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Archive 2021 · Sony A1 w/200-600mm & 2x Teleconverter Birds in Flight Challenge

MJR63
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p.1 #1 · p.1 #1 · Sony A1 w/200-600mm & 2x Teleconverter Birds in Flight Challenge

Hi Everyone,

I have Sony A1 w/200-600 & 2x Teleconverter and I've been getting into bird photography. Stills are fantastic and love the 50MP cropping ability however I'm having an issue with getting good images with birds in flight that are high in the sky. Both days were decent light. The images are not in focus and have lots of noise. I've been trying to shoot a hawk circling in the sky. The camera is picking up the bird in flight and tracking it but I'm not getting good results....Here are my settings:

RAW
F11
2000+ shutter
Auto ISO
Zone auto focusing continuous
Continuous shooting High +
Release Shutter Prioity
Bird Eye AF
High Finder Frame Rate

Am I expecting too much from the A1 with lens/teleconver to capture this hawk high in the sky circling? What are others experiences?

Any help would be appreciated!

Thank you!

Oct 10, 2021 at 06:10 AM

palmor
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p.1 #2 · p.1 #2 · Sony A1 w/200-600mm & 2x Teleconverter Birds in Flight Challenge

If you post the photo it will help more (both original and with your edits). If I had to guess that even in daylight your ISO is pretty high and shooting straight up means the bird is in shadows… and bringing those shadows up is making it noisy. This will be made worse depending on how much you have to crop.

Oct 10, 2021 at 06:22 AM

arbitrage
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p.1 #3 · p.1 #3 · Sony A1 w/200-600mm & 2x Teleconverter Birds in Flight Challenge

Get rid of that TC and things will be fine. The only time I found that I could kid myself into thinking that 2x was worth using on the 200-600 was on a low MP A9 camera and for perched birds. On the high MP A1 and for BIF it is useless. Also if you actually need 1200mm to get the bird a decent size in the frame, you had better have the most pristine air imaginable or there is no hope at all. At this time of year that is a rare occurrence.

Lets just say I won't even use the 2xTC on the 600/4GM lens on the A1 for BIF anymore (others will still use it)...on the 200-600...forget about it.

Oct 10, 2021 at 06:31 AM

149113
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p.1 #4 · p.1 #4 · Sony A1 w/200-600mm & 2x Teleconverter Birds in Flight Challenge

As others have said you are asking too much from that combination (A1 + 200-600mm + 2x). On perched birds I have even found the images to be too soft. Even on the 600GM + 2X you need absolutely perfect conditions and light to have any shot at really sharp images. If you're just out to catalog hawks circling overhead there will be enough detail there after lifting shadows to ID birds and that might suffice for your use case.

Oct 10, 2021 at 08:28 AM

gchappel
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p.1 #5 · p.1 #5 · Sony A1 w/200-600mm & 2x Teleconverter Birds in Flight Challenge

Two possible major issues.
One, as noted above, the 2x tc on the 200-600 has sharpness issues.
BUT, you stated you were just getting into bird photography.
If you new to bif/action photography it is tough for anyone to get sharp in flight images at 1200mm.
Lose the tc, get closer and practice.
It took a lot of us years to get even decent at bird photography. It is not as easy as many here make it look.
gary

Oct 10, 2021 at 09:06 AM

MJR63
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p.1 #6 · p.1 #6 · Sony A1 w/200-600mm & 2x Teleconverter Birds in Flight Challenge

Thanks to everyone for their advice and tips....Removed the TC and only used the 200-600mm. My 2nd attempt at my BIF hawk!

Oct 13, 2021 at 10:01 PM

shoot10fps
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p.1 #7 · p.1 #7 · Sony A1 w/200-600mm & 2x Teleconverter Birds in Flight Challenge

With the A1 and 200-600 do you guys get better images shooting in crop mode vs. using 1.4x or 2.0x TC's?

Nov 17, 2021 at 02:42 PM

Mucho Betis
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p.1 #8 · p.1 #8 · Sony A1 w/200-600mm & 2x Teleconverter Birds in Flight Challenge

The long distance between the subject and the camera is an important issue, the large amount of hot/cold air, ambient pollution, etc produces a lack of sharpness impossible to avoid no matter what lens / camera you are using. Of course you'll get better results w/o the TC.... Just use the crop mode to have a 900mm @ f6.3.

