arbitrage wrote:
I shot the 2-6 for a short while but it was too slow. I got a couple keepers of Barn Swallows. There were three barnies there this morning amongst the VGs. Tomorrow will be good if the EVF comes on
They were already hunting at 7:30 this morning.
Amazing shots, especially the first sequence. Did u say 200-600 was slow to focus or slow SS?
Jemini wrote:
Amazing shots, especially the first sequence. Did u say 200-600 was slow to focus or slow SS?
Just slow aperture for the low light today which forced me to up ISO and decrease SS. I actually just finished going through those shots and do have a number of nice ones I'll post up later.
I posted the complete mating sequence 2 weeks ago in the Nature and Wildlife forum but I left out a few out of the sequence since I didn’t want to overload the number of images in the thread. Here is one of the outtakes...
Maxxus46 wrote:
Some incredible frames in there with unique poses. Were you in the Hi+ 30fps mode? Awesome shots regardless of conditions.
If you are referencing the swallow images then yes I was in 30FPS for most of the morning but then started running out of card space so switched it down to 15FPS. I drained an entire battery in less than 2hrs and filled a 128GB card in Compressed in about the same time. My 2nd battery and 2nd 128GB card were draining and filling fast. I tried shooting in 240Hz with the zoomed out view for the last hour or so. Jury is still out if that was any better. I think I prefer 120 with the bigger FOV.
Oh and of interest, in one sequence with the 200-600 where I could steady my panning I did get the BEAF to activate on the swallow while in flight....incredible!! (not that it matters or helps with anything but still incredible).
multibit wrote:
Damn Geoff very impressive
You using Zone or wide for these and eye AF off when doing these fast action shots ?
I used Wide for all the swallow shots with Eye-AF active. I amazingly did get the Eye-AF to show up on one swallow sequence when my panning was very steady. Maybe I should try and turn it off just to not have the camera trying to over think things. No idea if that matters or not??
I tried Wide:Tracking a few times and it was working pretty well also but there is just something I find that I like more about non-tracking Wide. I find in Tracking Wide that if the camera decides to grab a water ripple instead of the swallow that it never recovers where as in non-Tracking it may dance the dots on the water ripples for a second but then often gets onto the swallow right after without any input from me.
One other note from yesterday's shooting is that the camera had a much easier time in the heavy overcast to grab the Violet-green swallows and had a very hard time with the Barn swallows. I assume this was because of the dark color of the Barn Swallow and better contrast of the VG swallow. Today forecast is full sun so I'm heading back to the swallow spot and will try in full sun.
In the past I find that full sun is a blessing and a curse. It is great to get higher SS and lower ISO. Keepers will surely look better than the ones posted from yesterday where heavy NR/Sharpening had to be done. However, I find that the AF systems work better in the overcast conditions. In sun they will get more confused with backgrounds especially at the location I shoot at. We shall see how it goes this morning....that is if my EVF stays awake to let me shoot. Light Dims will be installed to see if that helps for the first sunrise hours.
Wow, you've already got goslings over there? I was almost attacked by a male goose yesterday as I walked past its' mates nest that they had stupidly made in the middle of a walking path
arbitrage wrote:
Just slow aperture for the low light today which forced me to up ISO and decrease SS. I actually just finished going through those shots and do have a number of nice ones I'll post up later.
Thank you. I'm watching what can be achieved with 2-6 and A1. Can't afford 400 or 600 at this point.
Awesome shots. However I think noise started becoming objectionable around 5k. May be not for all situations. It may also depend on quality of light. What do you think?
My very first shots with the A1. I was surprised only a small rectangle area surrounding the focus point with the spot focus blinked when the shutter is pressed. I better turn on the fake shutter sound.
Jemini wrote:
Awesome shots. However I think noise started becoming objectionable around 5k. May be not for all situations. It may also depend on quality of light. What do you think?
Yes, in full sun you can probably shoot ISO 5000 without any issue. Not that I would go that high. Today in full sun I plan to stick at ISO 1600 and max out SS and give myself an extra stop of DOF from my aperture if using the 600GM. But more likely I will just use the 200-600 at f/6.3 as I can certainly track better with the smaller, lighter and more agile lens.
The other big issue is how much cropping you do. These are all still decent crops. You can visit my Flickr page to see View All Sizes to see what the actual crops were.
If I have as many opportunities as yesterday I will also do some back to back shooting with the A9II. Also going to try the 100-400 for a bit and see if the dual linear motors give any advantage over the 2-6 (I doubt it based on all my previous experience).
I should also note that the ISO 5000 and 6400 shots also happened to be the shots that were slightly OOF and therefore reducing them with more sharpening made noise worse. I only bothered with them because of the crazy wing positions in the first two and the bug in frame in the 5000 one. I think those ISOs are pushing things if you are cropping much or if the file isn't perfectly sharp. But in other situations I find I can use those ISOs without issue if need be.
