amlsml wrote:
Doug, Yes in Benezette. Went in September. Only saw bulls early Am and right before sunset. Heard them all night long, what an incredible sound. Amazing a wild herd in PA. Nice shots! A few more from the trip.
Very nice set, Andy. For the time the elks are active, high ISO is pretty common even at f4. Thank God we have Topaz Denoise.
Folks, how good is this lens on the A1 tracking erratically moving small birds? Let's say a still song bird is taking off and flying away in a random direction. Will it be able to follow with the Eye-AF (switching to head / body if no eyes in focus) or the expandable area? I shoot the R5 + RF600/4 and I'm having hard times shooting this kind of action. The AF cannot react fast enough, and unable to follow quickly (OOF images as a result).
docusync wrote:
Folks, how good is this lens on the A1 tracking erratically moving small birds? Let's say a still song bird is taking off and flying away in a random direction. Will it be able to follow with the Eye-AF (switching to head / body if no eyes in focus) or the expandable area? I shoot the R5 + RF600/4 and I'm having hard times shooting this kind of action. The AF cannot react fast enough, and unable to follow quickly (OOF images as a result).
Hi there,
The 200 AF calculations in a second definitely has its merit. I was in Ecuador last April and had a chance to track some hummingbirds taking off. One aspect that I noticed is most of the time I got to greedy. So, instead of backing away a little bit and relied more on the camera’s cropping ability, my position was too close most of the time. Not only it was tougher to track the small bird but after a few frames, it was out of the frame. The maximum number of frames I got from perching to out of the frame is 8 and I was shooting at 30FPS. In most cases, only a few frames were in frame and in focus. Here is a set of what I did. I realize that it was not flying straight at me though but this is a really fast flyer.
BTW, there is an excellent bird photographer here on FM that recently switched from the R5. And here is his thread that he posted in the Nature and Wildlife forum using the A1 plus GM 600mm f/4: https://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/1721206. I am not talking Canon down, BTW. I am sure the R3 will be an awesome body and can keep up with the A1 but the R5 less so, I am afraid.
docusync wrote:
Folks, how good is this lens on the A1 tracking erratically moving small birds? Let's say a still song bird is taking off and flying away in a random direction. Will it be able to follow with the Eye-AF (switching to head / body if no eyes in focus) or the expandable area? I shoot the R5 + RF600/4 and I'm having hard times shooting this kind of action. The AF cannot react fast enough, and unable to follow quickly (OOF images as a result).
In my experience the use case you described is a low percentage yield of in focus quality images. I shoot a lot of songbirds and most of them move in completely erratic ways and I have had only a handful that I could track from perched to in flight with any degree of success especially with the 600mm focal length or 840mm with the extender. The other factor is that when I am shooting perched I am around 1/400-1/800 for small birds like warblers. Those setting are simply way to low to get decent BIF images of those birds
@AGeoJO Great photos and thank you for sharing your experience! I was quite far from the bird (Ruby-crowned Kinglet). All I got are ~6Mpx crops out of 45Mpx. Not too greedy as you can see. It didn't help much though... As soon as the bird took off - everything is OOF. Those pictures were really awesome. Well, they could be awesome
There's a quite seasoned crowd on this forum, and I'm pretty sure you guys would handle any kind of bird with any kind of camera / lens. That's how I understand this: better the camera - easier to get great results for n00bs like me The R3 is nice but 24Mpx is a bummer for cropping imho. I know people used to crop images from 12Mpx and didn't complain, but it's Q4 2021 and for $500 more I could get twice more Mpx. The number of AF calculations is 120 (not 200, A1) vs 60 (R3). The AF mechanisms are different (OSPDAF + CDAF vs DPAF) so it's probably apple to oranges... I'm not planning to switch from Canon (I love my RF lenses, and I haven't seen anything close to the RF85/1.2 DS in any other system), but I want to give Sony a try. So I've ordered the 600/4 GM + A1 + 1.4xTC. I may just keep this combo for birding. Can't wait to give it a try and compare "first hand". The dealer said ~2 weeks of wait.
Also, unrelated, it seems like Sony doesn't make a short hood for the 600/4 GM. It would be nice to have one. The short hood makes the lens much less intimidating. Another concern - the A1 doesn't offer any tracking in video. It's not a huge deal, I can probably keep using my R5 for videos.