Nov 17, 2021 at 02:53 PM

dshao1
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p.1 #9 · p.1 #9 · Sony A1 w/200-600mm & 2x Teleconverter Birds in Flight Challenge

I only use the 2X on the 200-600 (and 100-400) for moon shots.

Nov 17, 2021 at 05:03 PM

dclark
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p.1 #10 · p.1 #10 · Sony A1 w/200-600mm & 2x Teleconverter Birds in Flight Challenge

MJR63 wrote:
Hi Everyone,

I have Sony A1 w/200-600 & 2x Teleconverter and I've been getting into bird photography. Stills are fantastic and love the 50MP cropping ability however I'm having an issue with getting good images with birds in flight that are high in the sky. Both days were decent light. The images are not in focus and have lots of noise. I've been trying to shoot a hawk circling in the sky. The camera is picking up the bird in flight and tracking it but I'm not getting good results....Here are my settings:

RAW
F11
2000+ shutter
Auto ISO
Zone auto focusing continuous
Continuous shooting High...Show more →

---------------------------------------------

MJR63 wrote:
Thanks to everyone for their advice and tips....Removed the TC and only used the 200-600mm. My 2nd attempt at my BIF hawk!

I think you mean f/13 not f/11.

You never stated what was not good about your TC results. OOF?

Your successful shot was f/6.3, 1/3200 sec, ISO 1250. With the 2X TC you would have needed to go to ISO 5000. You have a lot of light. You should be able to get good results with the TC.
I suspect that the main issue is the reduced AF speed at f/13 compared to f/6.3. In order to quickly achieve AF you would need to be pre-focused at close to the right distance.
Another issue with the TC is acquisition of the bird. Since the FOV is half as wide it is harder to find the BIF. I assume this was not your issue.
Motion blur is sometimes and issue, but the amount of motion blur as a fraction of the image size of the bird should not change with the TC, assuming your tracking ability is the same.
The image degradation due to the TC could be an issue (although I doubt it), but even if it is an issue it would be only if you were doing some serious pixel peeping. I have the impression pixel peeping was not required.

I am pretty sure your issue was the speed of AF to lock on and then track accurately, which is significantly degraded at higher f/#.

I also notice your successful shot was at 368mm. If the birds are that close you don't need a TC.

Dave

Nov 17, 2021 at 05:48 PM

duncang
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p.1 #11 · p.1 #11 · Sony A1 w/200-600mm & 2x Teleconverter Birds in Flight Challenge

shoot10fps wrote:
With the A1 and 200-600 do you guys get better images shooting in crop mode vs. using 1.4x or 2.0x TC's?

In my experience I get much better images with the TC1.4 than without(cropping) for the same subject/distance. Never tried the TC2.0 so no idea if that is any good but I doubt I would bother other than for scientific reasons e.g. study/record animal behaviour.

With the TC1.4 you get twice as many pixels on the subject so in general the result should be an image with more detail and, at least with the Sony 200-600 and TC1.4, any loss of sharpness is minimal.

Any loss of light is also offset by using twice the surface area of the sensor. DOF is more or less the same too I would think - haven’t done the calculation to check but DOF is an issue generally when you fill the frame.

This is not an a1 image but serves to illustrate the difference in a 600mm cropped image vs one shot with TC1.4 at 840mm. The camera happened to be in APS-C mode with the TC1.4 so that was FF equivalent field of view of 1240mm (or something like that).

https://duncangroenewald.com/img/tests/TC14_200-600_Samples/Sony_200-600_1.4TC_Comparison.jpg

However if you are downsampling the image then the extra detail won’t be useful but for 4K or 5K displays there is noticeable difference in the detail.

Here are a few from the a1 that would suffer similarly from the lack of detail if cropped from a 600mm image. No way I can get even close to this kind of detail with a cropped 600mm image.

https://duncangroenewald.com/img/tests/TC14_200-600_Samples/DAG02502-DeNoiseAI-standard.jpg

https://duncangroenewald.com/img/wildlife/birds/blue-winged-parrot/DSC06343_DxO-2.jpg

https://duncangroenewald.com/img/wildlife/birds/red-rumped-parrot/DSC01374_1_DxO.jpg

With the exception of the first image the others are all at relatively short distances so little or no atmospheric interference. Even the first one was early in the morning after a wet night so nice clear air.

