Nikon 500mm/f5.6 PF Super Tele Formally Announced

Result. Nikon warranty included!

 

Expect to see lots of Wednesday Pics with it...;)

Amazon update - the lens will arrive on 12/18. Hope it's accurate.

Afternoon up on the mountain.

D850 + 500PF ISO 640 1/320th f/5.6

This one is with the D850, 500mm, f/5.6, 1/200s, ISO 22800, EFCS, Qc, VR SPORT.

This one is with the D850, 500mm, f/5.6, 1/200s, ISO 22800, EFCS, Qc, VR SPORT.

Is that full frame or a crop?

That noise looks very 'big'...:confused:

Is that full frame or a crop?

 

That noise looks very 'big'...:confused:

It's a crop from a horizontal frame, so yes, but only slightly cropped in the other dimension. It's with a vivid camera profile which increases the contrast (and noise) a little. I think photo.net in some browsers displays embedded images > 100% - on my Windows laptop it does this, so the images look physically larger than the originally uploaded image, and this does make the noise more apparent (and the image less sharp), but on my Linux desktop, Firefox displays the image at the correct scale.

I guess it is a matter of taste, whether some subject movement blur with less noise is preferable to a sharp image with more noise. I prefer the subject to be sharp and don't mind the noise in this case. I don't normally use the D850 at such high ISO settings, so it comes as a surprise that the image came out as well as it did. I think it's because the blue channel is normally the noisiest one and early morning natural light contains a lot of blue, so this makes it possible to achieve a better result than would be obtained in artificial warm light at similar ISO values.

preferable to a sharp image with more noise

Sharp every time for me, no exceptions!

You can manually 'blur' noise in the background areas. You don't really see it on the bird.

I occasionally corrected a tiny bit of linear subject movement, but most birds I've shot that way aren't very linear!

I guess you could tinker with the RAW, but it's the image's IQ with the lens wide open, that's the key...:)

I'm looking at it on a Windows 7 machine via Chrome.

That's amazing, ISO22800 is really good. Noise reduction will clean that up no problem.

I've been really impressed with the high ISO performance on the D850, even if it only measures a stop or so better than the D810. I've found that DxO Prime sometimes doesn't help as much as you'd think, though - it gets very blocky very quickly in trying to remove all the noise from something at high ISO, and starts looking unnatural. Your suggestion of manually blurring out the background would be a good workaround (and also, in my experience, a way to simulate a much wider aperture...)

illkka gave me permission to do a Topaz AI Clear noise reduction on his Blackbird image. For ISO 228800 I think it came out rather nicely. This took all of 30 seconds. Open Click Done.

his Blackbird image

Smooth, literally.........:)

Oh, and I think Mike might have added an extra ZERO to the ISO Number...;)

Still pretty darn impressive....:cool:

Any detail salvageable in the 'under tail' region?

Just asking...;)

Thanks for sharing, Mike(D). I was already vaguely looking at the Topaz AI gigapixel thing, but that's standalone. I should probably experiment and see how their newer stuff compares against DxO PRIME - I'm currently a bit confused because they have "A.I. Clear", "Reduce noise" and "Topaz DeNoise" - and I'm far from clear how they compare. (As far as I can tell only the first one is AI based, but I'm not show how that affects the flexibility the others might have.) I'm prepared at least to try out the free trial, but installing all three seems overkill!

AI denoising certainly seems to work well - it's being used as an integral part of the real-time ray tracing stuff which NVIDIA et al. have been pushing recently, and the results are pretty noising without it. There have been some impressive results in SIGGRAPH. Of course, the danger with anything like this is that it's producing a "plausible image" rather than a canonical interpretation of the input, so every now and again you'll get something weird turn up, but that doesn't make it useful 99% of the time (or with suitable supervision).

Still pretty darn impressive....:cool:

 

Any detail salvageable in the 'under tail' region?

 

Just asking...;)

I doubt it, it looks a bit too black. All I did to ilkka’s image was download, opened in Topaz Studio selected AI Clear clicked using the defaults and saved as Blackbird then reposted it.

Thanks for sharing, Mike(D). I was already vaguely looking at the Topaz AI gigapixel thing, but that's standalone. I should probably experiment and see how their newer stuff compares against DxO PRIME - I'm currently a bit confused because they have "A.I. Clear", "Reduce noise" and "Topaz DeNoise" - and I'm far from clear how they compare. (As far as I can tell only the first one is AI based, but I'm not show how that affects the flexibility the others might have.) I'm prepared at least to try out the free trial, but installing all three seems overkill!

 

AI denoising certainly seems to work well - it's being used as an integral part of the real-time ray tracing stuff which NVIDIA et al. have been pushing recently, and the results are pretty noising without it. There have been some impressive results in SIGGRAPH. Of course, the danger with anything like this is that it's producing a "plausible image" rather than a canonical interpretation of the input, so every now and again you'll get something weird turn up, but that doesn't make it useful 99% of the time (or with suitable supervision).

The thing I like about AI Clear is that it’s extremely simple. The only other Topaz program I use is Remask which is pretty simple too. I don’t know about any of their other apps.

The thing I like about AI Clear is that it’s extremely simple. The only other Topaz program I use is Remask which is pretty simple too. I don’t know about any of their other apps.

Thanks, Mike. I'll see if I can get a clearer explanation out of their sales support.

it takes seven months (yes, 7 months) to manufacture the large PF element

If that's from mining the right 'sand', making the correct mixture and melt, cooling and annealing, slicing it, cutting out the hockey pucks, centering etc etc, well yes maybe.

But it cannot be over 200 days or 4800 hours of lens grinding!

(At least theoretically) the darkest day of the year, snowing lightly, windy, -7C on the shore of Lauttasaari, Helsinki. D850, 500/5.6 PF, f/5.6, 1/250s, ISO 2000.

I received my 500mm pf from Amazon a few days ago. I finally took it out for a test run today. It's pretty good. A keeper.

Nikon D500 camera with 500mm f/5.6 PF lens. 1/800s; f/5.6; ISO 1250

This is an excellent lens. However, I may be selling mine as I find that it stays in the bag most of the time as I mostly use my Olympus mirrorless lenses now. If anyone wants it for the same price I bought it ($100 less than list price), please let me know. Comes complete with everything in the box plus arca-swiss foot.

Shun, if this is considered advertising, please feel free to delete this post. I am doing this only because the waiting list is still long and people in this forum understand its value.

selling mine as I find that it stays in the bag most of the time

Thinking perhaps I should sell it for $200 below list as I did take it to Yellowstone. It gave me awesome photos of elk in snow.

Just checked, it's in impeccable condition.