149113 wrote:
In my experience the use case you described is a low percentage yield of in focus quality images. I shoot a lot of songbirds and most of them move in completely erratic ways and I have had only a handful that I could track from perched to in flight with any degree of success especially with the 600mm focal length or 840mm with the extender. The other factor is that when I am shooting perched I am around 1/400-1/800 for small birds like warblers. Those setting are simply way to low to get decent BIF images of those birds
@149113 so basically what I've got is more or less normal and as expected? I live by a forest and we have all kind of small birds flying around. Yesterday it was a tiny Ruby-crowned Kinglet. No problem taking a perched photo but I wanted those in flight...
As you said it's likely not an easy task but I still want to see if the grass is greener on the Sony side
docusync wrote:
@AGeoJO@ Great photos and thank you for sharing your experience! I was quite far from the bird (Ruby-crowned Kinglet). All I got are ~6Mpx crops out of 45Mpx. Not too greedy as you can see. It didn't help much though... As soon as the bird took off - everything is OOF. Those pictures were really awesome. Well, they could be awesome
There's a quite seasoned crowd on this forum, and I'm pretty sure you guys would handle any kind of bird with any kind of camera / lens. That's how I understand this: better the camera - easier to get great results for n00bs like me The R3 is nice but 24Mpx is a bummer for cropping imho. I know people used to crop images from 12Mpx and didn't complain, but it's Q4 2021 and for $500 more I could get twice more Mpx. The number of AF calculations is 120 (not 200, A1) vs 60 (R3). The AF mechanisms are different (OSPDAF + CDAF vs DPAF) so it's probably apple to oranges... I'm not planning to switch from Canon (I love my RF lenses, and I haven't seen anything close to the RF85/1.2 DS in any other system), but I want to give Sony a try. So I've ordered the 600/4 GM + A1 + 1.4xTC. I may just keep this combo for birding. Can't wait to give it a try and compare "first hand". The dealer said ~2 weeks of wait.
Also, unrelated, it seems like Sony doesn't make a short hood for the 600/4 GM. It would be nice to have one. The short hood makes the lens much less intimidating. Another concern - the A1 doesn't offer any tracking in video. It's not a huge deal, I can probably keep using my R5 for videos....Show more →
Sony doesn't make a short hood but one the guys here makes them from a 3D printer and they work fine and are reasonable in cost.
docusync wrote:
@149113 so basically what I've got is more or less normal and as expected? I live by a forest and we have all kind of small birds flying around. Yesterday it was a tiny Ruby-crowned Kinglet. No problem taking a perched photo but I wanted those in flight...
As you said it's likely not an easy task but I still want to see if the grass is greener on the Sony side
I shoot both ruby and golden crowned kinglets as well as 18-20 different warbler species each year and going from perched to in flight with focus and eye AF... very tough ask of the camera and lens especially in the branch obstructed environments I shoot in. You could crank the ISO and SS up so you are essentially shooting perched birds at BIF settings and then try to work out the flight patterns. Maybe figure some common patterns out. Kinglets are so erratic and I think that's a low percentage yield scenario at best. Then post process the hell out of them with Topaz or DXO to get the noise down. It's not my aesthetic though. The other factor is that even with the best AF on the planet at 600mm or 840mm you will lose focus on small objects in motion set against busy background. Plenty of complaints on FB about that but it's common to every long lens and camera make in that scenario
docusync wrote:
@AGeoJO@ Great photos and thank you for sharing your experience! I was quite far from the bird (Ruby-crowned Kinglet). All I got are ~6Mpx crops out of 45Mpx. Not too greedy as you can see. It didn't help much though... As soon as the bird took off - everything is OOF. Those pictures were really awesome. Well, they could be awesome
There's a quite seasoned crowd on this forum, and I'm pretty sure you guys would handle any kind of bird with any kind of camera / lens. That's how I understand this: better the camera - easier to get great results for n00bs like me The R3 is nice but 24Mpx is a bummer for cropping imho. I know people used to crop images from 12Mpx and didn't complain, but it's Q4 2021 and for $500 more I could get twice more Mpx. The number of AF calculations is 120 (not 200, A1) vs 60 (R3). The AF mechanisms are different (OSPDAF + CDAF vs DPAF) so it's probably apple to oranges... I'm not planning to switch from Canon (I love my RF lenses, and I haven't seen anything close to the RF85/1.2 DS in any other system), but I want to give Sony a try. So I've ordered the 600/4 GM + A1 + 1.4xTC. I may just keep this combo for birding. Can't wait to give it a try and compare "first hand". The dealer said ~2 weeks of wait.
