D500 at Reno

[Idaho_cowpony]

Nikon shooters!

So, with about 5500 images to go through now, one thing is readily clear to me..After using the D500 for the weekend, at Reno, I now know that at 10fps continuous shooting, the files add up very quickly. I guess that means more through away shots!

I thought I'd have a bit higher success ratio than I did with the D800. But I don't think so...

At the races this year, I used a Nikon D500 with Tamron 150-600 f5/6.3 , Nikon 17-55 f2.8, and a little Tokina 11-16 DXII f2.8.

I'll write up my impressions in this thread, followed with unedited photos. Only resized.

First up;

Czech Mate on the ramp.
Shot with Tamron 150-500 at 190mm, 1/100, ISO-160, f20


And 100% crop:



I really liked the ability to select focus points over a wide area. However, I found myself sticking to center focus mostly anyway. Not sure if the ability to select all the way to the edge really gave me any great advantage.

Unfortunately, with the Tamron 150-600, I never could get anything really sharp. Everything I shot with this lens, regardless of tune, was a bit soft for my liking. I hope the guys who used the D500/Nikon 200-500 had better results?

[Idaho_cowpony]

Re: D500 at Reno

Czech Mate on the ramp, 2
Shot with Tamron 150-500 at 250mm, 1/50, ISO-160, f25

[Idaho_cowpony]

Re: D500 at Reno

Dreadnaught Run-up
Shot with Tamron 150-500 at 300mm, 1/80, ISO-160, f20

[Idaho_cowpony]

Re: D500 at Reno

T-6 Action on Saturday
Shot with Tamron 150-500 at 170mm, 1/640, ISO-160, f6.3

[Idaho_cowpony]

Re: D500 at Reno

You can really see the quality deteriorate out at 500mm

Voodoo Sprayin'
Shot with Tamron 150-500 at 500mm, 1/400, ISO-160, f9

[wingman]

Re: D500 at Reno

Great stuff here, Joseph, and thanks for the commentary on the camera. One thing those somewhat new to this tend not to realize is how very hard it is to deal with supertelephoto lens lengths. Keep in mind that at 500mm focal length setting for that lens and camera you are shooting at the functional equivalent of 750mm with a film camera. That is a REALLY long focal length! My friends in the bird and wildlife world are using $2000 ten pound tripods with $500 gimbal mounts for these kinds of focal lengths, and still struggling. Camera store shelves are full of superlong lenses returned by customers as not sharp which work just as intended -- the tendency is always to blame the equipment rather than the operator's skills and the inherent difficulty of using a lens like this. This equipment is really good, but it's not magical -- it cannot override the laws of physics and optics. Years ago lenses with these kinds of magnification were exotic and REALLY expensive. That kept them in the hands of serious professionals who understood what they were dealing with. Now quality supertelephotos are in a price range where anybody with interest in their possibilities can pick one up -- and get mad that they're not getting what they think they paid for.

I think a lot of what you're seeing in the Voodoo shot is atmosheric distortion and degradation, likely along with some dust in the air. The farther the subject the more moving air, smog, heat and dust between you and the subject. Also most long wide focal length range zooms are not really sharpest at the very longest focal lengths. It would be worth carefully testing that lens under controlled conditions at 500mm, 450mm,400mm and so forth to check for this.

Finally, the best of your shots look pretty sharp to me for out of the camera captures. It is a fact of life that electronic sensors do not produce perfectly sharp images out of the camera. Pros actually recommend a two or three step sharpening process with their RAW images out of the camera. First step is actually called "capture sharpening" and is intended to deal with the sensor issue. Then later on you apply final sharpening to optimise things for print, magazine reproduction or screen use, each of which typically require different kinds and degree of sharpening for the very best final result.

If you are shooting jpeg and need to use the right out of the camera image, you have to carefully set the degree of in camera sharpening in the menus and then just let the camera try to do it for you. This is a pretty crude and imperfect way of doing things though, and will never give you the best the camera is capable of.

I hope this awfully wordy response is a bit helpful to you. I think the images look very good, and don't see that you have anything to worry about too much in the performance of your camera and lens.

