Pius Sullivan wrote:
What is he shooting in, is that called wide zone in Sony terms or just zone?
I noticed the dancing dots does not go outside the square.
As per above, he was in Zone but not in Zone:Tracking. Zone Tracking would start within that Zone but then would track outside of it when he lags in his panning. Wide would have probably been okay also and would have just danced the green squares no matter where the kite flew in the scene.
I do prefer Zone (non-tracking) just to give the camera a little more direction as to where to look and what to ignore. But then you need a bit more skill and shooting off a tripod is not conducive to keeping a bird that changes direction that quickly in the frame.
I would have used Zone if handholding in that situation but on a tripod I would have used Wide unless I found Wide was regularly grabbing some other thing in the frame.
The trick to Sony AF is that there is a preference for whatever is in the centre of your AF Area programmed into the algorithms. I just noticed this with time/experience of shooting Sony but Mark Galer has confirmed it (supposedly with conversations with Sony) in some of his AF videos.