Nikon NY Repair Center

Originally Posted by Woodyg3

Yeah, always use group or dynamic for birds in flight.

Were you using single point on the Heron in the shot above? If so, putting the point right on the feathers on the bird's back might have provided good contrast and better focus.

Woody, I used both dynamic 153 as well as single point. For some reason, single point just doesn't seem to cut it with birds. I don't know if it's because wide open, it's only f/6.7 (even though I stopped down). Not sure there is enough info getting to the sensor in these types of situations. I know people have mentioned focusing on something with more contrast, but sometimes there really aren't a whole lot of options. All of the photos of the heron were a little soft no matter whether dynamic 153 or single point.

But there is a definite improvement overall with better AF ability (meaning sharpness) even with the heron's situation than what I was getting before sending in the lens for service.

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Obviously Nikon did something beneficial when this lens was in for repair. This was a horizontal image - only cropped to a vertical without cropping anything from the top or bottom. Considering this was shot at f/6.7, it's pretty darned good. I did take photos at f/8 and f/9, but I was testing the lens for sharpness. A little Shake Reduction was added in Photoshop.

I was able to move around behind the hawk to change what was in the background. This perspective was pretty nice compared with other images that had lots of branches.

One more of the hawk from a different vantage point. No Shake Reduction done this time though. I tried 2 or 3 times, but it made squiggly lines all around the edges as well as other distortion. But it didn't seem as though it was quite as necessary as some of the other images.

This afternoon I was really stoked to see quite a few vultures flying overhead. Then there was one that flew out of the brush just a few feet away - scared the heck out of me.

But situations such as this where there isn't much of any contrast simply don't cut it. I shot 100+ images. Every single one is quite soft. I even used PCC's Shake Reduction, but even that couldn't bring this up to any satisfactory level of sharpening. And I really didn't crop much of anything away either.

Since the 300mm f/4 PF coupled with the 1.7x TC has an effective aperture of f/6.7, the auto focus just can't quite handle these low contrast circumstances. Out of all the images I took, most were softer than this one. So nothing to really salvage at all.

I had hoped the vulture images were soft due to the lack of contrast, but after a prime photo opp of a Red-Tailed Hawk with a Blue Jay, absolutely everything turned out soft. So I'm going to have to contact Nikon again to see if they will take another look at this lens. I wound up over-processing just to sharpen the images, but I'm definitely not happy with any of the results.

I shoot RAW+jpeg Fine. Here is the sooc jpeg only resized for the forum.



Here is the edit :



And here are a few others that I simply cannot do anything adequate for sharpening without introducing artifacting:

I went back out to test the sharpness of the AF - unfortunately these were all in very shaded areas so I hit my capped ISO limit and wound up having to increase my exposure during post. But the bird photo (which was by far the most underexposed image) still shows detail. So it seems the AF is affected only at long distances which is the same issue I had when I sent this lens in for repair the first time.

Lousy color with this first one, but it's only a test. I did adjust the noise, but the file was incredibly underexposed. What's important for me is there is visible feather detail. It was so dark in the woods that I had to focus manually before the AF would kick in. Without focusing manually, the AF just hunted.

The thing is all of these subjects were close. None were anywhere near as far as the vulture or hawk. Also tested with VR on with lower shutter speeds and VR off with higher shutter speeds. No difference there though.

I used the online site to request another repair. Despite this being within the 90-day covered repair from when I first sent it in, I will have to pay shipping to send it to them a second time. Back when I had the D600 oil spot issues that required the body be shipped 3x times, I only had to pay once for the shipping. But I will call before sending it in to find out why I have to pay shipping again. If the 90 days had expired, I could understand having to pay again.

Yesterday (Monday) I called Nikon and spoke with a rep. He assured me he will handle this issue himself rather than it getting bounced around to whoever happens to be available. So today I uploaded several images - all were sooc jpegs showing the softness of the focus, plus I included a few showing how the subject jumps around within the frame when using Normal VR.

He will be in touch after having the images assessed to let me know how to proceed. I don't know if they will want me to send in the 1.7x TC, but I offered in case it helps to identify the issue.

After I finished taking test shots, I reset my camera settings back to where I usually keep them (f/7.1 and shutter speed of 1/2000") and placed the camera on the seat next to me. I barely made it out of the park when I saw a bird going after a Red-Tailed Hawk.

So I quickly pulled over, grabbed my camera, and walked to the back of the car. Of course I forgot to stop down to f/8 or more...oops. There were two birds right there so I simply fired off a shot. This was the first image and the only one with two birds going after the hawk - and surprisingly two different species.



I just kept shooting and wound up with at least 100 images all of which are somewhat soft. And of course they all show signs of being over sharpened after editing. By this time, I had remembered to stop down to f/9.





Stopped down even more to f/10.



Usually I enable all my focus points by using Dynamic 153, but close to the end of shooting I chose to switch to Dynamic 25 just to eliminate the possibility of focusing on the lamppost. However, it really didn't make a difference sooc. I no sooner got back in the car when I saw a huge shadow move across the hood. Looking up there was the hawk being dive bombed by both birds. I wish I could have gotten a photo. Of course I had just put the camera down - and was looking at the back of the hawk so wouldn't have been much of a view anyway.

They can sure make a mess when eating spaghetti!