So I was the first person to receive a Nikon 200-500 f/5.6E lens here in North Dakota, which is pretty awesome considering how photogenic our wildlife is here! 

This was also my first outing with my new D4s as well! It has been super impressive so far, better even than my D4, as unbelievable as that sounds. 

It was really interesting using such a long lens, even longer than my 200-400 f/4 (which I will have a couple comparisons here).

I was very impressed with the performance of the lens, even wide open at f/5.6, and I was just as impressed with the wide open performance at f/8 when it is paired with a 1.4x teleconverter! Here are a couple quick sample photos comparing between the 200-500 and 200-400,  both on my D4. Ubiquitous Prairie Dog shots! 

Very impressive. If I only did wildlife I would seriously consider getting rid of my 200-400, but we will see how the 200-500 does during hockey season before I make that decision. 

I am very impressed by its performance wide-open, as shown above, as well as the color rendition and contrast. Even though it is only f/5.6 you can see that the bokeh is still very nice, more than good enough to help remove any distracting elements in the background. 

Next up are some bison shots taken with the 200-500 with my Nikon 1.4x teleconverter. Personally I have the latest version, the version 3, but I'm sure that the version 2 will perform very well as well, as long as you have a camera capable of focusing at f/8, which my D4s did beautifully. 

And of course the horse photos! Because wild horses are awesome, and more unique than bison, for me at least. Some of my favorite photos from the whole group. 

I also had a lot of fun doing landscapes with the 200-500, as well. Really interesting seeing the compression in the field of view. 

Last photo. This is more of an impression of the D4s than the 200-500, but I am super impressed with how well the camera performs at higher ISO. If you hadn't noticed most of the shots in this post were above ISO 800, because it is a relatively slow lens at f/5.6. I felt comfortable with that because the camera does amazingly there. Great colors, exceptional sharpness and clarity, even at higher ISOs. This next shot was after sunset by about 20 minutes, in the shade, at 500mm, with an f/5.6 lens, and it looks awesome. I have an 8x12 print of it and you can barely tell it is more than iso 800. Madness. 

 Here is a link to the image on flickr, since they don't have any compression like my website does here. 
https://www.flickr.com/photos/crimson_wolf/21414554460/in/dateposted-public/

I love it. Definitely one of my favorite photos of a deer that I have taken.

Anyways, thanks for reading! I'll have another post with other photos from the park, as well as a few posts with images from my week in Colorado, already a month ago. I have been working on my timelapse project for the past month, so the blog and images got put on the back burner. I'll try to get a couple posts out this weekend and next week .

​And a bonus picture of me using the 200-500, taken by my lovely wife. And a picture of her too, taken with the 200-500!

Thanks!

Kevin Fedde
Fedde Studios

And Teddy Roosevelt National Park is pretty much looking exactly the same as it did in my last post (and the first one ever on my blog here!) That being said, though, we (my wife and I) did see a ton more Bison than we did last time, so this is like to be a bison-heavy post. It'll also be a very photo-heavy post, so be prepared for that...

This is going to end up being a 5-camera post, so plenty to look at! 5 cameras: Nikon D4, Nikon D3s, Nikon D7000, Fujifilm X-T1 Graphite, Fujifilm X-T1 with 8 different lenses. Way too much going on, but they do their jobs very very well. 

So many bison herds chilling everywhere. Lots to look at and take photos of. 

Unfortunately they close the long road loop in the park during the winter, so we weren't really able to get out here to get any pictures in the snow, but it still looks very nice in the spring and fall, and even better in the summer. We bought a year-long pass, which I am sure we will use when we come back this summer. It'll be nice to see the park green again, as it has been a couple years since we were there in the summer. 

There was a good amount of younger bison, probably around a year old or so. So not newborn tiny, but still fairly small compared to the adult ones around. While the light wasn't the best (especially compared to the last time we were here) it was still all right. Fairly soft light which leads to a nice lack of hard shadows. 

This guy has magnificent facial hair. Look at that finely groomed beard! 

Of course we couldn't get away without taking some regular landscape photos, as well. 

There is just something awesome about the Nikon D3s sensor. I don't know what it is, but it just gives great colors and a super nice overall look to the photos, something that my D4 doesn't really do. My Fuji cameras are definitely closer in quality to the D3s in that regard. 

There is definitely a distinct difference in the colors between my Fuji cameras and the Nikon ones. The Nikon cameras tend to give a more clinical image, whereas the Fuji ones give a more artistic one, if that makes sense. 

Anyways, as usual it was taking forever to drive around the loop in the park, since we were stopping to get out and take photos so much. But that was the whole point! Also carrying WAY too much stuff. 

We also were on the lookout for some of the wild horses that live in the park as well. While we didn't see as many as we did Bison, we still saw a few. They are way prettier looking than the Bison, as well. There was one brown one near the highest point in the park that was super photogenic with his mane and tail blowing in the wind. 

After moving on a ways we found more wild horses! We were getting pretty close to sunset, so this was going to be our last stop. This next one is another one of my favorites. 

This spot is generally the one that we tend to end up at around sunset, with a nice bend in the river that makes for very nice landscape photos. 

And of course you have to have a massive panorama! Click through the image to get to the full-sized image over on flickr.

And I did manage to get a good shot of a deer. 

That about wraps it up. I'll leave you with one more photo, though. 

Bison are weird. 

Thanks for reading, and thanks for making it all the way to the bottom, this post is a bit ridiculously long.

Kevin Fedde
Fedde Studios