Nikon 500mm and purple fringing (1 Viewer)

[WayuU]

Hi all,

I have an AF-S NIKKOR 500mm f/4G ED VR. I got it just a few weeks ago.
I got this lens primarily for BiF photography since I wasn't with the performance of my Bigmos (Sigma 150-500mm). I love my Bigmos for everything else though.
I've come to realize that this Nikon lens is quite demanding in user knowledge and that I need a lot of training with it.

I have one question to you photographers that have experience with this lens or know how it should perform.
I've taken the below photo of a Gull but I find purple fringing above it's head, as you can see. Should that be acceptable on this lens?
Is it just not possible to avoid no matter how great a lens is (within these price ranges)?
Could it be camera body related?

No PP at all to the photo, including no in camera sharpening. Direct from NEF so that you can see it clean.
My camera body is a D200.
ISO 100 f/8 1/800

First photo is a 100% crop.
Second one shows a 200% crop and here it's more visible + also some fringing where the wing meets the body and going back towards the tail. Also some at the top of the wing where most of the black of the wing is.

 

[Helios]

To be honest I can't see anything wrong with the two images. A couple of years back I had an old manual Nikkor 500/4, and that did have plenty of CA (especially in the highlights).

The new 500/4 VR belongs to the best series of lenses that Nikon have ever done. I've never noticed any problems with it myself and I've had the lens for a year and a half. There's plenty of examples in my gallery.

 

[JPAC]

Motion blur that's all, use F4 that's what you're paying for.

 

[swainsons]

I wont lose sleap. Its also a factor of the angle of the light.......in this specific instance.

Enjoy your lens, get that shutter speed up.....

Good luck

 

[Aegea]

I don't see any real problem other than that the image is a bit soft, maybe motion blur or focus. Purple fringing is pretty easy to correct in pp anyway.

 

[WayuU]

Thanks everyone.

With all the answers I've received on this, among others from owners of this or similar lens, I now understand that it's unavoidable so that calms me down. That was all I needed to know.


JPAC:
No, this is not motion blur. It's a fringing in combination with an oof shot possibly though. And, you can't always stay on f/4, which is also why the lens can be used with other settings than f/4. At 10 meters the DoF of this lens is just 6cm and if you have a large bird in your frame you won't get much in focus.

 

[njlarsen]

I see a little bit of a purple cast to some of the shadow areas. This to my mind have nothing to do with fringing but is a white balance question. Shadow areas often get that, and sometimes I even feel the colors look wrong if it does not exist in shadow areas of a photo.

Niels

 

[WayuU]

I see a little bit of a purple cast to some of the shadow areas. This to my mind have nothing to do with fringing but is a white balance question. Shadow areas often get that, and sometimes I even feel the colors look wrong if it does not exist in shadow areas of a photo.

Niels

That's an interesting take on it. Maybe you're right and it's not actually fringing but as you explained. First time I hear of that as a reason for these kinds of colorings but with your experience I will take that into consideration and research more on that. Will have some interesting time ahead of me getting to know more about this.
Thanks Niels

 

[nirofo]

It's the camera that's producing the effect not the lens, the image is soft due to movement and is out of focus. The Nikon 500 f4 AF-S is one of the best lenses around and is more than capable of producing top notch results when used correctly, having said that it's not really the best lens to use for flight shots unless that is you've honed your handling skills to the limit and are prepared to have many failures before you get a good one. The Nikon D200 camera you're using makes your 500mm lens a 750mm lens when the 1.5X crop factor is taken into consideration; every little bit of lens shake and the slightest of focussing errors will show up and be magnified at this focal length. You will need plenty of practice or arms like Garth to get your flight shots right consistently with this combination. The D200 is more than useable at up to 600ASA, there's no good reason why you should handicap your chances by using a 100ASA setting and f8. I use my D200 and 500 f4 regularly at between 400 and 600ASA, I set the lens at f5.6 and very rarely need to change it. Your shot appears to be at least one stop underexposed making the bird slightly silhouetted, this is perhaps another reason for having the halo effect around the bird.

 

[Keith Reeder]

I'm not seeing anything, colour-wise, that can be attributed to the lens either - nothing I would call CA, certainly.

 

[WayuU]

Thanks nirofo,

I've received similar response (motion blur + high contrast) from other Nikon 500mm users and that calms me down. With a lot of practice and testing around settings I will get this babe to show it's potential.

I don't know how you can get good results with your D200 above ISO 200 though. I've never with my over 40000 photos taken with it had a good result above ISO 200. Could you please link me to some photos of yours with EXIF data showing good results on 400 ISO and over please? and also tip me on what you do to be able to get good results at those settings, and it doesn't need to be with the 500mm.

