Anyone have any experience with the Nikon 200-500mm lens or perhaps camera lenses in general? - Forums

Topic starter

Sep 12, 2023

As I've gotten better at focusing and guiding I've come to realize that I'm getting seagull shaped stars in my corners. I normally shoot the Nikon 200-500mm lens wide open at f/5.6 with the Nikon D850, a full frame camera.

Here is a 200% zoom in the upper right corner of an unedited stack in Pixinsight. How far down might I need to stop down to get round stars? Anyone experience this with this lens or camera lenses in general? Just questions for a cloudy night when I cannot get out and try it... I really hope I don't have to go more than a stop to f/8 or things could get dicey...

Thanks!

Benjamin

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Cody Looman

Sep 12, 2023

I used a 600mm f4 for awhile. It suffered from pretty bad coma and had to be refocused constantly. If I stopped it down to f8 I saw a decrease in the coma but also a huge decrease in signal to noise.

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Benjamin DeHaven

Topic starter

Sep 12, 2023

Cody Looman:
I used a 600mm f4 for awhile. It suffered from pretty bad coma and had to be refocused constantly. If I stopped it down to f8 I saw a decrease in the coma but also a huge decrease in signal to noise.

Ouch, 2 stops... stopping down to f11 would be very bad... thanks for your experience!

NeilM

Sep 12, 2023

I love my Nikon 200-500mm lens! I mainly use it for wildlife photography on my full frame D750 but I have occasionally used it for astrophotography

I'm not sure if this will be helpful at all.... but .. here is a 200% zoom at the corner of a recent image of mine with the 200-500mm lens and my D750 camera. This might be a totally useless comparison in which case please discard this message and move on! I shot this wide open (f5.6) but I spent at least 30-40 minutes trying to focus the darn thing. Focus is the reason that I don't use this lens more often - the focus ring has a hair trigger! I put electrical tape on the focuser to ensure that I could only move in minuscule amounts.

Regards
Neil

andrea tasselli

Frequent contributor

Sep 12, 2023

Same lens here. I think you'll be better served using the lens in DX mode and as @NeilM states you need to be very careful during focusing and I'm using a rubber band to make sure I can get the small increments that needs to be used. This is my test shot (@ f/5.6):

Nikkor AF-S 200-500 f/5.6 ED Full Frame Test (andreatax) - Full resolution | AstroBin

privateer

Sep 12, 2023

I wonder how that new Z 180-600 lens does in the corners. I might have to test.

Peter Graf

Sep 13, 2023

I was also surprised when I tried the 200-500 (which I really like for daylight shooting) for astrophotography. With the D7200 (crop sensor) I can confirm the same shapes of the stars in the corners. Likewise with the Tamron 70-200 G2, which on the whole also works quite well.

However, with even smaller sensors it gets better, of course, for example with the ZWO Nikon F adapter and the 533MC-P. I have mounted the ZWO EAF on a wooden plate in such a way that with a toothed belt the autofocus works (comparable to the 3d-printed EAF adapters available for more common "astro" lenses). Unfortunately, there is really a lot of backlash, that you have to compensate, when you move the focus ring. Might be the same with manual focusing. And I have not stopped down and used f5.6 (otherwise I would have fiddled with unscrewing the lens from D7200 while powered on, and so on).

Conclusion for me: it works, but I don't know if I will use it regularly. ;-)

This is a single debayered and stretched light frame, top left corner at 200%. Optolong L-Pro filter, 300s, on iOptron GEM28 mount.

This is a combination of five of these light frames with some basic processing.

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Joon Ren

Sep 13, 2023

Maybe you could stop down for the stars but keeps the lens wide open for the main target? Then you can combine them both in post-processing.

Francesco Verardi

Sep 13, 2023

Using photo lenses with a full frame hires camera like the 850 is not easy, in the past I got good results with a Canon 600 f/4 stopped down to 5.6 and an Aps-h camera.

Christian Koll

Sep 13, 2023

Benjamin,

I started astrophotography in 2016 using the Nikon AF-S 200-500mm zoom lens and a Nikon D750 - I took a large number of images with it.

Examples of my pictures taken with this lens on Flickr:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/147135308@N08/40130260293
https://www.flickr.com/photos/147135308@N08/43406730451
https://www.flickr.com/photos/147135308@N08/39488308135
https://www.flickr.com/photos/147135308@N08/38460633215
https://www.flickr.com/photos/147135308@N08/34138676123
https://www.flickr.com/photos/147135308@N08/33734712116
https://www.flickr.com/photos/147135308@N08/29482364591

At which focal length did you take the picture from your original post?

I figured out that at the maximum focal length this lens has bad stars in the corners.
That's the reason I used this lens below 400mm focal length only. And yes, I used the lens wide open at f/5.6.

I also had the impression that the image quality of this lens deteriorated a little with time (and I definitely got more "picky" regarding star quality...).
That's the reason I finally switched over to a true telescope in 2020. Today, I only use the AF-S 200-500mm for daytime photography.

Best regards!
Chris

PS: Another tip when using this lens, you've probaly figured out already: Make shure to lock the zoom ring in place with some sticky tape, so your focal lentgh woun't change over your imaging session.

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Benjamin DeHaven

Topic starter

Sep 13, 2023

Yes, sorry, this was at the 500mm end of the zoom range.

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Pavel Karas

Sep 14, 2023

I wonder how that new Z 180-600 lens does in the corners. I might have to test.

I am planning to do some tests on a starfield in the near future. I’ve had a chance to test it on the Moon and landscape and it looks very promising.

Up to 500 mm: very sharp even wide open. At 600 mm: a bit soft wide open but razor sharp between f/9 and f/11 (haven’t tested slower apertures).

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Pavel Karas

Sep 14, 2023

From my experience, it is hit or miss. Most camera lenses are not optimized for the infinity distance but rather for the distances they are most likely to be used at. Not to mention that stars are pretty specific type of object (very bright point source). When capturing stars, artefacts such as this coma are pretty common. This is true even for the telephoto lenses.

There are some models which perform exceptionally well, such as notoriously known Samyang 135mm f/2 (although there might be a slight inconsistency in the quality across manufactured pieces). I would love to hear about some more. :-)

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