There should be no reason why you can’t achieve the equivalent sharpness on birds in flight but even very small amounts of motion blur will result in a “painted” look and little micro-contrast as evident in the OPs image.

To get the same detail as in the stills above I had to shoot at 1/8000s to eliminate motion blur in fast moving close up subjects. This at 400mm and subject distance of < 3 meters with the 100-400GM.

https://duncangroenewald.com/img/wildlife/birds/welcome-swallow/DAG02658_DxO-1.jpg

In any event the image above simply serves to establish that it is possible to get crazy sharp images of birds in flight even if from close up and with high iso and DOF challenges. It still took many hours and 10s of thousands of images to capture this.

The motion blur challenges remain largely the same for close subjects and distance subjects. The cause changes - for closer subjects the subject movement has a bigger impact than lens movement while at a distance lens movement has the greater impact.

So how sharp can BIF images be when taken at 840mm ?

These are with the a9 + 200-600 + TC1.4. Look carefully and you can see the second one is just a bit sharper than the first one - this is typical at 1/4000s for close-up bif, where not so many are tack sharp.

https://duncangroenewald.com/img/wildlife/birds/welcome-swallow/DSC08757_DxO.jpg

https://duncangroenewald.com/img/wildlife/birds/welcome-swallow/DSC08769_DxO.jpg

Under the same circumstances A1 images with the same combination would just be more detailed, don’t believe anyone who tells you the a9 images are sharper with that combination because it is not true. At 1/8000s the A1 images would have been razor sharp. The only reason I didn’t use the 200-600 was because of the weight and because I could get close to the birds. I was just using the a9 for those shots to test whether the a9 autofocus was able to keep up - and it does but only just - far more misses in a sequence than the a1.

These below are cropped more than I would normally like and quite high iso but are still pretty sharp and don’t really suffer from the “painted” effect. Bear in mind these terns are very small and white seabirds are quite challenge to get any detail out of their feathers and pale grey doesn’t help either so not easy subjects at the best of times.

https://duncangroenewald.com/img/wildlife/birds/seabirds/whiskered-terns/DAG00426_3_DxO.jpg

https://duncangroenewald.com/img/wildlife/birds/seabirds/whiskered-terns/DAG02450_DxO.jpg

https://duncangroenewald.com/img/wildlife/birds/seabirds/whiskered-terns/DAG00525_DxO.jpg

This pelican and the duck below show good feather detail - well at least the kind I am always trying to get. However lighting plays quite a big part in that as you need the little shadows to be present so bit of angle from the sun helps with that.

https://duncangroenewald.com/img/wildlife/birds/seabirds/pelicans/DSC00976_DxO-1.jpg

https://duncangroenewald.com/img/tests/FE200-600-BIF/DSC01666_DxO.jpg

And there are a few more 200-600 + TC1.4 BIF images here - not sure what others think but they seem pretty acceptable in terms of IQ. Composition and lighting is not the best for many of them but that is another issue entirely.

Ideally view the images on a 4K or 5K display for best results. Avoid zooming to 100% as that will make them look blurred.

Given we have been in lockdown pretty much since I got the a1 I don’t think I have yet been able to get the best out of it with the 200-600. Small birds is more my thing and for that I prefer the 100-400GM.

https://duncangroenewald.com/pages/blogs/blog-page.html?date=2021-11-18

Well that turned into a bit of an essay! :-)

Nov 18, 2021 at 02:06 AM

Kenneth Farver
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p.1 #12 · p.1 #12 · Sony A1 w/200-600mm & 2x Teleconverter Birds in Flight Challenge

thank you so much for the images and text for an excellent answer.
This helps me with my A9ii, A1, 100-400, 200-600, and 1.4xTC
I hope to get out and take photos like these.

Nov 18, 2021 at 08:55 AM

smhoer
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p.1 #13 · p.1 #13 · Sony A1 w/200-600mm & 2x Teleconverter Birds in Flight Challenge

The only time I have had success with a 2x is with my 600GM. Even then, only on cold dry days with little thermal activity.

Nov 18, 2021 at 09:41 AM

MJR63
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p.1 #14 · p.1 #14 · Sony A1 w/200-600mm & 2x Teleconverter Birds in Flight Challenge

Thank you for your detailed response and sample images. Beautiful work! I'm putting my 1.4 tc back on and going to give it another try!

Nov 18, 2021 at 03:35 PM


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