reggieb
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 p.4 #10 · Is Nikon AF (Z9/8) really that much worse? | |
groob wrote
I have no idea how a camera could be materially better at shooting perched birds than a Z9. I’m not sure I have a single out of focus photo of a perched bird with the Z9, or even a woodpecker moving all around a tree. And again, the Z9 will pick out a tiny bird on a stick in a busy woodland setting at ~40 yards. If you want more than that, I’d suggest changing your shooting style.
Just last weekend, I shot some woodpeckers, egrets, and a great blue heron with my Z8 and a couple herons and egrets with a Panasonic G9II.
I just find that interesting, because you mention woodpeckers specifically, including one that was going around the tree - and I just had that exact subject yesterday. The Z8 nailed that scenario no problem at all. With the 85mm f1.2 no less (I wasn't planning to go birding, I was on a walk with my daughter when we spotted them).
As others have mentioned, it's long-necked birds that the Z8/9 have trouble with. The blue heron was behind my house in the pond, so I went and got a tripod and everything. The Z8 absolutely refused to focus on the heron in any subject detection mode. It would occasionally find it, but the box would jump all over the bird and remain focused on the grass in front of it 75% of the time and would never stay on the bird. Because of the tripod, I just switched out of subject detection, put a single point on its head, and nailed focus that way. The heron was around half of the frame at this point, because it was behind a berm, had it been out from behind that, it would have been probably 75-80% of the frame. But that is the exact scenario those cameras perform worst with, a partially obscured, long necked bird.
The G9II later that day, with a little snowy egret filling maybe 25% of the frame, nailed focus on it through grass without any issue at all. That's a camera most folks would never think has a better AF system, and it truly doesn't, but its Achilles heel isn't the same, either.
It is what it is. At the end of the day, I got focus. I don't have trouble with most BIF, or honestly, most situations. But the Z AF system has trouble with long-necked birds. This is a phenomenon that a lot of people have documented, including some of the great photographers in this thread. It's not anywhere in the remote ballpark of a deal-breaker, but it's not a made up issue, either. That said, I got the same birds all day long with my D3s, with my D500, and I can just use other autofocus modes on those birds. I was mostly just testing a ton of scenarios because I had a blue heron, and later a great egret, in the pond right behind my house, giving me a lot of time to just muck about.
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