where there’s smoke there’s fire

Nicolas Stettler (www.nicolas-stettler.ch, Instagram) is a 17 years old wildlife photographer from Switzerland. He bought the Nikon AF-S NIKKOR 500mm f/4E FL ED VR lens and sent me this article where he compares it to his older lens:

Nikon AF-S NIKKOR 500mm f/4E FL ED VR lens review: after 3 months of use

How and where I bought the lens

I recently fulfilled a long-lasting dream of buying a better tele lens. I originally intended to buy a second-hand 500mm G, the older version. When the lens finally arrived, the AF made some very weird noises. While it could have been because the lens wasn’t used for a long time, it could have also been damaged during transportation. Either way, the noise maybe would have gone away with using it for a bit. While this could have solved the issue, using it more could have also damaged the AF completely. Repairing it would have cost a lot of money as the guarantee had already expired.

When contacting the dealer, he informed me, that he also had the newer version, the E version of the lens for sale. The newer version was even more expensive. But considering I might have needed to pay the same amount for a repair of the older lens, I decided on buying the newer version in the end.

The lens had no signs of wear whatsoever. The lens came together with a solid case, a strap, and a lens cover. The Lens cover is not from Lenscoat though, but instead from Rolanpro. While it has some significant advantages to the Lenscoat, it has also some major drawbacks. Because the edges of the Lenscoat aren’t sewed, the Lenscoat tends to fray after a couple of years. On the Rolanpro, the edges are sewed and shouldn’t start to fray. But because the Rolanpro uses normal, inelastic fabric and not neoprene, it’s wrapped around the lens and held together with Velcro. To make sure that the cover stays in place, you have to tighten the fabric by so much, that the fabric overlaps by a bit. This can result in the adherence of multiple pieces. This is especially painful at the focus ring. When you never use manual focus, this is not a problem at all. If I want to film and use the manual focus ring, I always remove this piece.

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