ShootPDX wrote:
There are plenty demonstrations of tack sharp bursts posted around the web.
I think "arbitrage" posted a link to a long burst. Below are a couple from a burst of about 27 images shot in about 1 second of an ex- racer greyhound moving at full speed. All of the shots were tach sharp.
Do you feel it is a better overall performer than the a9/a9II?
Or just a high mp a9 with a few bells and whistles?
How Canon R5 compares as a whole?
From photos I have seen and comments I have read I would say that A1 is probably a stronger overall performer compared to both a9 and R5. But I should let the owners speak first.
I have to say I am very pleased with the A1 so far. The 50MPs allows much more latitude in cropping than the A9 I used to own. These mallards were at least 200 yards away from me when I took the picture.
baltmin wrote:
So what is the verdict after 3 days of shooting?
Do you feel it is a better overall performer than the a9/a9II?
Or just a high mp a9 with a few bells and whistles?
How Canon R5 compares as a whole?
From photos I have seen and comments I have read I would say that A1 is probably a stronger overall performer compared to both a9 and R5. But I should let the owners speak first.
I would say better than the A9II. The AF seems stickier and a lot better ability to crop are the things I like the best.
After what I shot today including Dunlin and Black Turnstone IF, I am pretty confident in saying that the A1 has better AF than the A9II. Better enough to really matter? Probably not. But some of the Dunlin sequences I took as they flew towards me and then landed were almost all in perfect focus with just a few frames slipping to far wing or back on the body. None fully left the subject and over 90% were tack on the head/eye.
Here is another fun gif of one such 81 frames at 30FPS sequence...
arbitrage wrote:
After what I shot today including Dunlin and Black Turnstone IF, I am pretty confident in saying that the A1 has better AF than the A9II. Better enough to really matter? Probably not. But some of the Dunlin sequences I took as they flew towards me and then landed were almost all in perfect focus with just a few frames slipping to far wing or back on the body. None fully left the subject and over 90% were tack on the head/eye.
Here is another fun gif of one such 81 frames at 30FPS sequence...
Hi Geoff, I think that those 30 fps are great for selecting the perfect pose. Beautiful sequences. Love to watch them since they are mesmerizing while observing the real flight you were tracking at location. They also serve for checking your tracking expertise. Congrats for your exquisite compositions and great A1 addition to your arsenal
Okay...here comes the Sunday image dump...but don't worry, now I go back to work for 4 days so you won't be bothered by any more birds until Friday afternoon....
Although I took a lot of bird images in the last 5 days but I am posting a non-bird image. Sorry, I couldn't get anybody lined up on a short notice, at any rate, this image is more to show my point anyway. Yes, the Eye-AF works better than my previous portrait camera and that's hardly surprising. But another plus of this camera, and it is the only camera that I know of, that can trigger flash using the electronic shutter.
Why is this camera also nice for portraits and not only for birds? I used soft flash light here to fill in shadows, barely noticeable but it is there. With the A7r IV you have to use either the EFCS or full mechanical shutter to trigger the flash. The EFCS sound of the EFCS is well-dampened but the pure mechanical shutter is fairly loud. But the mechanical shutter is a tiny bit away in the front of the sensor. The distance, albeit very small but enough to cause the bokeh to become harsher and busier if a shutter speed of greater than 1/1000sec is used. I like using my fast lenses at wide open or close to wide open for portraits and the resulting shutter speed can be 1/2000 sec. or even higher in most cases. With the A1, since there is no spatial separation, there is no negative impact on the bokeh. Just FYI, of course.
arbitrage wrote:
So far it has been working well with the 2-6/1.4. I've only been struggling with the 600/2x. I thought maybe my 2x was a little off but I tested a friend's 2x yesterday and they gave very similar images.
I'm actually liking to just shoot the bare 600GM and cropping even if I'm cropping all the way to a 600/2x FOV or further into what I would have cropped into a 600/2x FOV.
I'm going to be doing some controlled testing of the TCs. Every time I do controlled testing of TCs I usually find that there isn't much benefit from them. But that never translates to me stopping to use them...Show more →
Interesting info Geoff!
I have read a lot about Sony's 1.4 TC being superior to e.g. the Nikon 1.4TC, but it struck me that this was always coming from Sony A9 users. The A9 is "only" 24mp full frame ánd has spot on AF. I was wondering when I heard about the A1 being Nikon D850 eq. pixel density, or D500 crop density, whether the "superiority" of the Sony TC's would still hold up.
Can I conclude that they are also simply limited by the rules of physics after all?
B.t.w. I would assume that 600mm on 50mp FF will be sufficient reach (with cropping) in most scenarios, whereas 500mm is definitely short, hence my eternal wait for that d***d 600mm f5.6 full-blooded prime quality lens.
