NikonGear'23

Images => Nature, Flora, Fauna & Landscapes => Topic started by: David Paterson on December 27, 2016, 17:58:15

Title: First results with the 200-500 f5.6 (Image added, 27th)
Post by: David Paterson on December 27, 2016, 17:58:15
I've had the lens for three weeks but today was the first sunny day we have had, so I shot a lot of real-world tests.

This fieldfare should be in Spain by now; instead, she was in our garden eating the berries from our Chinese rowan; 500mm at f9, 100% crop re-sized to 1200px for the forum. Looks good to me. Next thing is - get closer to the target.   ::)   ;D
Title: Re: First results with the 200-500 f5.6
Post by: Ron Scubadiver on December 27, 2016, 18:09:11
Sweet.  Hard to get bad pictures with that lens.  Builds up your arms too.
Title: Re: First results with the 200-500 f5.6
Post by: elsa hoffmann on December 27, 2016, 22:05:58
Ah you are going to love it. Enjoy the lens
Title: Re: First results with the 200-500 f5.6
Post by: David Paterson on December 27, 2016, 22:41:46
Thanks, both.

You might be right, Ron, about body-building - I had to go and take a little nap after heaving this monster around for 2-3 hours.   ::)
Title: Re: First results with the 200-500 f5.6
Post by: BW on December 27, 2016, 22:43:33
The fieldfare are probably in spain. You have photographed a mistle thrush :) It looks great by the way and the lens is a great performer.
Title: Re: First results with the 200-500 f5.6
Post by: Mongo on December 27, 2016, 23:01:39
nice start David. Do not be afraid to use it wide open or at f6.3 generally. You can also get away with a 1.4 EII @ about f9 to f10 for stationary subject.

 
Title: Re: First results with the 200-500 f5.6
Post by: Frank Fremerey on December 27, 2016, 23:05:10
Perfect shot.  But you will have taken a lot of good shots within three weeks. Are there more shots you like to share?
Title: Re: First results with the 200-500 f5.6
Post by: David Paterson on December 28, 2016, 01:33:16
Thanks Børge - you are right, of course - I discovered my mistake earlier tonight but then forgot to correct the post. So that's two mistakes.   ;D

Mongo - thanks for the comment and the advice; which I shall follow, of course! I've been using 7.1 quite a bit, to see if I can get just a sliver of DoF.

Frank - the weather has been horrendous and I've been struggling for most of  those three weeks with the consequences of the biggest computer disaster of my life. Are you Apple Mac? If so, DO NOT put your faith in Time Machine. I have religiously taken TM backups every two weeks, for many years. But when I finally really needed to restore the system drive on my main computer, Time Machine DIDN'T WORK. At all. So I have shot almost nothing - sorry! But it was nice of you to think I might have more good images.

Title: Re: First results with the 200-500 f5.6
Post by: Akira on December 28, 2016, 04:48:16
A great result right from the first post with your new lens, but it is not surprising given your standard of how a quality image should look like.  The image quality is also impressive even as 100% crop (equivalent of a X000mm lens?!).
Title: Re: First results with the 200-500 f5.6
Post by: Bjørn Rørslett on December 28, 2016, 08:57:34
I think most users of the 200-500 will find the results nice and useful. Dave's bird is evidence for this.

As to the backup/recovery issue Dave found himself troubled with, any regime of backups has to be mistrusted until one proves it'll work. Just unplug a disk drive and see how troublesome, or preferably easy, it is to get the missing data or OS back by restoring the data.
Title: Re: First results with the 200-500 f5.6
Post by: Fons Baerken on December 28, 2016, 11:09:29
I love that rowan variety, Sorbus cashmeriana?
Title: Re: First results with the 200-500 f5.6
Post by: pluton on December 28, 2016, 18:35:11
Good bird photo.
Sorry to to hear TM failed to do it's job.  It has always worked for me.  In fact, I recently erased a conventional clone and replaced it with a second TM.
I erase and start my TMs over every six months or so. 
Title: Re: First results with the 200-500 f5.6 (Image added, 27th)
Post by: David Paterson on December 28, 2016, 21:35:57
Thank you all very much for the kind comments about my fieldfare mistle-thrush picture. And for all the insights into backups, TM and others, and the frailty thereof. Wasn't it Joni Mitchell who sang "you don't know what you've got till it's gone"? That gal just wrote the Mac-users' anthem, right there.

Another 100% crop - this time it is definitely a goldfinch! I'm getting some practice in with the 200-500, around our feeders.
Title: Re: First results with the 200-500 f5.6 (Image added, 27th)
Post by: Erik Lund on December 28, 2016, 22:51:26
Congratulations on the fine lens! Looks like a good one :)

Good luck with the computer,,,
Title: Re: First results with the 200-500 f5.6 (Image added, 27th)
Post by: elsa hoffmann on December 29, 2016, 15:24:56
Great image - I like it a lot
Title: Re: First results with the 200-500 f5.6 (Image added, 27th)
Post by: Frank Fremerey on December 30, 2016, 00:51:34
A very fine instrument in your hands
Title: Re: First results with the 200-500 f5.6
Post by: MFloyd on December 30, 2016, 08:30:41
No. I never trusted Apple. I build my own hardware and use Windows. For backup I chose my own set of Hardware / Software solutions that suit my needs. And I test these and they work. With Windows 10 it is even easy to reinstall the whole system if it should be necessary and the error lives in the system backup too.

