p.215 #1 · Sony FE 200-600mm f/5.6-6.3 G Image Thread
I went out to the Zoo to try and learn the subtleties of shooting my new (to me) 200-600mm lens. It is different that shooting my 100-400mm lens. A bit more fussy with focus I am finding.
I found a grumpy little mess of a bird so I shot an image of him. I had the 1.4 TC on at the time.
p.215 #2 · Sony FE 200-600mm f/5.6-6.3 G Image Thread
CJMiller wrote:
Thank you! I look forward to contributing to the forum. The A9ii and 2-6 is very impressive. I need to sit down and go through the settings, but I have been too excited so far to take a break from shooting.
Chris
Hey Chris, as long as you're in Iowa, have you been over to the Mississippi River lately.
Lock and dam #18 and #19 have pretty good counts right now for bald eagles.
About 420 at Burlington, and 190 at Keokuk.
Might be worth it to check it out.
p.215 #3 · Sony FE 200-600mm f/5.6-6.3 G Image Thread
davev wrote:
Hey Chris, as long as you're in Iowa, have you been over to the Mississippi River lately.
Lock and dam #18 and #19 have pretty good counts right now for bald eagles.
About 420 at Burlington, and 190 at Keokuk.
Might be worth it to check it out.
I have been to Davenport and Keokuk in the past week. Numbers are very good, but at these locations distance to the subject is the problem. Several friends are shooting the 600f4 with the 2.0tc and still cropping. I live ten minutes from the Coralville Reservoir where the Corps of Engineers has a dam on the Iowa River. Numbers were good last week, with 50-60 eagles most mornings. In the past week I have shot with photographers from all over the country. I will try to post a few pics. On most sequences the eagles are 20-30 yards out, sometimes closer.
p.215 #5 · Sony FE 200-600mm f/5.6-6.3 G Image Thread
First two shots with my new Sony FE 200-600mm 5.6-6.3 G lens on my A7RIV. I had very little time to set up for these two shots. I was closing in on a good spot to check out the nest in a tree on the shoreline of the Connecticut River. As I was approaching the adult bald eagles decided to make a dash for it. I had my camera and lens hanging off my shoulder as I was walking very carefully through 8-10 inches of snow leading downhill to the river's edge. I stopped and swung the camera and lens to my eye and snapped a half dozen shots in a matter of seconds. Fortunately, I had the camera set for proper exposure and a high shutter speed but I didn't realize it was zoomed to a little over 400mm in APS-C crop mode instead of 600mm. These were two of the better ones but some heavy cropping was required. I waited around for about 45 minutes but the two eagles went fishing upriver and didn't return before I had to leave. I'll be back for some more shooting now that I found a nice spot near the nest and riverbank.
p.215 #6 · Sony FE 200-600mm f/5.6-6.3 G Image Thread
Hello all. New member this month. Have contributed some posts on my successful settings and experiences with my A7Riv 200-600 combo. I purchased the A7Riv and 200-600 lens last October despite some hesitation after reading about issues some were having with this combo when shooting birds in flight. I waited until firmware 1.2 was released and after some people reported better success after the update before I took the plunge. Based on a lot of good input from people in these forums and scouring the web for any and all tips to get the most out of this pairing, I felt I had a good baseline to start my adventure with this new gear. I am pleased to say I have been very happy with this choice. I did not experience any of the focusing issues cited by others and after shooting thousands of images I have found over 90% of my images to be in sharp focus and any out of focus shots due to either my error or other non camera issues. While there are features in the A9 series I wish I had, the I feel the versatility of A7Riv is a better match for my shooting style.
Of course the proof in the pudding is in the image results, and reviewing the posts in this topic area has shown great results with the 200-600 lens with a variety of bodies. Anyway, after just recently gaining the means to post some pics directly from my computer I figured it was time to share some of my results with those of you who have been so kind and willing to share yours. So I hope I can provide some images that are both inspirational and/or instructional as to the capabilities of the gear we shoot with and the wonderful nature of the subjects we capture.
Since I am still learning about posting pics I will post here my typical settings and will say upfront that all posted images are resized for email transmission and ease of upload.
My typical setting are:
Shutter priority mode 1/2000 to 1/3200 depending on general light conditions.
Auto ISO limited between 100 - 2500
Continuous AF, in Hi, not Hi+ to get better EVF performance. Short bursts of 2 - 3 shots.
Shutter Release = balanced
Aperture mode = standard
OSS = Off
Mechanical shutter with ESFC
BIF and open ground targets: Zone focus mode without tracking
Obscured static target: Expanded spot focus mode (sometimes with tracking)
All shots are hand held. 90% of time, especially for BIF I shoot in 26MP crop mode at 900mm, often using quick zoom of 200-600 to acquire at 300mm and zoom into 900mm for capture.
Since first of year, all shots are compressed RAW plus extra fine JPEG with each file type written to separate 128 GB memory card with 250mb/sec write speeds to facilitate faster buffer clearing.
p.215 #7 · Sony FE 200-600mm f/5.6-6.3 G Image Thread
CJMiller wrote:
Hey Dave,
I have been to Davenport and Keokuk in the past week. Numbers are very good, but at these locations distance to the subject is the problem. Several friends are shooting the 600f4 with the 2.0tc and still cropping. I live ten minutes from the Coralville Reservoir where the Corps of Engineers has a dam on the Iowa River. Numbers were good last week, with 50-60 eagles most mornings. In the past week I have shot with photographers from all over the country. I will try to post a few pics. On most sequences the eagles are 20-30 yards out, sometimes closer.
That's a fine looking shot, and where you are it does sound like they are closer than at #18.
But sometimes, you don't need to be close.
