I just got mine today. A B&M store had their last one in stock and held it for me for about 45 minutes until I was able to drive there. I took it out this afternoon attached to my 500, with the 2x, in crop mode. SOOC JPEGs, most at ISO 6400 (I need to turn down the high-ISO NR a bit), 1600mm EFL. I'm in love.
Pius Sullivan wrote:
Has no problem keeping up with the buffle heads does it...
It did really well with the buffies. Shooting back to back with the A9II was an interesting experience.
You really start to see the nuances between the two systems.
I'm not a fan of the leaning reflections from the ES in images 4, 5 and 6.
arbitrage wrote:
It did really well with the buffies. Shooting back to back with the A9II was an interesting experience.
You really start to see the nuances between the two systems.
I'm not a fan of the leaning reflections from the ES in images 4, 5 and 6.
Therein lies one of the deficiencies with the ES, though I have to say that for 80%+ of my shooting it's fine. Perched birds, static animals, large slow moving birds against featureless or homogeneous backgrounds... For those cases where MS is needed, the camera still keeps up with the 12 FPS.
Landing at 20 FPS. Just caught the mallard landing in my peripheral vision, no time for AED, zone worked reasonably well. Apart from my Sony a9, none of my prior Canon SLR's with the exception of maybe the 1dx series would have captured focus as quickly and the a7riv wouldn't have even cycled on by the time it landed. In shade/side lighting, no less.
There are just so many fantastic wildlife photos here; especially birds. I am curious how many folks make use of fill flash at times for their wildlife photography - be it for shadows and/or for catch light on duller days. and for those that do use flash, what flash are you using.
I know this isn't the 'right' forum for this post, so I have made a post in the Gear -> Lighting forum and am just making this post here as a 'pointer' to that post because I would really value the input from the wildlife shooters here. That post can be found at
