Nikon 500mm PF lens – a game changer

The Nikon 500mm PF lens is amazing for wildlife photography. During my recent Uganda mountain gorilla photography tour I had my first chance to test Nikon’s 500mm 5.6 PF lens. I’ll put a few photos and thoughts below on using this lens in the field so to speak.

A Blue cheeked Bee-eater about to snag a dragonfly taken at 5.6 ISO 400 and a shutter speed of 1/1000th. For my first outing with this lens I walked down to the Botanical Gardens, Entebbe, which is a great spot for birding. And that sentence says a lot … I walked there and then wandered around for a good few hours. The Nikon 500mm pf lens is so small and lightweight compared to other quality telephotos that it immediately gives you an advantage of utter portability. When I saw this Bee-eater catch a couple of dragonflies I could bag a shot of it hand held.

Nikon 500mm PF 5.6 lens quality

This lens is a total game changer for wildlife photography producing clean, sharp images. The Malachite Kingfisher below was taken hand held on a moving dug out canoe in the Mabamba swamp. F5.6, 1/1000th sec, ISO 450.

We had a great sighting of a Shoebill here and again this lens nailed really sharp images of this bird both static and in flight hand held from a dug out canoe. This lens is fast and the autofocus locks onto your target nice and quickly.

Nikon 500mm PF 5.6 lens image stabilisation

The image stabilisation on this lens is supurb meaning ou can still hand hold it at quite slow shutter speeds to capture a sense of movement. I shot these Africa Skimmers hand held on a boat at just 1/40th sec which produces the effect in the wings.

A change of continent now … the quick focusing ability enabled me to get this shot of a Proboscis monkey in Borneo at the exact point it hit the river when it hurled itself from height.

The focus also nailed these Condors in the Colca Canyon Peru in pretty poor light.

And closer to home a Herring gull silhouted against the full moon

Nikon 500mm PF 5.6 conclusion – pros and cons

The Nikon 500mm pf 5.6 is a superb lens. It instantly solved my need for a longer telephoto lens that is lightweight. But ultimately it all comes down to image quality and I’m pleased to report that this lens is very sharp and fast. I’ve used a Nikon 200-400 F4 for many years and this lens matches that for image quality I think – at a size and price of about half. You’ll also miss far less shots than with a large telephoto as this is so easy to use hand hold.

There are only a couple of drawbacks with this lens. The 5.6 aperture is never going to let you isolate subjects from their background as well as a 2.8 lens of course but I was pleasantly surprised. I shot the golden monkeys below recently in the high bamboo forests of the Virungas and the background is more than useable.

For bird photography this is the perfect lens allowing sharp shots hand-held.

The other drawback is something that most Nikon lens suffer from and is only a minor inconvenience. The lens hood is sometimes hard to align properly to put it on. At the time of writing the Nikon 500mm pf 5.6 lens is hard to get hold of and you might have to wait a while after your order. Thanks to Greys of Westminster for getting hold of one for my at short notice.

Nikon 500mm pf lens wildlife photography with 1.4 adaptor.

Adding hardly any weight my Nikon 500mm pf lens becomes a 700mm f6.3.

I’ve been running Borneo orangutan photography tours in partnership with the Orangutan Foundation UK for over 10 years now and recently used the Nikon 500mm pf lens for wildlife photography in the rainforest for the first time with my 1.4 adaptor. Below are a few photos taken using this lens in Borneo.