When there are a bunch, at some point, a few are going to fly near you.
From years back while shooting Canon. Around 600 birds near the dam.
p.215 #8 · Sony FE 200-600mm f/5.6-6.3 G Image Thread
R426 User wrote:
Hello all. New member this month. Have contributed some posts on my successful settings and experiences with my A7Riv 200-600 combo. I purchased the A7Riv and 200-600 lens last October despite some hesitation after reading about issues some were having with this combo when shooting birds in flight. I waited until firmware 1.2 was released and after some people reported better success after the update before I took the plunge. Based on a lot of good input from people in these forums and scouring the web for any and all tips to get the most out of this pairing, I felt I had a good baseline to start my adventure with this new gear. I am pleased to say I have been very happy with this choice. I did not experience any of the focusing issues cited by others and after shooting thousands of images I have found over 90% of my images to be in sharp focus and any out of focus shots due to either my error or other non camera issues. While there are features in the A9 series I wish I had, the I feel the versatility of A7Riv is a better match for my shooting style.
Of course the proof in the pudding is in the image results, and reviewing the posts in this topic area has shown great results with the 200-600 lens with a variety of bodies. Anyway, after just recently gaining the means to post some pics directly from my computer I figured it was time to share some of my results with those of you who have been so kind and willing to share yours. So I hope I can provide some images that are both inspirational and/or instructional as to the capabilities of the gear we shoot with and the wonderful nature of the subjects we capture.
Since I am still learning about posting pics I will post here my typical settings and will say upfront that all posted images are resized for email transmission and ease of upload.
My typical setting are:
Shutter priority mode 1/2000 to 1/3200 depending on general light conditions.
Auto ISO limited between 100 - 2500
Continuous AF, in Hi, not Hi+ to get better EVF performance. Short bursts of 2 - 3 shots.
Shutter Release = balanced
Aperture mode = standard
OSS = Off
Mechanical shutter with ESFC
BIF and open ground targets: Zone focus mode without tracking
Obscured static target: Expanded spot focus mode (sometimes with tracking)
All shots are hand held. 90% of time, especially for BIF I shoot in 26MP crop mode at 900mm, often using quick zoom of 200-600 to acquire at 300mm and zoom into 900mm for capture.
Since first of year, all shots are compressed RAW plus extra fine JPEG with each file type written to separate 128 GB memory card with 250mb/sec write speeds to facilitate faster buffer clearing.
Welcome on FM and on this thread, Gary! I am glad to hear another success story of the A7r IV and the G 200-600mm lens. Judging by the sharp images that you posted, you seemed to have dialed in the setting for using that combo. If I may suggest something to you, please. And that would be for you to look into getting some noise reduction software. Some of your images will benefit greatly if you run them through the software first. There are plenty of them out there and I don't want to recommend one over the others.
Joshua
Danpbphoto wrote:
I never knew of this duck Joshua! Never seen one posted here on FM in 20 years either.
Whatever eqpt you use is just an extension of your skills! Others on this Forum also!!!
Thanks!
Dan
Dan, here is a water level image of a Mandarin duck. I hope you like it. Thank you for your kind words, Dan!
p.215 #9 · Sony FE 200-600mm f/5.6-6.3 G Image Thread
Joshua, thanks for your comments. Some of the images I posted were early shots that indeed did have some noise issues despite demonstrating excellent focus. The small image sizes I uploaded (the image files uploaded were only a couple of MB) probably made the noise even more apparent. I got Topaz De-Noise for Christmas and also started shooting in RAW, both of which definitely improved my results. I will be posting more images that hopefully will show the improved results. When selecting shots to post by only looking at the thumbnails in File Manager I obviously did not notice the noisier images.
p.215 #11 · Sony FE 200-600mm f/5.6-6.3 G Image Thread
Thank you, Douglas. I have a few friends that spend much of their time photographing owls. They have been very helpful. It definitely takes a lot of patience.
p.215 #15 · Sony FE 200-600mm f/5.6-6.3 G Image Thread
Some Osprey Facial Expressions. Shot with A7Riv, 600mm in crop mode , 1.2500, F6.3, Auto ISO (~200-300) hand held OSS off. Osprey was sitting on telephone pole cable. Sat there for an hour. Kept waiting for him to take off, but he outlasted me.
Images were downsized by email application to 1280 x1024, then saved as images for posting and uploaded to forum. Seem to lose a little quality with this process. Any suggestions for improvement?.
p.215 #17 · Sony FE 200-600mm f/5.6-6.3 G Image Thread
Lucky and unlucky with this series, lucky in that the SEO flew in my direction and the a9ii kept tracking it in the low light. Unlucky in that I need more light as I was shooting with the 1.4TC
Cropped to 4096px on the long edge, f10, 1/1250s, 840mm, ISO12800
p.215 #18 · Sony FE 200-600mm f/5.6-6.3 G Image Thread
webmstrk9 wrote:
Lucky and unlucky with this series, lucky in that the SEO flew in my direction and the a9ii kept tracking it in the low light. Unlucky in that I need more light as I was shooting with the 1.4TC
Cropped to 4096px on the long edge, f10, 1/1250s, 840mm, ISO12800
Ken, it looks like you are ready for the 600mm GM lens
p.215 #20 · Sony FE 200-600mm f/5.6-6.3 G Image Thread
I have discovered that resizing TIF files for posting here results in Exif data being stripped. So I have exported this file as a JPEG and resized hoping that Exif data is retained and displayed with image. Please bear with me.
This was a long distance shot over 150 yards, which was heavily cropped to reduced file size, but still exceeded size limit for posting here. At least I hope the Exif data now shows up.