Also, unrelated, it seems like Sony doesn't make a short hood for the 600/4 GM. It would be nice to have one. The short hood makes the lens much less intimidating. Another concern - the A1 doesn't offer any tracking in video. It's not a huge deal, I can probably keep using my R5 for videos....Show more →
Sorry about the incorrect AF calculation number. I put it down based on my memory and it is no longer the best, needless to say.
Jon @buffalowolff that makes short lens hoods and also lens caps using 3-D printer. Feel free to contact him. I hope I got his handle correctly, again based on memory only .
149113 wrote:
I shoot both ruby and golden crowned kinglets as well as 18-20 different warbler species each year and going from perched to in flight with focus and eye AF... very tough ask of the camera and lens especially in the branch obstructed environments I shoot in. You could crank the ISO and SS up so you are essentially shooting perched birds at BIF settings and then try to work out the flight patterns. Maybe figure some common patterns out. Kinglets are so erratic and I think that's a low percentage yield scenario at best. Then post process the hell out of them with Topaz or DXO to get the noise down. It's not my aesthetic though. The other factor is that even with the best AF on the planet at 600mm or 840mm you will lose focus on small objects in motion set against busy background. Plenty of complaints on FB about that but it's common to every long lens and camera make in that scenario...Show more →
@149113 Thank you for the explanation and advice.
I'm keeping my ISO reasonably high as well. Took some time to get used to this idea after shooting portraits mostly at ISO 100 I tried Topaz, ON1 and DxO. DxO doesn't support a bunch of Canon lenses, old and new. It recognizes my EF200/2 as "Canon 200/2.8 II" and my RF600/4 as "Canon RF 600/11". Apparently DxO hates Canon So far the ON1 denoiser is my favorite.
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AGeoJO wrote:
Sorry about the incorrect AF calculation number. I put it down based on my memory and it is no longer the best, needless to say.
Jon @buffalowolff@ that makes short lens hoods and also lens caps using 3-D printer. Feel free to contact him. I hope I got his handle correctly, again based on memory only .
No worries - it's still an impressive number. Before yesterday I had no idea Sony doubled it compared to the A9II. I'll keep Jon in mind when I get the lens. The user profile checks out
roadapple wrote:
Joshua, this is such a stunning and Very beautiful Hummingbird, such Vibrant color !!
Thank you very much, Tom! Most (maybe even all) hummingbirds are active during rain. It was raining at a pretty good intensity when I took those images. The white specs in the images are rain drops. That doesn’t take away from their brilliant colors; actually it seems to enhance the vibrancy.
docusync wrote:
Folks, how good is this lens on the A1 tracking erratically moving small birds? Let's say a still song bird is taking off and flying away in a random direction. Will it be able to follow with the Eye-AF (switching to head / body if no eyes in focus) or the expandable area? I shoot the R5 + RF600/4 and I'm having hard times shooting this kind of action. The AF cannot react fast enough, and unable to follow quickly (OOF images as a result).
---------------------------------------------
AGeoJO wrote:
Hi there,
The 200 AF calculations in a second definitely has its merit. I was in Ecuador last April and had a chance to track some hummingbirds taking off. One aspect that I noticed is most of the time I got to greedy. So, instead of backing away a little bit and relied more on the camera’s cropping ability, my position was too close most of the time. Not only it was tougher to track the small bird but after a few frames, it was out of the frame. The maximum number of frames I got from perching to out of the frame is 8 and I was shooting at 30FPS. In most cases, only a few frames were in frame and in focus. Here is a set of what I did. I realize that it was not flying straight at me though but this is a really fast flyer.
