In the Field

Morning Dip - Steller's Sea Lion. Great Bear Rainforest, British Columbia, Canada. September 1, 2023.

Steller's Sea Lions can be found almost anywhere that there's salt water in British Columbia's Great Bear Rainforest. In the rougher and more active outer reaches of the Great Bear you can find large numbers of the sea lions hauled together on rocks and islands. In the inlets and inner channels of the Great Bear you tend to find them in smaller numbers and, in some cases, all alone. We found this lone sea lion in a tidal lagoon far from the outer coast and under absolutely calm conditions - and just as the morning mist was lifting off the water. For whatever reason he chose to swim parallel to our Zodiac and surfaced (and exhaled!) in a fairly regular pattern...which allowed me to capture this high-contrast and colourful shot. It was a very sweet and almost calming scene...

I captured this image using a Nikkor Z 400mm f2.8 TC VR S at 400mm (without its built-in TC engaged). Given what I like to shoot, where I shoot it, and my own style, 400mm is an extremely important focal length for me. At present (late autumn of 2023) there are 6 different "lens pathways" to get to 400mm using Z-mount lenses and, until very recently, I owned them all. I also have one remaining F-mount pathway to get to 400mm in my kit - using the Nikkor 120-300mm f2.8E plus a TC-14EIII teleconverter. While the 120-300mm plus 1.4x TC produces extremely high quality results, I'll keep the rest of the current discussion to the Z-mount options.

If I was asked today which lens pathway to 400mm produces the absolute sharpest images overall (factoring in edge-to-edge sharpness and at a wide variety of aperture and subject distances) I could give a very definitive answer: it's the Nikkor Z 400mm f2.8 TC VR S. And, given the price of this lens (currently a little over $18.000 CAD), it well should be!

So how can I say that the Z 400mm f2.8S is the sharpest Z-mount 400mm option with a high degree of confidence? Well...in the autumn of 2023 I was in a fortunate position where I had all 6 "Z pathways to 400mm" in my possession and was able to extensively test them against one another under identical field conditions. In case you're wondering, here's the list of those 6 Z pathways to 400mm:

• Nikkor Z 400mm f2.8 TC VR S
• Nikkor Z 400mm f4.5 VR S
• Nikkor Z 180-600mm f5.6-6.3
• Tamron Z 150-500mm F5-6.7 Di III VC VXD
• Nikkor Z 100-400mm f4.5-5.6 VR S
• Nikkor Z 70-200mm f2.8 paired with Z TC-2.0x

At the time of this writing (15 Dec 2023) I'm planning to produce a detailed report on how the overall performance of these 400mm pathways compare to one another on several fronts - optical performance (including central region AND edge sharpness, quality of out-of-focus zones), usability (including "hand-holdability" and VR performance), and AF performance.

But I'm comfortable revealing right now how these 6 different 400mm options compare in one aspect of optical performance - image sharpness. If we limit the discussion to overall image sharpness it turns out the 6 Z pathways to 400mm rank exactly in the order listed above, with the Z 400mm f2.8 TC VR S being the sharpest 400mm option and the Z 70-200mm f2.8 plus Z TC-2.0x combo being the least sharp (or softest). Note that these comments (and those below) are based on systematic field tests at 3 different distances and over a wide range of apertures (from wide open for each lens to f11).

Like you'd expect - and although I've listed them sequentially above - the progression from "Sharpest 400mm lens" to "Softest 400mm lens" is not linear. Instead, there are 3 clusters of lenses where the lenses in each cluster are very, very similar in overall sharpness to one another and quite different from the other clusters.

I'll call the first cluster the "Professional's Choice" cluster - it includes the first two lenses - the Z 400mm f2.8S and the Z 400mm f4.5S. Interestingly (and not very surprisingly) these are the ONLY two prime (fixed focal length) lenses in this test. So...the two primes are the sharpest - period! However, the difference in sharpness between these two primes is both very minimal and very nuanced - and it varies with aperture shot, distance to subject, etc. And, anyone good at post-processing (and in particular, in image sharpening) could reduce the sharpness difference to virtually unnoticeable. If I am being fully honest, you have to do some pretty extreme pixel-peeping to see any differences in image sharpness between these two lenses - they're both crazy sharp!

The second cluster? It includes the two lenses many would think of as "ultra-zooms" - the Nikkor Z 180-600mm and the Tamron Z 150-500mm. I'll call it the "Still Pretty Darned Sharp" cluster. While I give a very slight edge in sharpness to the Z 180-600mm over the Tamron Z 150-500mm, the main contributor to this ranking is in extreme edge sharpness where the 180-600mm is definitely better. However, in both the central region and half way to the edge (just outside the "rule of thirds" boundary) there is virtually no sharpness difference between these lenses. They're definitely not as sharp as the two primes - and they're definitely sharper than the two lenses ranking below them - but I suspect most users would never notice a sharpness difference under field-shooting conditions.

