of missed focus and also less pixels to crop into. I haven't attempted BIF so only shooting birds on a stick. Some of the results do uncannily look like slight motion blur with SS between 1/250-1/500. I'm wondering if the VR and IBIS is possibly not functioning perfectly. Also highly possible to be just user error on my part.

The Masked Lapwing bird is probably the best example i can see this problem , the subject was almost filling the frame and was taken at 1/800 SS, bird was basically standing still and lens supported on the door of open car window , although nothing in that image appears sharp.

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[ajrmd]

I've had some inconsistent results from my 180-600Z - however I'm only using a Z5 , so more chances of missed focus and also less pixels to crop into. I haven't attempted BIF so only shooting birds on a stick. Some of the results do uncannily look like slight motion blur with SS between 1/250-1/500. I'm wondering if the VR and IBIS is possibly not functioning perfectly. Also highly possible to be just user error on my part.

The Masked Lapwing bird is probably the best example i can see this problem , the subject was almost filling the frame and was taken at 1/800 SS, bird was basically standing still and lens supported on the door of open car window , although nothing in that image appears sharp.

Classic car window story, either vibration from the engine and/or atmospherics.

 

[Len Shepherd]

Can you explain how the coatings make a difference here

The basics are without lens coatings about 1.5% of light is reflected off each air/glass surface - around 50% for a lens with 17 groups (34 surfaces).
Quality would be significantly unacceptable without coatings.
Coatings like Nikon SIC help reduce the flare issue significantly.
Newer coatings such as Arneo further reduce flare - but cost money to add to a lens.

in a way which could result in some of the more poor results we've discussed? I thought that the coatings essentially helped to control dust and moisture and flaring. What about them would cause a softer image in cases where things like flaring are not a concern?

Lens flare whether internal or from outside the lens (part lens hood related) reduces contrast in highlights and to a lesser extent in shadows.
Humans primarily perceive sharpness by subject contrast.
A lens with more advanced coating could have produced a little more dynamic in range in the pink spoonbill bird - to me a relatively unimportant issue because IMO in these images subject matter overwhelms perhaps 1-2% more dynamic range.

Lens flare would be unlikely IMO to cause the images being discussed.

Second, why is a high quantity of light all that much more of an important factor for sharp photos from this 25 element lens vs. say the 600pf with 20 or the 500 pf with 19?

High contrast light, handled well, contributes to greater image contrast, helping humans to perceive sharpness.
All lenses loose some contrast - some more than others. Splitting hairs the number of element groups is important as whatever flair there is occurs at air/glass surfaces.

Digressing slightly, flare arising at air/glass surfaces can usually be better absorbed internally in primes than zooms.

Coming back to my opinion of the cause of the problems.
Many owners are getting very good results.
If the lens has been checked out by Nikon or produces good results on a tripod with a resolution test target, then the problem is highly unlikely to be the lens.

Just like being good at table tennis or having a low golf handicap, it takes regular practice at BIF photography with a learning curve to achieve consistently good results.

 

[Ralph]

Classic car window story, either vibration from the engine and/or atmospherics.

Poor lighting as well.

 

[Dinusaur]

I've had some inconsistent results from my 180-600Z - however I'm only using a Z5 , so more chances of missed focus and also less pixels to crop into. I haven't attempted BIF so only shooting birds on a stick. Some of the results do uncannily look like slight motion blur with SS between 1/250-1/500. I'm wondering if the VR and IBIS is possibly not functioning perfectly. Also highly possible to be just user error on my part.

The Masked Lapwing bird is probably the best example i can see this problem , the subject was almost filling the frame and was taken at 1/800 SS, bird was basically standing still and lens supported on the door of open car window , although nothing in that image appears sharp.

View attachment 84744View attachment 84745

View attachment 84743View attachment 84746

Classic car window story, either vibration from the engine and/or atmospherics.

I just came back from a two month visit to India. While there I took thousands of bird photos using 180-600mm lens and a Z9 (no tx though I carried both). I quickly found out that setting the aperture to 7.1 at 600mm produced sharper image than wide open (6.3). I am not saying that this is the case here, but it is worth noting.

 

[SCoombs]

Going out to shoot this morning I feel like I had a major breakthrough in understanding what is going on here. There's nothing in what I'm going to say here that I didn't already know as individual elements, but for a few different reasons I hadn't put it all together yet.

