Rented a 300mm f4 for a week

[Moab Man]

Re: Rented a 300mmf4 for a week

Moab Man - Which of your cameras are you using this lens on ? DX or FX ? Have you tried on both formats ? Which format is better suited to this lens ?

I have only used it on the D7100 for its extra reach. This week I will try it out on the D600.

 

[Redtail55]

Re: Rented a 300mmf4 for a week

A issue that seems to be happening more and I'm not sure if it's the camera or the lens but I'm getting a lot of out of focus shots , more than I'm used to and I've noticed that the lens is hunting too much.I have the camera set to AF-c which I know it will search but the lens is not snapping to focus when I have the center point over the subject. Any thoughts ?It's a rental lens so maybe it's not at it's optimum as when it was new ?

 

[Redtail55]

Re: Rented a 300mmf4 for a week


Here's a shot I took this morning and the camera used the center point for focus and the bird is right in it ,but it's out of focus.

 

[Redtail55]

Re: Rented a 300mmf4 for a week


A shot taken today in Sarnia Ont .

 

[Moab Man]

Re: Rented a 300mmf4 for a week

It could be the focusing system of the camera your using which is what I expect. My D7100 runs rings around the focusing system of the D600. This week I will only shot with the D600 and see how it does.

 

[Redtail55]

Re: Rented a 300mmf4 for a week

Well today I'm afraid I didnt have a good day with the 300mm f4 lens. I've been trying to get some shots that are sharp and the sun was shining somewhat today and I was out with my buddy looking for Snowy Owls, which we found perched in a tree by the road .We both took a bunch of shots and I thought I'd captured some good shots but after downloading to the computer there wasn't as many keepers as I'd hoped for. I tried to adjust the lens in Auto Fine Tune somewhat as Moab Man had suggested but being that this lens is a loaner I really don't have much time to play around with it to get it sharp as I want.The rental is up tomorrow and it's going back .
At this point I'm on the fence as for saving up the money to purchase this lens or try something different , or just keep using the 70-300vr.

 

[Redtail55]

Re: Rented a 300mmf4 for a week

The photo on the left had the focus point right on its face and when cropped in, it's fuzzy. The second picture is better but not the detail I was expecting with the lens.

 

[Moab Man]

Re: Rented a 300mmf4 for a week

Through a private message I was asked a question about my 300mm and I thought it might be useful to share my reply as this question might be on other peoples minds as well. So in part, here is the paraphrasing of the question and part of my response.

Paraphrased question:

"how quick is your new 300mm to autofocus on the D7100... relative to the 70-300mm VR?"

Answer in part:

I am only just starting to try out my 300mm on my D600, but from my experience with the D7100 here is what I can tell you. My 55-300mm & 70-300mm are much faster to focus. I don't find the 300mm to be slow, but it's not fast. In the crunch time of catching faster moving birds (smaller targets) it does play a little bit of catch up to the previous two lenses. The speed of this lens is something I have found repeatedly mentioned in reviews as not slow, but not fast either. I wonder if this has to do with the weight of the internals and moving them quickly, but that theory is from my own wandering mind.

When focusing in on larger targets, or larger fast moving targets, I have had no problems with acquiring focus or maintaining it. I was actually pretty happy with it maintaining a crisp focus on a running dog (larger target).

Where this lens fits for me? I will use this for wildlife, sports, and general shooting of distant targets.

Where I would not really consider this lens? Tracking faster moving small objects and especially erratic small objects - it can't keep up.

 

[Redtail55]

Update to this post. After using this lens for about a week, I can't say that I'm totally satisfied with the results that I had but on the other side of the coin I would like to try another version of the same model as I think that being a rental lens it may not have truly been 100% errror free.The autofocus wasn't as accurate as I'd hoped for and MoabMan had indicated in an earlier post about some back focus issues that he spotted. I would have liked to test and tune the lens further and see what the results would have been, but I could not in the short time that I had it. FWIW , I do think that this lens is a great option for the photographer who wants a good lens and who doesn't always need a zoom or wants to carry a monopod or tripod. As the new 300mmf4 VR is way out of my price range , the used market will come into play down the road and I still may purchase a model to add to my bag anyways .Adding a 1.4x teleconverter to this model will achieve about 560mm (35mm equivalent)which is more than enough for my style of shooting .Here's one of the last photos I took with the 300mmf4 .RedBellied Woodpecker.