BTW, there is an excellent bird photographer here on FM that recently switched from the R5. And here is his thread that he posted in the Nature and Wildlife forum using the A1 plus GM 600mm f/4: https://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/1721206. I am not talking Canon down, BTW. I am sure the R3 will be an awesome body and can keep up with the A1 but the R5 less so, I am afraid.
149113 wrote:
In my experience the use case you described is a low percentage yield of in focus quality images. I shoot a lot of songbirds and most of them move in completely erratic ways and I have had only a handful that I could track from perched to in flight with any degree of success especially with the 600mm focal length or 840mm with the extender. The other factor is that when I am shooting perched I am around 1/400-1/800 for small birds like warblers. Those setting are simply way to low to get decent BIF images of those birds
Thanks. I don't have the FE 600 GM, but instead the FE 400 GM.
The use case you describe is indeed a really tough one.
No matter what focus settings I choose, it's more or less impossible to keep a little songbird in flight, in tracking focus for any length of time or number of frames.
So I am relieved that my gear - A1 + FE 400 GM - is not the only one coming up short for this scenario.
I have used even 1/3200 and 1/4000 s exposure times that didn't help either.
If the bird is perched motionless I can get indeed razor sharp images for much lower shutter speeds.
k-h.a.w wrote:
Thanks. I don't have the FE 600 GM, but instead the FE 400 GM.
The use case you describe is indeed a really tough one.
No matter what focus settings I choose, it's more or less impossible to keep a little songbird in flight, in tracking focus for any length of time or number of frames.
So I am relieved that my gear - A1 + FE 400 GM - is not the only one coming up short for this scenario.
I have used even 1/3200 and 1/4000 s exposure times that didn't help either.
If the bird is perched motionless I can get indeed razor sharp images for much lower shutter speeds.
Yeah those tiny birds are so fast, and everything is happening in a blink of an eye. It's impossible to pre-focus since no one knows where they would go. I was under impression that real-time AF should theoretically help. Maybe in a few generations, but we're getting there!
So I'm lucky enough to join the 600 GM club earlier this week. Got out today for a couple of hours finally to try the lens out and while there wasn't a ton going on the shots I took I was very happy with (not surprise there). I didn't think I'd see that big of a difference with AF speed compared to my 200-600 but it's night and day.
Day started out really slowly in the first location with no wildlife but some domesticated . I think the cat new it was Halloween and tried to put her best scary face on
National Wildlife refuge started good for seeing birds (Red-tailed Hawk, Bald Eagle, 2 Coopers Hawks) but none close enough for photos. Ended at the beach and got some shots of Sanderlings and on crazy fisherman way out on the rocks with the remnants of the storm still throwing up the waves. I'll throw the Sanderlings in a different post so I don't post too many in a single one.
palmor wrote:
So I'm lucky enough to join the 600 GM club earlier this week. Got out today for a couple of hours finally to try the lens out and while there wasn't a ton going on the shots I took I was very happy with (not surprise there). I didn't think I'd see that big of a difference with AF speed compared to my 200-600 but it's night and day.
Day started out really slowly in the first location with no wildlife but some domesticated . I think the cat new it was Halloween and tried to put her best scary face on
National Wildlife refuge started good for seeing birds (Red-tailed Hawk, Bald Eagle, 2 Coopers Hawks) but none close enough for photos. Ended at the beach and got some shots of Sanderlings and on crazy fisherman way out on the rocks with the remnants of the storm still throwing up the waves. I'll throw the Sanderlings in a different post so I don't post too many in a single one....Show more →
Congratulations on your new lens palmor.
Terrific images, I like especially the cat one.
The R3 is nice but 24Mpx is a bummer for cropping imho. I know people used to crop images from 12Mpx and didn't complain, but it's Q4 2021 and for $500 more I could get twice more Mpx. The number of AF calculations is 120 (not 200, A1) vs 60 (R3). The AF mechanisms are different (OSPDAF + CDAF vs DPAF) so it's probably apple to oranges... I'm not planning to switch from Canon (I love my RF lenses, and I haven't seen anything close to the RF85/1.2 DS in any other system), but I want to give Sony a try. So I've ordered the 600/4 GM + A1 + 1.4xTC. I may just keep this combo for birding. Can't wait to give it a try and compare "first hand". The dealer said ~2 weeks of wait.
So far the ON1 denoiser is my favorite.