One this is that stopping down definitely makes a huge difference. I'd already sorted that out, but today I became convinced it's definitive. 6.3 is just not that sharp on my copy - BUT with everything else coming together I was able to figure out that just as Dinusaur said stopping down even just to 7.1 is making an enormous difference. I still wish it was as sharp wide open as my 200-500, but having to be at 7.1 vs having to be at 9 makes an enormous qualitative difference as to whether I'm willing to accept the limitation.

The more important factor, though, is the VR. I may go out to the pond this afternoon to try to confirm, but based on this morning I feel extremely confident that having the VR on at higher shutter speeds was doing a number on the sharpness. I know this is a common idea that has been discussed at length with Nikon VR, but you have to realize that my 200-500 did not have this problem. I had at one point tested it a fair bit and found that having it on or off at high shutter speeds didn't make a difference, so I was used to that and assumed that newer technology would perform at least as well in this regard, but this 180-600 absolutely seems to get much, much sharper when either shooting at low shutter speeds with VR on or at high speeds with it OFF. I spent a few hundred shots this morning of critters in the backyard bouncing around between 1/500 with VR set to sport vs off and at 1/2500 or so with VR set to sport vs off and the difference is dramatic and pretty consistent.

That doesn't mean I'm finding amazing sharpness to be consistent. It's definitely much more consistent, but I am certainly getting a fair share of softer looking images - mainly when using high shutter speeds. With low shutter speeds, even with VR on, I expect a fair amount of the shots from my bursts to me off based on motion, either of the subject or even motion from me that the VR just didn't quite get. Yet even working at very high speeds like 1/3200 I am still seeing more that are off than I expect, with of course the key point that if I put VR on almost all of them are slightly off.

Here are some samples from after I figured this out. The critical thing to understand about these is that unlike every other photo I've posted in this thread, I have applied no sharpening to these at all beyond whatever LR imports with. For all of the others, I applied LR's sharpening slider (either globally or with masking), increased the texture and/or clarity using a mask, and then went into Photoshop to apply sharpening with a high pass layer. For the ones posted here, I have only cropped and applied basic exposure and color corrections but left anything related to sharpening alone. I suppose the one exception is that I ran a denoise on a few of the higher ISO ones which can affect sharpness a bit, but I consider this something different.

Something else I have to mention: in looking at these I decided to see what NX studio did with them as what I see in LR looks slightly worse than what I saw on the camera LCD and I would say that NX studio's rendering is noticeably sharper. Now I have always found NX studio's overall rendering of texture/sharpness to be slightly better than LR's, but this feels a bit more pronounced to me. Alas, I've spent many an hour trying to find a away to get LR to render in the same way that the cameras/NX studio does but can't get it to do so. Importing with camera profiles, for instance, is quite different from Nikon's own rendering for the Z8 and I haven't found any tweaks that quite match Nikon's. With LR's denoising and powerful editing features, though, I wind up feeling like I have to use LR anyways and give up on that lovely texture that Nikon produces.

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I will now post two copies of the same photo, one from NX studio and the other from as close as I can get it in LR. First is NX Studio.

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Now LR:

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I honestly don't know if the difference will come across in a forum sized image, but looking on my computer the Nikon version just has a certain something in the texture that really makes it look much more critically sharp. (By the way, to match NX studio's look as closely as possible, I have texture at +8 [this is from LR's camera settings profile] clarity at +9 [the profile wants +4], saturation at -10, and the red channel calibration saturation at -11).

 

[Fiat]

Going out to shoot this morning I feel like I had a major breakthrough in understanding what is going on here. There's nothing in what I'm going to say here that I didn't already know as individual elements, but for a few different reasons I hadn't put it all together yet.

One this is that stopping down definitely makes a huge difference. I'd already sorted that out, but today I became convinced it's definitive. 6.3 is just not that sharp on my copy - BUT with everything else coming together I was able to figure out that just as Dinusaur said stopping down even just to 7.1 is making an enormous difference. I still wish it was as sharp wide open as my 200-500, but having to be at 7.1 vs having to be at 9 makes an enormous qualitative difference as to whether I'm willing to accept the limitation.