The third cluster? Two more zooms - the Z 100-400mm f4.5-5.6S and the Z 70-200mm f2.8S plus Z TC-2.0x. I'll call this cluster the "Acceptable for Many Users" cluster. The reality is that if you haven't been exposed to the two Nikon 400mm primes and haven't tried out the two ultra-zooms discussed above, you'd probably be thinking these two 400mm pathways were just fine. But, if you DO compare all the lenses under identical conditions you'd see a large gap in sharpness between these last two lenses and the two primes and a noticeable gap between these last two 400mm options and the two ultra-zooms. And, for the record, even though I have clustered these two lenses together, the Z 100-400mm is a little (but noticeably) sharper at 400mm than the 70-200mm plus 2x TC is.

So...lots of ways to get to 400mm with Z-mount lenses. Some pathways are sharper than others, and not surprisingly, the sharpest pathways are with the prime lenses. If you factor in price, convenience of use, portability, other optical characteristics (e.g., bokeh), AF and VR performance, and overall usability in the field, my own feeling is that the many wildlife photographers would conclude that the Z 400mm f4.5S is their best pathway to 400mm.

Anyway...Here's a larger version (4800 pixel) of this cooperative Steller's Sea Lion:

• Morning Dip - Steller's Sea Lion: Download 4800 pixel image (JPEG: 2.6 MB)

ADDITIONAL NOTES:

1. These images - in all resolutions - are protected by copyright. I'm fine with personal uses of them (including use as desktop backgrounds or screensavers on your own computer), but unauthorized commercial use of the image is prohibited by law. Thanks in advance for respecting my copyright!

2. Like all photographs on this website, these images were captured following the strict ethical guidelines described in The Wildlife FIRST! Principles of Photographer Conduct. I encourage all wildlife photographers to always put the welfare of their subjects above the value of their photographs.

3. This image was captured during my Summer in the Southern Great Bear Exploratory Photo Adventure in the late summer of 2023. Each year I offer trips into two different parts of the Great Bear Rainforest as well as two tours into the Khutzeymateen Grizzly Sanctuary (to photograph grizzlies, of course!). Details about these trips can be found on the Photo Tours page of this website.

Behind the Camera

Morning Dip - Steller's Sea Lion. Great Bear Rainforest, British Columbia, Canada. September 1, 2023.

High Efficiency* Compressed RAW (NEF) format; ISO 500.

Nikon Z 9 paired with Z Nikkor 400mm f2.8 TC VR S. Hand-held from floating Zodiac. VR on in Sport mode. Wide-area Custom (13x3) AF area mode with subject detection on "Animal".

1/2500s @ f4.5; -2.0 stop compensation from matrix-metered exposure setting.

At the Computer

Morning Dip - Steller's Sea Lion. Great Bear Rainforest, British Columbia, Canada. September 1, 2023.

Initial noise reduction and capture sharpening on the .nef (raw) file using the DeepPRIME XD algorithm of DXO PhotoLab 7 Elite.

Subsequent adjustments to the adjusted linear DNG file (exported from PhotoLab 7) and conversion to 16-bit TIFF file (and JPEG files for web use) - including all global and selective adjustments - made using Phase One's Capture One Pro 23. In the case of this image the only global adjustment was a tweak to the white balance. Selective local adjustments performed using Capture One Pro's layers and masking tools. In this case small adjustments were made on 3 separate layers, with one or more highly targeted and selective tweaks to brightness (mid-tone exposure), clarity (mid-tone contrast), highlights, blacks, shadows and color balance). There were no enhancements to the colour saturation of this image during post-processing.

Photoshop modifications were limited to the insertion of the watermark and/or text.

Conservation

Morning Dip - Steller's Sea Lion. Great Bear Rainforest, British Columbia, Canada. September 1, 2023.

Species Status in Canada*: Special Concern (November 2003) - protected in Canada since 1970.

The Steller Sea Lion (Eumetopias jubatus) is the largest of the sea-lions, and males can weigh up to a ton (females are considerably smaller and rarely weigh over 600 lb). Males compete among themselves for females, and successful males end up breeding with several females within their harem.

From the early 1900's through to the 1970's huge numbers of Steller's Sea-Lions were culled for their fur and to remove a competitor (for humans) for salmon. During that time approximately 55,000 sea lions were killed and the breeding population of BC was lowered to about 4,000 animals. Since the Steller Sea Lion first received protection in 1970 the population in the coastal waters of BC has grown to between 18,000 to 19,700 animals (7,600 or so of these are of breeding age).

*as determined by COSEWIC: The Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada