I recently bought a Nikkor 200-500 f/5.6 lens. I've been trying it out with several kinds of subjects and results have been a little mixed.

When the subjects are close (example photo) the focus is sharp. This bird was around 5m away from me, and I was using a 1.7 teleconverter as well.

But when the subjects are far away, the image is very soft (example). This person was probably 200-300m away. 1.7x TC was on.

Another example without the TC, subject hundreds of meters away.

Does this mean that:

• My shutter speed is too slow for the distance?
• The air softens the image?
• The lens simply cannot focus that far?

I don't expect this to be a problem with the lens itself as the lens is brand new and it gives beautiful images when focusing "not-so-far-away". The teleconverter doesn't seem to soften the image significantly either.

I recently bought a Nikkor 200-500 f/5.6 lens. I've been trying it out with several kinds of subjects and results have been a little mixed.

When the subjects are close the focus is sharp. This bird was around 5m away from me, and I was using a 1.7 teleconverter as well.
_{Click any for full size}

But when the subjects are far away, the image is very soft . This person was probably 200-300m away. 1.7x TC was on.

Another example without the TC, subject hundreds of meters away.

Does this mean that:

• My shutter speed is too slow for the distance?
• The air softens the image?
• The lens simply cannot focus that far?

I don't expect this to be a problem with the lens itself as the lens is brand new and it gives beautiful images when focusing "not-so-far-away". The teleconverter doesn't seem to soften the image significantly either.