Thanks to Donald for letting me borrow the Nikon 200-500mm f/5.6 a few weeks back.  For the big dance show I thought about lens choices that would let me shoot from way in the back of the theater.  I had concerns if f/5.6 was enough in those random lighting situations, but I think it worked out.

The 200-500mm is a big lens that is almost as heavy as the 200mm f/2.  I find that it is easier to use and carry because of the larger tripod foot.

First here are some photos in bright light settings where f/5.6 is not a problem at all.  The park still had flowering peach trees and I can’t recall ever seeing butterflies collecting nectar this early, and with this type of flower.  I shot all these with the lens mounted on my aged D600, which again, is getting close to 500,000(!) shutter actuations.

Nikon raw files in almost every one of their cameras can very easily be setup in camera to look as good, if not better than Canon files in terms of pastel colors and vibrancy.

The lens is plenty sharp wide open at f/5.6.  Below is a crop showing a bee in mid flight also about to collect nectar.  The lens at its various focal lengths draws very much like a macro lens.  The butterfly was way up on the highest branch of the peach tree though.

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So here are some samples from the 200-500mm from a real event gig.  I also had my dual camera setup with the wide angle triggered by pocket wizards.  (Here’s the Dance Performance post if you haven’t seen it)

These photos I took a little bit of time to color grade and correct the minor pin cushion distortion that the 200-500mm has.  While the aperture won’t obviously beat an f/2.8, the true usefulness of this tool comes from the crazy focal length.  By shooting from such a far distance it allows you to get stacks of dancers in an ensemble and let them have equal compositional weight in a frame.  I even found the max 500mm range was almost too far for this venue!  However at an outside event like the Dragon Boat race, 500mm is sometimes just the starting point.

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I think this lens is a great value if you have the time for slow walks in the park with a monopod.  The pleasant bokeh rendering comes more from focal length as opposed to aperture, and it’s really nice and soft.  Also a big plus for me is the clarity of the glass that really lets the Nikon color shine through.  On a side note, I find it funny that almost all the cameras I own (of which there are many makes and models) Standard picture profile is probably the most uninspiring of them all.  For Canons I prefer Portrait Picture Style.  And for Nikons I prefer Neutral or Vivid Picture Control.  (Neutral in the Nikon world is the most Canon-like, and not to be confused with Flat.)

I’m obviously going to be further editing them in post anyway, but I thought mirrorless cameras was going to solve editing forever with their realtime previews? 😉

For something really crazy I mounted the 200-500mm to the mirrorless Nikon V1 with the FTZ adapter.  That little camera (which is my best product photography camera) has a sensor crop factor of 2.7x, so it makes it seem like 1350mm.  Here’s a shot of the moon through some tree branches (which don’t show up due to the crazy long focal length.  The top is perfectly acceptable at f/5.6 and the bottom one is probably optimally best at f/8.

If I find a good deal on this lens used I might buy one in the future.  I sometimes see them for less than a $1000 USD.  Used lens prices are often varied for no reason other than popularity or obscure curiosity.  Nikon has always been an optics company and their glass and cameras have usually always been quite affordable on the used scene. 

The 200-500mm is not going to be a low light instrument, its strengths are more for the forced flattening of elements in the frame.  For outdoor sporting events in full sun it would make it seem like the participants are layered mere feet from each other on the near and far plane, and the f/5.6 aperture would allow for more than one thing in focus.