Stephanusius's reviews

  • Nikon 300mm f/4D ED-IF AF-S Nikkor

    10 out of 10 points and recommended
    Very sharp, beautiful bokeh, compact and light, fast AF, 2nd hand very cheap, built as a rock
    1000$ more and you can have a VR. You don't need this for action pictures!!!!!!

    At birdview places and sport locations you can see all the nerds with giant 150-600 mm zooms, for what? With the Nikkor 300m f4d you are prepared for this by saving much money and muscle pain.
    This compact and only 1400 gramm lightweight does not need a tripod. With it's closest focusing distance 1,45m you are able to do macros and because of the great sharpness you can crop easily to 1:1. I use it many times on dragon flies hunt for getting a chance to shoot big ones with a long escape distance.

    The fast autofocus is perfect for handheld pictures and if 300mm is not enought it works very well with a TCII 1,4 converter. I compared pictures made with a 200- 500mm zoom and cropped it. The 300 mm F4 was better with the advantage of 1 step more light and a beautiful bokeh. To admit: For this performance you need to use a 36 MP Camera or higher.

    reviewed May 3rd, 2020 (purchased for $600)

  • Nikon 200-500mm f/5.6E ED VR AF-S Nikkor

    7 out of 10 points and recommended
    Price Weight and Size VR Good autofocus 2,2 m closest focusing distance Good for handheld use
    Soft at 500mm Converters not useful

    Bought this lens for wildlife photography. Bad news first: this lens is not a really a useful 500 mm lens as it becomes soft at this range. This is similar to Sigma and Tamron 150-600 Zooms and it's an illusion to be able to bargain with limits of physic. For a good performance above the 300mm range you have to spend a lot more money. If you needed more magnification it would be better to get closer to the objects or buy a prime lens instead.

    Back to this zoom: It's light, it's well made and it is a good tool for taking good pictures in wildlife. The autofocus is working fast and the VR is very helpful at low light. I did not use any tripod or monopod as this lens is perfect for handheld pictures. The performance at 500mm is acceptable when stopping down,

    Don't think I am crazy but I like to use this lens for macro for insects with a great flight distance like big dragon flies or butterflies. 2.2 meter is not much and because of the great sharpness (2stops down) of the lens it is possible to crop nearly 1:1.

    There was a situation I only could take a picture of a cobra swimming near by because I used this zoom to be able to focus at 200mm with 2,2m distance. In the next moment I could take a picture of an eagle in the trees with 500 mm 30m away from my location. Both pictures have a good sharpness.

    Open F5.6 aperture is not an issue. It's still possibel to make the motive stand out from its background and the bokeh is very nice after my opinion.

    I would not recommend to use converters with this lens as you get only disadvantages like blurred pictures, slow AF and high ISO or long exposures.

    reviewed December 9th, 2020 (purchased for $1,200)