I don't know who Garth is but yes, plenty of practice and I will have no problems at all getting great shots hand held with this lens. It IS one of the major reasons I bought this lens. I will say maybe 10% of my shots will be hand held. I did over 60 hours of research on hand holding big lenses and there are a lot of nature photographers out there that recommended this lens above all others for my purposes. The 400mm being too clumsy to hand hold + much heavier and the 600mm being way too heavy according to them all.
I have over 25 years of physical training (semi elite swimmer, 15 years martial arts with a lot of weight lifting, and more) so I know how my body works and I know that with a lot of practice and time using it + correct handling I will have a steady enough use of it for great hand held shots. And I'm not a big guy
People that don't have my background or aren't very big, I can see having problems hand holding it.

One more thing, why do you set it to f/5.6 and not f/4? is it because of the too shallow DoF at f/4?

 

[swainsons]

One more thing, why do you set it to f/5.6 and not f/4? is it because of the too shallow DoF at f/4?

I would guess its nothing to do with DoF.... More likely sweetspot. I know I like shooting around f8 with my 400f2.8 and 1.4TC and f5.6 with 300f4 and 1.4TC. Sometimes you get sharper pics by clicking one stop down from wide open...

Regards

 

[WayuU]

I would guess its nothing to do with DoF.... More likely sweetspot. I know I like shooting around f8 with my 400f2.8 and 1.4TC and f5.6 with 300f4 and 1.4TC. Sometimes you get sharper pics by clicking one stop down from wide open...

Regards

Could be.
I've read of users with this lens testing the sweet spot and they did not find any diff between f/4 and f/5.6. BUT, using a TC did give better results stopping down one or two stops.

We'll see what he says

 

[nirofo]

Thanks nirofo,

I've received similar response (motion blur + high contrast) from other Nikon 500mm users and that calms me down. With a lot of practice and testing around settings I will get this babe to show it's potential.

I don't know how you can get good results with your D200 above ISO 200 though. I've never with my over 40000 photos taken with it had a good result above ISO 200. Could you please link me to some photos of yours with EXIF data showing good results on 400 ISO and over please? and also tip me on what you do to be able to get good results at those settings, and it doesn't need to be with the 500mm.

I don't know who Garth is but yes, plenty of practice and I will have no problems at all getting great shots hand held with this lens. It IS one of the major reasons I bought this lens. I will say maybe 10% of my shots will be hand held. I did over 60 hours of research on hand holding big lenses and there are a lot of nature photographers out there that recommended this lens above all others for my purposes. The 400mm being too clumsy to hand hold + much heavier and the 600mm being way too heavy according to them all.
I have over 25 years of physical training (semi elite swimmer, 15 years martial arts with a lot of weight lifting, and more) so I know how my body works and I know that with a lot of practice and time using it + correct handling I will have a steady enough use of it for great hand held shots. And I'm not a big guy
People that don't have my background or aren't very big, I can see having problems hand holding it.

One more thing, why do you set it to f/5.6 and not f/4? is it because of the too shallow DoF at f/4?

Here's a link to a few shots I've put together in a slide show, there's alsorts in there, some going back many years.
http://s117.photobucket.com/albums/o71/nirofo/Birds/?albumview=slideshow
Various lenses have been used including a Russian Tair 300mm manual preset, Tokina 150-500 ATX manual focus, Tokina 80-400 AF ATX, Tokina 70-300 AF ATX, Tamron 200-500 AF-DI and Nikon 500 f4 AF-S, none have exif data included as I don't keep it. Quite a few of the earlier photos are scanned from 35mm film slides via a Nikon Coolscan 3, the majority were taken at f5.6 or f8 aperture priority on either Nikon film cameras such as FM2n, F801s, F90X or a Nikon D200. The reason I use f5.6 on the 500 f4 is because it gives me just that extra bit of DOF that I find necessary for bird photography, f4 is just not enough DOF for most shots even though the 500 f4 lens is excellent wide open. I also regularly use a 1.4 converter quite often, f5.6 -f8 is better for this combination. If you are having problems using the D200 at ASA settings above 200, then I suggest you check your camera set up, you may have it set up wrongly. The D200 is very good a 400 ASA and more than useable up to 600 ASA.

If you log onto the Nikonians web site there is an excellent procedure for setting up your camera that can be downloaded, here's a copy of it in excel format.

nirofo.

 

[WayuU]

Thanks nirofo,

I've been looking at some of your photos and you have a beautiful birds gallery and I certainly can't seen much noise in any of them.
I downloaded the file you provide. Thank you very much for that.
I'm not welcome on Nikonians web site since about 5 years back because I had in my posts my name and title as "Greenpeace Systems Engineer" and they banned me for having the Greenpeace name in it. To me if they can't allow a non profit organization name (just the name) in the signature then such a site is not for me. It's another thing if you promote a profit working company IMO.
Anyway, I could not have gotten that file, at least not from there.

 

[chirp-chirp]

Can't say I can see any purple fringing in your shots. They are looking a smidge soft to my eyes which, as others have mentioned, is most likely to be a shutter speed and BIF combo fix.
Enjoy the lens. i have one now and think it's a cracker. Really surprised what it can do with the TC2.0 v3 on it too.