The more important factor, though, is the VR. I may go out to the pond this afternoon to try to confirm, but based on this morning I feel extremely confident that having the VR on at higher shutter speeds was doing a number on the sharpness. I know this is a common idea that has been discussed at length with Nikon VR, but you have to realize that my 200-500 did not have this problem. I had at one point tested it a fair bit and found that having it on or off at high shutter speeds didn't make a difference, so I was used to that and assumed that newer technology would perform at least as well in this regard, but this 180-600 absolutely seems to get much, much sharper when either shooting at low shutter speeds with VR on or at high speeds with it OFF. I spent a few hundred shots this morning of critters in the backyard bouncing around between 1/500 with VR set to sport vs off and at 1/2500 or so with VR set to sport vs off and the difference is dramatic and pretty consistent.

That doesn't mean I'm finding amazing sharpness to be consistent. It's definitely much more consistent, but I am certainly getting a fair share of softer looking images - mainly when using high shutter speeds. With low shutter speeds, even with VR on, I expect a fair amount of the shots from my bursts to me off based on motion, either of the subject or even motion from me that the VR just didn't quite get. Yet even working at very high speeds like 1/3200 I am still seeing more that are off than I expect, with of course the key point that if I put VR on almost all of them are slightly off.

Here are some samples from after I figured this out. The critical thing to understand about these is that unlike every other photo I've posted in this thread, I have applied no sharpening to these at all beyond whatever LR imports with. For all of the others, I applied LR's sharpening slider (either globally or with masking), increased the texture and/or clarity using a mask, and then went into Photoshop to apply sharpening with a high pass layer. For the ones posted here, I have only cropped and applied basic exposure and color corrections but left anything related to sharpening alone. I suppose the one exception is that I ran a denoise on a few of the higher ISO ones which can affect sharpness a bit, but I consider this something different.

Something else I have to mention: in looking at these I decided to see what NX studio did with them as what I see in LR looks slightly worse than what I saw on the camera LCD and I would say that NX studio's rendering is noticeably sharper. Now I have always found NX studio's overall rendering of texture/sharpness to be slightly better than LR's, but this feels a bit more pronounced to me. Alas, I've spent many an hour trying to find a away to get LR to render in the same way that the cameras/NX studio does but can't get it to do so. Importing with camera profiles, for instance, is quite different from Nikon's own rendering for the Z8 and I haven't found any tweaks that quite match Nikon's. With LR's denoising and powerful editing features, though, I wind up feeling like I have to use LR anyways and give up on that lovely texture that Nikon produces. View attachment 84782
View attachment 84795
View attachment 84783View attachment 84784

I will now post two copies of the same photo, one from NX studio and the other from as close as I can get it in LR. First is NX Studio.View attachment 84785

Now LR:
View attachment 84786

I honestly don't know if the difference will come across in a forum sized image, but looking on my computer the Nikon version just has a certain something in the texture that really makes it look much more critically sharp. (By the way, to match NX studio's look as closely as possible, I have texture at +8 [this is from LR's camera settings profile] clarity at +9 [the profile wants +4], saturation at -10, and the red channel calibration saturation at -11).

Thanks, Shane, for sharing your findings. Since I mostly use TC1.4 with Z186, at 600mm (840mm) the wide-open aperture becomes 9. Wonder if stopping it down to 10 has the same effect as without TC (down 6.3 to 7.1)? What's your and everyone's thought?

 

[ajrmd]

Thanks, Shane, for sharing your findings. Since I mostly use TC1.4 with Z186, at 600mm (840mm) the wide-open aperture becomes 9. Wonder if stopping it down to 10 has the same effect as without TC (down 6.3 to 7.1)? What's your and everyone's thought?

Save up for an 800 PF. You’ll be happier with the results.

 

[jerrylwatson]

Going out to shoot this morning I feel like I had a major breakthrough in understanding what is going on here. There's nothing in what I'm going to say here that I didn't already know as individual elements, but for a few different reasons I hadn't put it all together yet.

One this is that stopping down definitely makes a huge difference. I'd already sorted that out, but today I became convinced it's definitive. 6.3 is just not that sharp on my copy - BUT with everything else coming together I was able to figure out that just as Dinusaur said stopping down even just to 7.1 is making an enormous difference. I still wish it was as sharp wide open as my 200-500, but having to be at 7.1 vs having to be at 9 makes an enormous qualitative difference as to whether I'm willing to accept the limitation.

