Spring Bird Migration is in full-swing, and I’ve been out and about photographing birds the majority of the month of April.

For many years I’ve been using the Tamron 150-600mm zoom lens for my bird photography. First the original G1 version, and more recently the newer G2 version. The G2 does have slightly faster autofocus than the G1, and supposedly it works with the special Tamron 1.4 Teleconverter to extend the range and get sharp shots.

In reality I don’t notice a great deal of difference between the two. I think the G2 may be a little faster at acquiring focus at the long end, like for example a bird in flight. The teleconvertor is a waste of time though - I could not get good sharp results with it even with fantastic light, and it wreaked havoc with the autofocus.

While they are good lenses, there have been times when I’ve been let down. Even if I do everything correctly - good shutter speed, panning smoothly, keeping VR off at high speeds and on at low speeds - my keeper rate wasn’t where I wanted to be. Maybe in a 20 shot sequence of a bird in flight I might have 4 to 5 “good” images to pick from but zooming into all of them at 100% often is disappointing with lack of feather details. I might end up with just 1 that’s to my standards if I’m lucky.

On a trip in early April to Killdeer Plains with Eric Wright, there were some fantastic opportunities that I thought I nailed, but when looking at the images at home in Lightroom many were not perfect. It was then that I finally decided it was time to buy a new prime lens, so I finally pulled the trigger on the Nikon 500mm PF 5.6 lens. If I’m spending all of this time and money to get to a location, it makes no sense to me to shoot with a lens that gets me great shots SOME of the time. I selfishly want ALL of the time. I know that’s not a reality but I’d like to be a lot closer to that.

I’ve held off on that purchase because 1) the money and 2) I was afraid that losing the 100mm at the long end would really suck. In reality, due to focus breathing issues the Tamron at 600mm is really closer to 550mm, so its not so much of a big deal. So I’d have to crop in a little more. I’d sacrifice that if things were sharp and in focus.

The lens arrived in a few days and I was able to get out in the field and put it to the test. I’m not going to go into sharpness charts, static test shots, etc. In real world usage, this lens is just simply AMAZING. When coupled with my D500, it autofocuses so fast that you almost don’t see it happen. And its tack sharp, even wide open at f/5.6. So much so that little birds far away can be cropped in heavily and there’s still plenty of feather detail.

Here’s an example straight out of camera - there’s no editing done on these next two images. The original shot - man this sparrow is really far away! And in a bunch of branches.

Let’s zoom in, way in, like just over 100%.

Pretty amazing, huh? If this was a good shot, meaning the bird wasn’t turned away from me, and it was doing something interesting, I could do some noise reduction, some sharpening, etc, and end up with something more-than-good-enough for social media or a small print. Honestly I’d probably never crop in this far, but if I had to, I could. What that translates into for me is the fact that if I do everything right and put a lot of megapixels on a bird, its going to be sharp and have plenty of feather detail.

Here’s one more test shot. A squirrel on my neighbors fence. Again, no work has been done at all to the image, it’s straight out of camera.

And zoomed in at 100% to show the detail before any sharpening or processing is done.

The next weekend I went back to Killdeer Plains. Here’s a few images from that second trip.

This next shot, a female Red Winged Blackbird, was shot at Killdeer with the 500PF and the Tamron 1.4 teleconverter on as a test. It’s tack sharp. I won’t hesitate to use it again if I find myself in good light and can afford the ISO to shoot at f/8 and an effective 1050mm on the D500.

Since that second Killdeer trip, I’ve hit numerous hotspots in my local area and have come away with some shots that I’m really happy with.

So far my thoughts are that this lens is a keeper and will really enable me to get the most out of the time and effort I put into bird photography. I’ll check back in as I get more time with it.

Stay tuned,

Jeremy