These are the sort of generic / take away comments which are not very helpful. I could make the same sort of badmouthing comments on Windows ad libitum, as I practiced MS since its very inception. TimeMachine (™) has helped me out of the deep sh..it on several occasions; I also recently used it to migrate to my new MacBook Pro. Two remarks:(1) use TM the way it is build i.e leave it on, and don't use it from time to time (2) always put (at least) a second backup strategy in place e.g. every month (or less) I take a CarbonCopy clone on HDDs (copies which are then safely stored away: fire and theft proof). This way, I was kept whole from major disasters, all these years.

By the way, David, very nice pictures ... and I'm sorry to learn your data recovery problems.  In addition to the aforementioned, I always make a second copy during my imports (Lr has provided this option), and this on another disk.  Moreover, I never empty / reuse my memory cards before a month or so, in the case I need a last chance recovery.
Title: Re: First results with the 200-500 f5.6 (Image added, 27th)
Post by: Anthony on December 30, 2016, 10:48:48
Time Machine has saved me in the past, but I also have a second backup which I refresh every week or so with SuperDuper.  It is possible for any hard drive to fail, and it is possible that two will fail at the same time.

When a backup disk, Time Machine or otherwise, is full, I put it somewhere safe and install a new replacement.
Title: Re: First results with the 200-500 f5.6 (Image added, 27th)
Post by: David Paterson on December 30, 2016, 10:59:59
Thank you, Erik, Elsa, Frank and Floyd.

Floyd - in the light of what you and others have said, it's obvious I must beef up my backup regime. However, it seems to me that the extreme measures - that you (and others) find necessary - point to one of the major downsides of our digital age. There is just no reliable solution for accessible long-term data storage. Electronic components have a certain useful life-span before they become unreliable and eventually fail completely. I have not been particularly unlucky, but since I bought my first desktop computer in the late 1980s I have had disk failures, memory-card failures and ram failures. On the other hand, I have two 4-drawer filing cabinets in my office which house my archive of 35mm and medium-format transparencies. Many of these go back over 40 years and have never had any care taken except to keep them in darkness and at a reasonably stable temperature, yet they are apparently as fresh as the day they were shot. Digital manufacturers are providing us with ever more high-capacity storage devices at very low prices. Perhaps they should turn their research in the direction of affordable *reliable* long-term storage.
Title: Re: First results with the 200-500 f5.6 (Image added, 27th)
Post by: Frank Fremerey on December 30, 2016, 11:15:05
I must beef up my backup regime. However, it seems to me that the extreme measures - that you (and others) find necessary - point to one of the major downsides of our digital age. There is just no reliable solution for accessible long-term data storage.

That is so not true. I 1996 I reported for c't magazine about data storage in Banks and Broadcasting. It works reliably.

Think of having your files stored unchanged. Bit for bit.
Do not think about the media, media fail.
Do not organize it yourself.
Store the data in a reliable professional data center.
pay a monthly fee.
Keep your access and encryption keys on different physical media in different places.

That is data storage.

If electricity fails worldwide for a longer period we will have other problems, much bigger problems.

If you are bold enough to think your pictures still serve humankind in that situation, then have them printed on long term stable material like natural canvas with pigmented ink. and store them safely in a bunker.
Title: Re: First results with the 200-500 f5.6 (Image added, 27th)
Post by: MFloyd on December 30, 2016, 11:48:06
David, I couldn't more agree with you. My "digital age" started around 1999 and really picked up in 2009, to stabilize around 300GB per annum for the last three years.  Up to now, I have encountered no losses, despite chronical HDD failures, the latter being an inherent part of the game. Film, has also his problems; just having a look at the movie industry and their problems to safeguard and preserve copies. An excellent article around archiving digital media is here: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2984597/storage/hard-core-data-preservation-the-best-media-and-methods-for-archiving-your-data.html

May be we should dedicate a thread to this.
Title: Re: First results with the 200-500 f5.6 (Image added, 27th)
Post by: MFloyd on December 30, 2016, 11:58:59
...
Do not organize it yourself.
.....

But you rely on a home build computer, making a bet that you will do better and more reliable than the "big guys". You tell me. A chain is as solid as its weakest link. As David mentioned, the reliability of mass storage devices, be it HDD, SSD or other media, is clearly the weak link in my process. And Dr. Murphy likes very much to play this game: years ago a had a simultaneous double disk crash and controller unit in an IBM RAID unit in one of my offices ....
Title: Re: First results with the 200-500 f5.6 (Image added, 27th)
Post by: Bjørn Rørslett on December 30, 2016, 12:09:41
We have an issue here. The thread has wandered off completely and now mainly deals with data security and storage. Interesting and crucial topics for sure, but nothing relevant to the 200-500 lens as such.

Might I ask further submissions to concentrate on the lens and the results it can deliver? The data aspects can  be dealt with in a separate thread.
Title: Re: First results with the 200-500 f5.6 (Image added, 27th)
Post by: MFloyd on December 30, 2016, 17:23:25
As per Bjørn's request with regard discussions related to image back-up strategies, I opened a new thread http://nikongear.net/revival/index.php/topic,5164.0.html open to everybody, of course. 😊
Title: Re: First results with the 200-500 f5.6
Post by: ColSebastianMoran on December 31, 2016, 00:01:53
The lens is great. I've been using it for birds with a D7200.
Title: Re: First results with the 200-500 f5.6 (Image added, 27th)
Post by: elsa hoffmann on December 31, 2016, 07:45:42
I have this lens permanently attached to a D800.
My other D800 is used for all my other lenses.
I simply couldnt live without the lens anymore :)