The more important factor, though, is the VR. I may go out to the pond this afternoon to try to confirm, but based on this morning I feel extremely confident that having the VR on at higher shutter speeds was doing a number on the sharpness. I know this is a common idea that has been discussed at length with Nikon VR, but you have to realize that my 200-500 did not have this problem. I had at one point tested it a fair bit and found that having it on or off at high shutter speeds didn't make a difference, so I was used to that and assumed that newer technology would perform at least as well in this regard, but this 180-600 absolutely seems to get much, much sharper when either shooting at low shutter speeds with VR on or at high speeds with it OFF. I spent a few hundred shots this morning of critters in the backyard bouncing around between 1/500 with VR set to sport vs off and at 1/2500 or so with VR set to sport vs off and the difference is dramatic and pretty consistent.

That doesn't mean I'm finding amazing sharpness to be consistent. It's definitely much more consistent, but I am certainly getting a fair share of softer looking images - mainly when using high shutter speeds. With low shutter speeds, even with VR on, I expect a fair amount of the shots from my bursts to me off based on motion, either of the subject or even motion from me that the VR just didn't quite get. Yet even working at very high speeds like 1/3200 I am still seeing more that are off than I expect, with of course the key point that if I put VR on almost all of them are slightly off.

Here are some samples from after I figured this out. The critical thing to understand about these is that unlike every other photo I've posted in this thread, I have applied no sharpening to these at all beyond whatever LR imports with. For all of the others, I applied LR's sharpening slider (either globally or with masking), increased the texture and/or clarity using a mask, and then went into Photoshop to apply sharpening with a high pass layer. For the ones posted here, I have only cropped and applied basic exposure and color corrections but left anything related to sharpening alone. I suppose the one exception is that I ran a denoise on a few of the higher ISO ones which can affect sharpness a bit, but I consider this something different.

Something else I have to mention: in looking at these I decided to see what NX studio did with them as what I see in LR looks slightly worse than what I saw on the camera LCD and I would say that NX studio's rendering is noticeably sharper. Now I have always found NX studio's overall rendering of texture/sharpness to be slightly better than LR's, but this feels a bit more pronounced to me. Alas, I've spent many an hour trying to find a away to get LR to render in the same way that the cameras/NX studio does but can't get it to do so. Importing with camera profiles, for instance, is quite different from Nikon's own rendering for the Z8 and I haven't found any tweaks that quite match Nikon's. With LR's denoising and powerful editing features, though, I wind up feeling like I have to use LR anyways and give up on that lovely texture that Nikon produces. View attachment 84782
View attachment 84795
View attachment 84783View attachment 84784

I will now post two copies of the same photo, one from NX studio and the other from as close as I can get it in LR. First is NX Studio.View attachment 84785

Now LR:
View attachment 84786

I honestly don't know if the difference will come across in a forum sized image, but looking on my computer the Nikon version just has a certain something in the texture that really makes it look much more critically sharp. (By the way, to match NX studio's look as closely as possible, I have texture at +8 [this is from LR's camera settings profile] clarity at +9 [the profile wants +4], saturation at -10, and the red channel calibration saturation at -11).

To me, NX adds more contrast which can add sharpness.

 

[Fiat]

Save up for an 800 PF. You’ll be happier with the results.

Can't wait that long and 800 PF is too heavy, too big for me anyway.

 

[ajrmd]

Can't wait that long and 800 PF is too heavy, too big for me anyway.

Hmmm... there are some reasonable values in used 800 PF's and they aren't that large/heavy compared to the 186. Interestingly, I was perusing another site with sample images of the 400 f/4.5 (a super sharp lens by any measure) and I couldn't help but reflect on the angst in this thread. If one were to critically look at those 400 f/4.5 images, one wouldn't be in any rush to buy that lens either.

 

[SCoombs]

Hmmm... there are some reasonable values in used 800 PF's and they aren't that large/heavy compared to the 186. Interestingly, I was perusing another site with sample images of the 400 f/4.5 (a super sharp lens by any measure) and I couldn't help but reflect on the angst in this thread. If one were to critically look at those 400 f/4.5 images, one wouldn't be in any rush to buy that lens either.

Why do you say that? I've actually looked at quite a lot of examples/threads of the 500pf and 400/4.5 over the years as I've thought about what lens to go for and was just looking at a 400/4.5 thread last night as I consider whether to swap my 180-600 for one of these. It's true that there are examples of disappointing looking shots in all of these threads, but to me the proportion of photos with incredible image quality is absolutely much, much higher in those threads.

