Comparing Long Range Photos
In this test, I grabbed a few camera / lens combos and took photos of a tree top that is 77m / 253 ft from my backyard (as measured by a Leica Rangemaster 2400-R).
Alphabetically by camera make and model, they are:
- Nikon D850 with Tammy 150-600 G2 at 600mm, f/8, full frame hand held
- Nikon D850 with 800mm f/5.6 AI-s, f/11, shot on tripod with cable release. Manual focus using live view.
- Nikon P900 at 2000mm, f/6.5 shot hand held.
- Nikon Z7 with Tammy 150-600 G2 at 600mm, f/6.3 full frame shot hand held.
- Olympus E-M5m2 with Nikon 800mm f/5.6 AI-s, f/11 shot on tripod with cable release. Manual focus using EVF magnification.
I took a couple photos at each setting and picked what I thought was the best at each shutter speed.
I uploaded them into Capture One and did auto exposure correction, but did not do anything with noise reduction or color balance. I saved them as 100% jpeg.
The images are cropped for approximate equal field of view. There was some wind, so not all shots look exactly the same, even within the same camera model. The Nikon P900 images are 3456×3456 (11.9 MP), the Olympus shots are 2482×2482 (6.2MP), and the Nikon Z7 shots are 1538×1538 (2.4MP).
Key to Samples A, B, C, D, E
A = #7, B = #2, C = #9, D= #5, E = #1
1 Nikon D850, 150-600g2
2 Nikon P900
3 Mamiya 6
4 Leica M6 TTL
5 Nikon D850, 800mm
6 Panasonic S1R
7 Olympus E-M5m2
8 Fuji GA645 Pro
9 Nikon Z7
10 Nikon d7200