aae991 wrote:
That's amazing that you can get that close! Birds here in the midwest U.S. are too skittish to tolerate such close distance - at least where I love. Plus we are in a moderate drought right now, so many of the birds have moved elsewhere looking for reliable water supplies. I'll have to expand my search for more dependable sites. Thanks again for sharing those beautiful photos.
Same around here. The only way I could get 15ft from a Kingfisher is it would have to be dead I just look at them and they fly off.
Vikasmal wrote:
Few more from the weekend. Though with the monsoon season here in New Delhi, its quite gloomy and rainy out so have been using ISO 3200 for all shots. Also find that the eye detect hunts a lot when the light is low so have to shift to point AF a few times. Seems to work way better when the birds are in sunlight which sadly I havent had the opportunity to shoot much.
Mine were. I am not sure if I used anything else yet The eye does not get picked up on everything, the swallows as an example, it picks the head over the eye. I little too far out to grab just the eye at that speed. It does a fantastic job on most things.
Focussing on the bird's head is just as good as eye focus IMO.
RobAmy wrote:
Mine were. I am not sure if I used anything else yet The eye does not get picked up on everything, the swallows as an example, it picks the head over the eye. I little too far out to grab just the eye at that speed. It does a fantastic job on most things.
aae991 wrote:
That's amazing that you can get that close! Birds here in the midwest U.S. are too skittish to tolerate such close distance - at least where I live. Plus we are in a moderate drought right now, so many of the birds have moved elsewhere looking for reliable water supplies. I'll have to expand my search for more dependable sites. Thanks again for sharing those beautiful photos.
Same here, except when I'm with my friend, the bird whisperer. She seems to have them come closer than they ordinarily would.
Although, I did get a red-tailed hawk sitting on the deck railing a couple of years ago in the rain. I opened the door and stuck the 500 mm lens out (it's what was on the camera at the time) and it didn't move. I took a number of wet head-and-shoulder hawk pictures. Very unusual circumstance.
bobbytan wrote:
Focussing on the bird's head is just as good as eye focus IMO.
Yes, having the head on all these smaller birds is all one needs...the focus plane will take care of the rest. If the bird is really close then the eye-af may make a difference.
Head AF is actually what Sony needs to work on. Right now when Animal-Eye-AF does activate on birds (or even on animals) it is only EYE-AF...there is no head AF and this is why I think it takes frame filling birds for it to actually work on birds (even though it isn't supported officially). Hopefully Sony will save me $10K by giving me the AED update for my existing cameras soon
arbitrage wrote:
Yes, having the head on all these smaller birds is all one needs...the focus plane will take care of the rest. If the bird is really close then the eye-af may make a difference.
Head AF is actually what Sony needs to work on. Right now when Animal-Eye-AF does activate on birds (or even on animals) it is only EYE-AF...there is no head AF and this is why I think it takes frame filling birds for it to actually work on birds (even though it isn't supported officially). Hopefully Sony will save me $10K by giving me the AED update for my existing cameras soon...Show more →
But even if Sony adds the Head/EyeAF, you’d still only have a 20-something MP camera.
A few from last week. The camera did struggle to do eye af for a running dog with 135 F2 lens. The doggo model was black, somewhat similar to bears so I am looking forward to how this works out.
Not top-notch work, but as they days start getting shorter, the shadows in the yard start growing longer.
I gave a little exercise to some higher iSO, cleaning up the images in LR - always a tradeoff between sharp detail and noise. I'll throw a couple of images out there just for fun.
Bambi's little sister wandered across my yard this evening.
I just look at them and they fly off. 