Another way of putting this would be to say that in the 180-600 threads I can see that many of the photos are a bit soft just by looking at the forums sized photos, whereas in the 500pf and 400/4.5 threads I usually have to click on the photo to view it at 100% before I can see the softness.

 

[ajrmd]

Why do you say that? I've actually looked at quite a lot of examples/threads of the 500pf and 400/4.5 over the years as I've thought about what lens to go for and was just looking at a 400/4.5 thread last night as I consider whether to swap my 180-600 for one of these. It's true that there are examples of disappointing looking shots in all of these threads, but to me the proportion of photos with incredible image quality is absolutely much, much higher in those threads.

Another way of putting this would be to say that in the 180-600 threads I can see that many of the photos are a bit soft just by looking at the forums sized photos, whereas in the 500pf and 400/4.5 threads I usually have to click on the photo to view it at 100% before I can see the softness.

Because, I was just looking at a thread on another website of 400 f/4.5 images and was surprised at the number of images demonstrating poor IQ; over-cropped, poor contrast, poor acutance, etc. My point was that one shouldn't gauge a len's effectiveness based on random image postings alone. Lower resolution images can be deceiving and it is important to consider objective tests, field reviews by respected photographers, and full frame, high quality images when considering a lens purchase.

 

[SCoombs]

Because, I was just looking at a thread on another website of 400 f/4.5 images and was surprised at the number of images demonstrating poor IQ; over-cropped, poor contrast, poor acutance, etc. My point was that one shouldn't gauge a len's effectiveness based on random image postings alone. Lower resolution images can be deceiving and it is important to consider objective tests, field reviews by respected photographers, and full frame, high quality images when considering a lens purchase.

Well I certainly agree with all of that.

My way of looking at a lens is essentially this (in no particular order):

1) I look at sample images from sites which host photos at full resolution, especially sites which literally just host people's unmodified files. DPReview is good and Fredmiranda CAN be good but you have to pay attention because photos there can be of a variety of resolutions.

2) I look at the overall sum total/trend of samples across all sites. One photo that doesn't look so great on a site with lower resolution doesn't mean much. One photo that doesn't look so great on a site with full resolution doesn't mean much (even the best equipment/photographers produce bad photos sometimes!) One photo that looks great anywhere doesn't mean a whole lot. Hundreds or thousands of photos which follow a given pattern probably does mean a lot because it's a large enough sample that the skills of the photographers, the luck they may have had on a given day, and the ups and downs of hosting sites, compression, etc. tends to all even out.

3) I look at reviews and objective tests, but these are honestly the things I put the least weight in because they're very, very, very susceptible to outliers. One exceptionally bad or good copy in the hands of a reviewer can give a drastically inaccurate impression of a lens.

I said no particular order, but I can say that honestly I put the most emphasis on #2. This is because of basic probability and statistics. Every lens produced will have photos put out there by bad photographers, great photographers, photos made with bad copies and good copies and average copies, photos where everything lined up perfectly and where everything went wrong, samples which look worse than they really are because of compression or examples which look better than they are because the photographer only uploaded a very small version of it, etc., and no matter how good a source is in theory any handful of samples can give the wrong impression because you can wind up seeing disproportionate number of the samples from any one of those categories of thing - and this applies to all lenses, so if you compare 3 reviews of lens A with 3 from lens B you might wind up thinking lens A is superior when it's really just that those three reviews were all just from exceptionally good copies that aren't representative of the norm or because those three reviews all suffered from file compression or whatever. However, when you look at hundreds or thousands of examples you're going to have all of that even out across any lenses you're trying to look at or compare.

 

[aolander]

Why don't you give this topic a rest. IMHO, the OP's lens is flawed and not representative of the180-600mm's sharpness. If you don't like what you see from this lens, get something else. As has been pointed out, it's a $1700 lens compared to the $3000 of the 400mm f/4.5 Z or 500mm PF. I've seen a number of reviews stating that 186 is better than the 100-400mm Z which received many rave reviews initially. Many in this community seem obsessed with sharpness, and the 180-600mm may not satisfy them, but there are many that will be completely happy with it. You're going on and on ad nauseam.

