Well done, Ronny! I gave up doing manual focus on wildlife long time ago . But each time you nailed it, it made you feel good. You are using an AF lens though but probably the AF couldn't keep up with a BIF, huh?
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From earlier in the morning today...
Thanks Joshua.
The Vermilion Flycatcher's wings are fantastic!
Wow, it's been a while since I've posted here . . . way to busy and that pesky day job gets in the way. However, I found a few moments in downtown Cleveland to do some walking around.
Sigma 50mm f/1.4 Art is a weird lens. With 24Mpix (Kolari v2 mod, no AA-filter) camera focus plane does not gain anything by closing down. Also boke quality does not improve by closing down, actually larger blur caused by wide open shooting many times hides bad qualities of boke, and the boke issues are more visible when closed down. So I mostly shoot this lens wide open, as narrow DOF suits most of my subjects as long as I take the narrow DOF into account when I compose the image.
I also use Alpha mount Sony ZA 50mm f/1.4 SSM, which is the last and best(technically in focal plane) Zeiss Planar [Sony FE 50mm f/1.4 is only having name "planar" in the lens name, the design itself or rendering style has nothing to do with double gauss design what is the traditional meaning behind word "planar" in "Zeiss-dictionary"]. And I like the Sony more for some subjects, but in my use it needs to be closed down f/1.7-2.2 depending on scene. Additionally I also use Zeiss "classic" 1.4/50 ZE, which has best boke & rendering style of any normal lens (subjective opinion) at optimum apertures f/2.2-2.8. Would be nice to have all good qualities in single lens, but that is most likely not going to happen...
Sigma 50mm f/1.4 DG HSM Art @ f/1.4, 1/30s, A7 (Kolari v2) @ ISO 100, Hoya HD CIR-PL 77mm
