Nikon 500mm f/4 VR or ?

Geomaticsman wrote:

The 500VR is the quintessential birding lens IMO. The 400 is too short/heavy for dedicated birding. The 600VR is longer, but comes with a big size/weight penalty for only 20% more reach. The new 800VR could be good, but my experience is that 800mm is pretty specialized and usually needs to be paired with something shorter...so I still think it best to start with the 500VR. In other words if you can only afford to buy one supertele, the 800 would not be the best choice, even for birding.

The 500VR takes the TC14EII well wide open. Shooting f5.6 requires some support in lower light and low ISO's required by the D300s, but it's doable. My 500VR also took the TC17EII well with my D300but you had to stop it down to at least f8, which is getting quite slow. Forget using the TC20EIII.

As was mentioned -- very important to fine tune w/wo the TC's, especially with the TC14EII which seems to really throws off the AF.

The new canon supertele's are sharp and remarkably light, but keep in mind Nikon has the best sensors. I shot the 1D4 and 800L last year but came back to the D800+500VR combo which IMO is much superior IQ, though is much slower FPS. If you do go with the 500VR you should really consider the D800.

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Gary -- Some Nikon stuff -- and a preference for wildlife in natural light
www.pbase.com/garyirwin
http://photographersonlinemagazine.blogspot.com