 

[MatthewK]

Going out to shoot this morning I feel like I had a major breakthrough in understanding what is going on here. There's nothing in what I'm going to say here that I didn't already know as individual elements, but for a few different reasons I hadn't put it all together yet.

One this is that stopping down definitely makes a huge difference. I'd already sorted that out, but today I became convinced it's definitive. 6.3 is just not that sharp on my copy - BUT with everything else coming together I was able to figure out that just as Dinusaur said stopping down even just to 7.1 is making an enormous difference. I still wish it was as sharp wide open as my 200-500, but having to be at 7.1 vs having to be at 9 makes an enormous qualitative difference as to whether I'm willing to accept the limitation.

The more important factor, though, is the VR. I may go out to the pond this afternoon to try to confirm, but based on this morning I feel extremely confident that having the VR on at higher shutter speeds was doing a number on the sharpness. I know this is a common idea that has been discussed at length with Nikon VR, but you have to realize that my 200-500 did not have this problem. I had at one point tested it a fair bit and found that having it on or off at high shutter speeds didn't make a difference, so I was used to that and assumed that newer technology would perform at least as well in this regard, but this 180-600 absolutely seems to get much, much sharper when either shooting at low shutter speeds with VR on or at high speeds with it OFF. I spent a few hundred shots this morning of critters in the backyard bouncing around between 1/500 with VR set to sport vs off and at 1/2500 or so with VR set to sport vs off and the difference is dramatic and pretty consistent.

That doesn't mean I'm finding amazing sharpness to be consistent. It's definitely much more consistent, but I am certainly getting a fair share of softer looking images - mainly when using high shutter speeds. With low shutter speeds, even with VR on, I expect a fair amount of the shots from my bursts to me off based on motion, either of the subject or even motion from me that the VR just didn't quite get. Yet even working at very high speeds like 1/3200 I am still seeing more that are off than I expect, with of course the key point that if I put VR on almost all of them are slightly off.

Here are some samples from after I figured this out. The critical thing to understand about these is that unlike every other photo I've posted in this thread, I have applied no sharpening to these at all beyond whatever LR imports with. For all of the others, I applied LR's sharpening slider (either globally or with masking), increased the texture and/or clarity using a mask, and then went into Photoshop to apply sharpening with a high pass layer. For the ones posted here, I have only cropped and applied basic exposure and color corrections but left anything related to sharpening alone. I suppose the one exception is that I ran a denoise on a few of the higher ISO ones which can affect sharpness a bit, but I consider this something different.

Something else I have to mention: in looking at these I decided to see what NX studio did with them as what I see in LR looks slightly worse than what I saw on the camera LCD and I would say that NX studio's rendering is noticeably sharper. Now I have always found NX studio's overall rendering of texture/sharpness to be slightly better than LR's, but this feels a bit more pronounced to me. Alas, I've spent many an hour trying to find a away to get LR to render in the same way that the cameras/NX studio does but can't get it to do so. Importing with camera profiles, for instance, is quite different from Nikon's own rendering for the Z8 and I haven't found any tweaks that quite match Nikon's. With LR's denoising and powerful editing features, though, I wind up feeling like I have to use LR anyways and give up on that lovely texture that Nikon produces. View attachment 84782
View attachment 84795
View attachment 84783View attachment 84784

I will now post two copies of the same photo, one from NX studio and the other from as close as I can get it in LR. First is NX Studio.View attachment 84785

Now LR:
View attachment 84786

I honestly don't know if the difference will come across in a forum sized image, but looking on my computer the Nikon version just has a certain something in the texture that really makes it look much more critically sharp. (By the way, to match NX studio's look as closely as possible, I have texture at +8 [this is from LR's camera settings profile] clarity at +9 [the profile wants +4], saturation at -10, and the red channel calibration saturation at -11).

Congrats! This is about equal to the typical results/level of sharpness I get out of my 186. Now that this is put to rest, could we please merge this with the "186 Disappointment!!!!!!" thread and call it a day? Get out this weekend with your newly found sharpness machine and make some more nice photos!

 

[SCoombs]

Congrats! This is about equal to the typical results/level of sharpness I get out of my 186. Now that this is put to rest, could we please merge this with the "186 Disappointment!!!!!!" thread and call it a day? Get out this weekend with your newly found sharpness machine and make some more nice photos!

