AGeoJO
Offline
• • • • • • •
Upload & Sell: On
|
bowens wrote:
Welcome back Joshua. Definitely looking forward to your the images from your trip. Did you only take and use your Sony gear or did you also take your Canon gear since the majority of the time was wildlife? Butch
Gunzorro wrote:
Great to have you back, Joshua! Looking forward to your images, as always! 
Thank you, Butch and Jim! Good to be back!
I had my A7r II (used approximately 90% of images), A6300 (used 5%) and Canon 7D Mark II (used 5%, if I know that fast AF was critical) on this trip. For this particular type of photography I knew that my keeper rate would be lower than a pure Canon setup.
Hummingbirds were one of my main targets. Here at home, at least in Southern California, they are fairly rare and are not that colorful. Over there in CR, they are a lot of them and the variety is quite a bit. After a short observation, I noticed they like to go back to the same flowers, typically the most colorful ones that are a tad taller than the rest. Forget about focusing on the hummingbird, let alone following them while they are flying. Frankly, most of the time, I just focused on the flowers using my longest lens, give ample room on around the flower stalk and just wait for the hummingbird to get there. That's when you just used the "spray and pray" method, taking 10-15 shots of more hoping that one of two images would be in perfect focus. I always use my back button AF. So, when I press the shutter button, I didn't refocus on the target.
If I had a Canon, I would still prefocus on the flowers but I would try to refocus or follow focus on the hummingbird head while it is hovering near the flowers. Seriously, you can forget about doing that using the Sony with Metabones. In many cases, it would even do that on a fairly small static target where the background was prominent, regardless of the size of AF point used. Both the A7r II and A6300 experienced the same issue. A shooting buddy of mine had a m-4/3 Olympus, and it does the exact same thing. So, it is more inherent to the mirrorless system, it seems.
No issue for landscape, people photography, or cityscape and any other slow pace photography, but I must be honest here, the AF in both the A7r II and A6300 was tested big time and it reared its ugly head on this trip. I put it a lot of effort to get the most out of the setup for this trip and I try to be creative and again, I got lucky more than just a few times. And I am counting my blessing.
In CR it was hot, humid and has mosquito issues. I hate mosquitos but they are the main reasons for the proliferation of a lot variety of frogs, of course .
Edited on Jul 17, 2016 at 03:35 PM · View previous versions
|