AGeoJO wrote:
Why is this camera also nice for portraits and not only for birds? I used soft flash light here to fill in shadows, barely noticeable but it is there. With the A7r IV you have to use either the EFCS or full mechanical shutter to trigger the flash. The EFCS sound of the EFCS is well-dampened but the pure mechanical shutter is fairly loud. But the mechanical shutter is a tiny bit away in the front of the sensor. The distance, albeit very small but enough to cause the bokeh to become harsher and busier if a shutter speed of greater than 1/1000sec is used. I like using my fast lenses at wide open or close to wide open for portraits and the resulting shutter speed can be 1/2000 sec. or even higher in most cases. With the A1, since there is no spatial separation, there is no negative impact on the bokeh. Just FYI, of course. ...Show more →
Thank you, Joshua!
Do I understand you correctly, using the EFCS (electronic first curtain shutter) no longer has a bokeh disadvantage compared to the mechanical shutter, even with shutter speeds faster than 1 / 500sec?
(My observations with older A7 models or the A7RIII are the following:
Silent shutter: Reduced dynamic range, various other problems due to the slow sensor readout.
EFCS: Bad bokeh with shutter speeds faster than approx. 1 / 500sec.
Mechanical shutter: Visibly poorer sharpness (for landscape shots) (already starting) at shutter speeds slower than approx. 1 / 100sec, but depending on the lens in question. For example the Sigma 35mm f1.2 is much better for me with the EFCS.)
A1:
Silent shutter: Faster sensor readout, ok. Dynamic range in comparison to EFCS or mechanical shutter?
EFCS: No more bokeh disadvantages regardless of the shutter speed?
HelBen85 wrote:
Thank you, Joshua!
Do I understand you correctly, using the EFCS (electronic first curtain shutter) no longer has a bokeh disadvantage compared to the mechanical shutter, even with shutter speeds faster than 1 / 500sec?
(My observations with older A7 models or the A7RIII are the following:
Silent shutter: Reduced dynamic range, various other problems due to the slow sensor readout.
EFCS: Bad bokeh with shutter speeds faster than approx. 1 / 500sec.
Mechanical shutter: Visibly poorer sharpness (for landscape shots) (already starting) at shutter speeds slower than approx. 1 / 100sec, but depending on the lens in question. For example the Sigma 35mm f1.2 is much better for me with the EFCS.)
A1:
Silent shutter: Faster sensor readout, ok. Dynamic range in comparison to EFCS or mechanical shutter?
EFCS: No more bokeh disadvantages regardless of the shutter speed?
I apologize if this has already been discussed. ...Show more →
About 0.2 EV DR is lost in silent shutter (full electronic) according to DPR.
Bokeh balls are still cut-off in EFCS (at least at 1/4000s I see it).
Sorry for cutting in, but I found this interesting and wanted to test it out myself .
HelBen85 wrote:
Thank you, Joshua!
Do I understand you correctly, using the EFCS (electronic first curtain shutter) no longer has a bokeh disadvantage compared to the mechanical shutter, even with shutter speeds faster than 1 / 500sec?
(My observations with older A7 models or the A7RIII are the following:
Silent shutter: Reduced dynamic range, various other problems due to the slow sensor readout.
EFCS: Bad bokeh with shutter speeds faster than approx. 1 / 500sec.
Mechanical shutter: Visibly poorer sharpness (for landscape shots) (already starting) at shutter speeds slower than approx. 1 / 100sec, but depending on the lens in question. For example the Sigma 35mm f1.2 is much better for me with the EFCS.)
A1:
Silent shutter: Faster sensor readout, ok. Dynamic range in comparison to EFCS or mechanical shutter?
EFCS: No more bokeh disadvantages regardless of the shutter speed?
I apologize if this has already been discussed. ...Show more →
Ben, thank you for bringing up the advantage and disadvantages of using the mechanical, electronic and the combo or EFCS. The electronic shutter of the A1 still traverses the sensor but the speed that it does is significantly faster than, let’s say, the A9/A9 II. According to Dave here: https://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/1691342, it does so some 2.43X faster. The speed is sufficient to get a sync seed of (almost) 1/250sec for studio strobes. But if you use the hi-sync speed of your speed lite, that should be fine. I tested my flash setup at hi-sync and I didn’t see any disadvantages of that for outdoor settings, again, used for fill lights and not as main lights. I venture to say that the electronic shutter built into the A1 is another step closer to a global shutter, still far away to be qualified as such for a FF sensor. Global shutter exists already but only for smaller sensor size and here, we are dealing with a FF sensor.
The next question would be the DR. I don’t have any means to evaluate that. In general, I am looking more from the point of view of real life photography. From the last 5-6 days of using this camera, mostly for bird photography, some landscape, and some portraits, the resulting images are as good as coming from the A7r IV. But of course, that was far away from a scientific evaluation and I didn’t do any side-by-side comparison either. I didn’t use my A9/A9 II for anything else except for wildlife/bird photography. But I will be using my A1 more as a universal camera, a “jack of all trade” camera so to speak but at the same time, a master of several. At this point, I still prefer using my A7r IV for landscape/cityscape, simply the higher resolution, albeit a little, is still there and I don’t need the superb AF performance for that type of photography. For anything else, the A1 will be doing the task.
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