Neal

[Florian]

Re: D500 at Reno

Well explained Neal. I also made the experience quite often coming back to the motel at night in Reno and having no real sharp photos from aircrafts in the air. Mostly this occured at the practice days when I took the photos from the pits and the temperatures were relatively high (lots of tarmac and big distances to the runway). Please find attached such a sample photo (100% crop) with strong deformed areas due to heat blurr and also soft looking in total (Nikon D300S and Nikkor 80-400 the old one at 400mm, I think that also the autofocus has a hard stand to focus properly at a far distanced blurred object which also might have a big effect).
When I changed my position at the end of the week coming closer to the planes and having better lighting conditions the results were much better (higher hit ratio and image quality) which showed me that my equipment was probably not the main reason for the soft pictures).
Lower camera resolution and lower focal length have a positive effect on image quality during such difficult conditions because you don't see the effects so strong.
I bought myself a new Nikkor 200-500 lens this year and at a recent airshow with difficult conditions (frontlightning and high temperatures) and I found the photos less sharp than the ones from several years ago (same airshow, same camera, similar conditions but the old 80-400 lens with 100mm less focal length and lower sharpness in ideal test conditions mounted).

Best regards,
Florian

[wingman]

Re: D500 at Reno

And one other thing. Your experience with 10fps burst shooting is why I've almost never used high speed motorized shooting modes. I find going through images trying to find the very best to be a pretty time consuming and agonizing process, at best. When I'm dealing with tens of thousands of shots-- most of which look about the same it's even worse.

I certainly know guys who swear by shooting bursts, and brag about how many gigs they shot up today, it's never seemed to me that their stuff in the end was any better than what I was doing shooting 2 or 3 shots a pass. I seldom found that my third shot in a burst, or my seventh shot in a burst, was consistently any better than shooting one or two at a time. If I got it right they were all equally good, and if I got it wrong (more often) they were all out of focus, or nose cut off, or whatever. Bursts make sense for field sports guys who need to get the slide into third base perfect, or birds in flight guys who need the flapping wing position right -- you cannot time this stuff by eye. But for airplanes I just don't see real utility, and those bursts make sorting and classifying after the races a LOT harder and more time consuming.

Neal

[wingman]

Re: D500 at Reno

Good example, Florian, though that shot is not all THAT bad. With some work with sharpening and adding clarity in Photoshop or Lightroom it would be pretty acceptable for web use.

Your points are very valid however. If we test our equipment in non demanding conditions at home and find it working well, then it is unfair and unproductive to blame that equipment for unsatisfactory performance in demanding field conditions. Sometimes the problem is simply the conditions and/or less than perfect technique.

Neal

[Idaho_cowpony]

Re: D500 at Reno

Thanks for the comments folks! I think Neal really hits it on the head. Shooting at a such a long focal length really is pushing things for the operator (myself!) I do see where with minor editing, a lot of my shots should be okay.

One thing I was most happy with, was the extreme low-light performance.

Here's a selection of images where I would have had to bump the ISO up a bit higher usually, but found myself able to coast through with really low ISO levels.

Shot with Nikon 17-55 at 5mm, 1/320, ISO-125, f2.8



Shot with Nikon 17-55 at 17mm, 1/320, ISO-125, f2.8



Shot with Nikon 17-55 at 38mm, 1/80, ISO-250, f2.8



Shot with Nikon 17-55 at 5mm, 1/200, ISO-160, f4.5



Shot with Nikon 17-55 at 17mm, 1/100, ISO-400, f2.8



Shot with Nikon 17-55 at 24mm, 1/400, ISO-400, f2.8



Shot with Nikon 17-55 at 32mm, 0.62, ISO-200, f2.8

[RAD2LTR]

Re: D500 at Reno

Nice pics, I noticed a lot of people shooting with the D500 over the weekend. It was a very popular choice for bodies.

My experience with the 200-500 on the D600 was a little hit or miss. I don't know if my misses were due to operator error or if there is a minor issue with my lens. I've read several reviews where people tried 2 or 3 different versions before getting a good one. It makes me wonder about mine.

That said, here is a shot that I took from 2 that is similar to yours, only it was at 450mm, F14,1/125

There is some atmospheric distortion, but considering that, its a decently sharp pic.

When I got it right, the lens was amazing. I shot this at 1/100, F18, 440mm.


A good portion of my stuff seems to be closer to this however. Just a little bit soft.
1/125, F16, 450mm


I spent a lot of time changing settings and setups on my camera over the weekend. Its now setup for back button focusing which seemed to help some, as well as a few other settings that I thought might make a difference.