I wish it were that simple! Unfortunately when I went out to the pond my results were really incredibly bad. I do suspect/hope this was mostly just a consequence of a lot of thermal distortion - about which I posted another thread - but I'm sure you know how it is that until I can get out and get better results from this sort of setting I will be left wondering.

To be a bit more specific about what I'm concerned with here, I feel fairly confident now that I can get results I will be happy with from short range subjects like those in the back yard. However, as we know a lens can often produce very different qualities at different distances. For example, I was just reading Thom Hogan's review of the Nikon 200-400 f4 and he talks about after years of testing he was finally able to nail down that beyond a certain distance (not subject size but distance) the quality of photos produced by the lens dropped off dramatically. So far in three or four attempts I've yet to really get any good results from anything at a more moderate distance - e.g., the kind of distance that would see a duck or goose or swan fill from 75%+ of the frame. There's reason to think these may be explainable: the first few times I tried I hadn't figured out what I wrote about yesterday, and the first time I think my AFFT was also off from what I've found to be the best. Then of course there's the question of distortion as mentioned.

So I am still looking to get out there on a day when I can get some good such shots to put this concern to rest.

 

[MatthewK]

Yeah, it shouldn't be this hard to take a sharp, clear photo with this lens. You're either making this more difficult than it needs to be, or the lens is defective. Remember, a broken clock is right at least twice a day, so it's plausible that in certain random situations it'll deliver some decent shots, and the rest will be unexplainably bad. If it's not hitting ringers out of the box, and after countless tests, then you need to return it or send it in. No more need to continue down the detective route trying to solve the case, because it shouldn't be this difficult. Sorry that you're having to go through this though, it sucks having suspect equipment that you don't trust.

 

[Ralph]

Yeah, it shouldn't be this hard to take a sharp, clear photo with this lens. You're either making this more difficult than it needs to be, or the lens is defective. Remember, a broken clock is right at least twice a day, so it's plausible that in certain random situations it'll deliver some decent shots, and the rest will be unexplainably bad. If it's not hitting ringers out of the box, and after countless tests, then you need to return it or send it in. No more need to continue down the detective route trying to solve the case, because it shouldn't be this difficult. Sorry that you're having to go through this though, it sucks having suspect equipment that you don't trust.

Send it back. From what you have been saying, you will never be happy with it.

 

[SCoombs]

Yeah, it shouldn't be this hard to take a sharp, clear photo with this lens. You're either making this more difficult than it needs to be, or the lens is defective. Remember, a broken clock is right at least twice a day, so it's plausible that in certain random situations it'll deliver some decent shots, and the rest will be unexplainably bad. If it's not hitting ringers out of the box, and after countless tests, then you need to return it or send it in. No more need to continue down the detective route trying to solve the case, because it shouldn't be this difficult. Sorry that you're having to go through this though, it sucks having suspect equipment that you don't trust.

In a lot of ways I agree. I've been on the receiving end of a lot of "you're doing it wrong" comments in the past when posting about issues with a lens which turned out to very much be problems with the lens. On the other hand, it's certainly true that there are some factors that really can lead to consistently poor results if they aren't handled properly, and things like "don't use the VR at the wrong shutter speeds" has famously been one of those things in the past. Stopping down is also somewhat frequently reported as helpful or necessary with users of this lens. Thermal distortion is also a very common problem that has made many a lens look bad when there's nothing wrong with it. I also do feel like I'm getting relatively consistent results since making these changes.

On the other hand, I also agree that a lens shouldn't take rocket science to get good shots out of. I'm considering what to do. It's too late to return the lens (and one reason I let it get too late is that having used it so much I was not feeling confident about how it would be received back) but I can probably sell it for very even money, something I'd do IF I can have some confidence that it doesn't have something seriously wrong with it. I suppose I could send it in to Nikon, but having looked into this a bit in the past as regards to a different lens I get the impression that the likelihood of Nikon actually making any kind of significant alteration to the lens is quite small, especially if it can produce the kind of static test shots that this one can (e.g., as below).

Even before purchasing this lens I had long been considering a 500pf or a few other more "serious" options and I'm still considering that now. I have been keeping an eye on listings here and Fredmiranda and looking around at used camera retailers. One factor that is holding me back from some decent prices with some of the retailers is the inability to determine the country of origin of any of their offerings.

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