jhapeman wrote:
Yes, I have been able to spend about 3 hours out near my feeders (in the freezing cold) and I 100% would concur with you--if they come towards you there is a delay to capture focus again, however I'd say its more like 1/15-/130s after I turned the Bird setting to be head-eye only and the stickiness to 5. Before that it was more like what you were seeing.
Further away it's much better. I was also using my 600/4 and also close the the MFD. One thing I would add is that you need shockingly high shutter speeds at the MFD with small birds. Even 1/4000s was often not enough.
Ha ha guess where I was having my photography experiments, Jeff Bird feeders!!!
I had NO idea that it's possible to focus just on the head, and I don't know how I missed this. I just select "bird" and that's it, without getting into details. It's a shame to get the camera sooner than most people here but didn't bother to RTFM... I didn't notice the arrows in the menu for each subject type either. I feel dumb but at least now I know
Yes, 1/4000 was also my starting point. I tried to stay around 1/6400-1/8000 to make sure I'm getting actual OOF images and not just some motion blur. Those tiny feeder birds are extremely agile, and they take off and accelerate at mind blowing speeds.
Anyways, thank you so much for the tip - I have no choice but spend more time by the feeders tomorrow. Just one question - will the "eye" only mode work faster than the "eye/head"? Assuming I only want eyes in focus, do I need to worry about the head?
Unrelated - I really like videos from this camera, especially those involving panning. They are out of this world smooth. Even the A1 can't do this smooth, not even close. If I follow a moving person by panning the camera - it looks like someone is just scrolling background and the person remains static. I have never seen this in my life before. The S-Log starting ISO is a little too high so I had to repurpose my photography ND filters, but it's really awesome nevertheless.
The thing I find great is that my wings seem much more symmetrical. Perhaps it is my imagination or simply the nature of the angles but a lot of the A1 images seem to have slightly unnatural looking longer top wings and curvatures.
duncang wrote:
The thing I find great is that I my wings seem much more symmetrical. Perhaps it is my imagination or simply the nature of the angles but a lot of the A1 images seem to have slightly unnatural looking longer top wings and curvatures.
I think the fast scanning sensors in A1 and Z9 still distort the wings on very fast movements but it is hard to notice and close enough that we never complain about it. Only now with the GS we may see what it should really look like.
Following on my other comment, changing the AF to just the head + eyes on the bird seems to be the best so far for small birds, as I am getting more keepers in a sequence. I also have had better success setting the Recognition Sensitivity to 4 (I tried 5 and that was too likely to jump off of the bird to a false match) and tracking persistence to 5 (Locked On). Shutter speed seems to have be 1/5000 at a minimum for most the small birds.
Here's a launch sequence of a House Finch where it stayed very nicely locked on the eye. Like Duncan, I think this camera exposes some very slight subject distortion at the wingtips that I've seen on the A1. That wingtip is going to be at the maximum velocity of any object in an image like this when they are beating their wings. I can't wait to try this with some hummingbirds next month. Nothing artistic here, just an example sequence. BTW these were at ISO 1000 but pushed one stop up, no noise reduction and just using the default Camera Standard profile in LR 13.2.
arbitrage wrote:
I think the fast scanning sensors in A1 and Z9 still distort the wings on very fast movements but it is hard to notice and close enough that we never complain about it. Only now with the GS we may see what it should really look like.
I agree. It does look a bit better with the a93. Think the global shutter makes a difference for the wing tips!
jhapeman wrote:
Following on my other comment, changing the AF to just the head + eyes on the bird seems to be the best so far for small birds, as I am getting more keepers in a sequence. I also have had better success setting the Recognition Sensitivity to 4 (I tried 5 and that was too likely to jump off of the bird to a false match) and tracking persistence to 5 (Locked On). Shutter speed seems to have be 1/5000 at a minimum for most the small birds.
It's impressive how the camera is not distracted by the busy background. I'm pretty sure my A1 would jump to a random branch in this situation.
jhapeman wrote:
Following on my other comment, changing the AF to just the head + eyes on the bird seems to be the best so far for small birds, as I am getting more keepers in a sequence. I also have had better success setting the Recognition Sensitivity to 4 (I tried 5 and that was too likely to jump off of the bird to a false match) and tracking persistence to 5 (Locked On). Shutter speed seems to have be 1/5000 at a minimum for most the small birds.
Here's a launch sequence of a House Finch where it stayed very nicely locked on the eye. Like Duncan, I think this camera exposes some very slight subject distortion at the wingtips that I've seen on the A1. That wingtip is going to be at the maximum velocity of any object in an image like this when they are beating their wings. I can't wait to try this with some hummingbirds next month. Nothing artistic here, just an example sequence. BTW these were at ISO 1000 but pushed one stop up, no noise reduction and just using the default Camera Standard profile in LR 13.2.
I haven't investigated but is it possible to setup up the shooting mode with all those specific settings and have access via a toggle button ?
Yes, you can set up a custom shooting set and have it toggle with a button. I mainly end up just toggling where I AF vs. tweaking all of these substrings, so my two toggles I do are between wide and a registered AF point (I use the AE Lock Button for that) and to toggle from any fps to 120fps with the C5 button. In the past I've just set up a different set of setting to one of the C settings on the dial. It all depends on what you shoot and your style. The customization of the Sony bodies is just insane, and it takes time to wrap your head around all of it and master their use.
arbitrage wrote:
I think the fast scanning sensors in A1 and Z9 still distort the wings on very fast movements but it is hard to notice and close enough that we never complain about it. Only now with the GS we may see what it should really look like.
As you said, we didn't really know for sure what they should look like, there was no reference point until now. That's why we never complained either, unless it was too obvious.
Now, we'll be able to learn what the exact shapes and curves look like in reality ... which is exciting!
A74me wrote:
Question, when you shoot at 120 frames per sec and you reach the buffer capacity how long does the camera take to clear the buffer . thanks.
Not very scientific, but I just tested mine and it took approx 11 ~ 12 seconds to finish writing completely from releasing it as soon as the "slow" icon began to show up. I'm using a 1TB AV Pro CFexpress card. and shooting in compressed RAW.
Thanks,
whats the fastest frame rate you can shoot with no buffer limit and instant clearing ? i shoot 300 image stacks of live bugs and cant have a delay waiting for the buffer to clear. i shoot compressed raw as well with my a74 but only 10 frames per sec.
second question i also shoot fine jpeg is the clearing time the same as compressed raw.
Bird feeders!!!