Will

[wingman]

Re: D500 at Reno

IMO back button focusing is always the way to go for almost any situation. It just works better for me and allows much better control. All my bodies get set that way the day they come out of the box.

Neal

[LoveOldPlanes]

Re: D500 at Reno

The D500 is the body I am saving for. I went in with a D800 and the 200-500 mm lens. A number of folks had the D500/ 200-500 mm lens combo. The most important thing they found was that when run all the way out to 500 mm...the focus goes fairly soft. I started running it out all the way, and giving a slight twist back from the full lock....and got significantly better focus overall.

I used to use the 80-400mm that superseded the 70-400 mm lens. Nikon support was brutal in their hate of the earlier lens, one telling me the best thing one could do with it was use it as a wheel chock. The later lens was that much better. I was saving for it when the 200-500mm came out at a fraction of the cost, so I bought it to see how I liked it.

I tried to use the lens at Oshkosh and only about 15% of my aerial shots were in focus. Backing off at Reno took me up to 98+% clear. I also tried turning off the Image Stabilization and that helped get more clear shots. Now I know that if it is blurred, it is my abilities, not the camera's.

At Sun N Fun I spoke at length to Scott from Nikon in the support booth. He was trying the 200-500 mm out for the first tme, as was I. We compared notes and I didn't know about the soft focus issue. Looking back, his photos were not all the way out for the lens and clearer than mine. He managed to get a pre-release version of the D500 and was using them together. Late in the event he told me it seemed to be the best combination for aerial photography he had yet used.

The other point I am learning through is that the better the equipment, the more your skills and lack of show up. I hope to get the D500 soon. To challenge myself and learn more this year, I took a third of my photos with a D5100....and got great results. The better I got with the entry level camera, the better I have become with the D800.

Guess I should repay a debt of gratitude here...first year out I knew who Mr Nurmi was having seen his photos for years. First time out of pylons I spotted where he was standing and stood a good number of yards behind him to see if I could get any good photos. The few good ones that came out bore a passing resemblance to what I knew of his work. It gave me a baseline to understand much about photography at the pylons...so...thanks Neil!

[wingman]

Re: D500 at Reno

You're very welcome. By the way, have we met? I've enjoyed your posts, and found them extremely helpful in understanding some of the things that happened at Reno.

Thanks for the discussion of your Nikon experiences. Maybe the most important thing you said was this: "The other point I am learning through is that the better the equipment, the more your skills and lack of same show up." Cameras like the D500 and D800 (my main body these days, by the way) are stunningly capable, but equally unforgiving. They reveal everything you're doing wrong in brutal detail. They can be very hard on your ego -- and I speak from experience here. An aviation analogy might be the difference between fun flying at 150 feet and 90 mph in a Super Cub vs doing the same at 250 mph in a Mustang. You can make mistakes in the Cub and never know it, but do the same things in the P-51 and you're in a high speed stall and then dead.

I like your approach of honing skills with a somewhat less unforgiving but still high quality machine and then moving into the "big leagues". That makes a lot of sense. I suspect that it can be tough to jump right in at the top.

Your experience with the long end of the new zoom would fit a common pattern in wide range long zooms. The nice little Nikon 70-300 is like that -- soft at 300mm and much much better at 250mm. Tests and anecdotal accounts of the 200-500 seem to indicate generally excellent performance at 500mm, though. I've seen great bird and small mammal stuff done with it at 500mm, though at much closer distances than using it at Reno. If you have a busy airport nearby, or even a highway, take it out for field testing to figure out better just what you have. I try to do a lot of testing of a new lens before using it under fire. I like to know just what I'm going to be dealing with.

After a lot of trial and error years ago I've come turn off image stabilisation (VR on Nikon lenses) for almost all photography of moving subjects, and especially for pylon work. It's a real Godsend for static subjects in uncertain light, but I did much better on the pylons without it.

Thanks again for all the information on Reno 2016.

Neal

[Idaho_cowpony]

Re: D500 at Reno

Some action;

Shot with Tamron 150-500 at 150mm, 1/640, ISO-160, f5.6


Shot with Tamron 150-500 at 210mm, 1/500, ISO-160, f8



- Joseph