chiron wrote:
Lovely shots. I especially like the portrait of the bald-headed man. His expression and the tonalities are terrific.
Like you, I don't shoot BIF or sports. Most of my photography where excellent AF is important are photographs of people in natural settings.
What do you think the A1 II is going to add for you in street photography over what the A1 can do? I have been thinking about getting an A1 II, but I really don't quite see that it improves over what I can do with the A1. I have used the AI autofocus in my a7cr and it seems like a slight improvement on the A1, but nothing game-changing.
I Haven't had much chance to use it yet for street photography but my hopes for this (when not using zone manual focusing) is that the AI subject recognition will pick up a person quicker than the A1 but as you say maybe nothing game changing but it is extremely quick. I have both the A1ii for other reasons such as the much improved IBIS, slight improvement in high iso (it is visible to my eye) and the new rear screen etc
got a chance to shoot couple of thousand frames with the A1 II. Trying out a few new custom AF modes and shooting techniques.... for some reason the camera had a mind of its own and decided to switch the file type to "FINE JPEG" from RAW when the first card filled up. that ruined about 30% of the shoot! but otherwise it did well.
the last image is one of the "FINE JPEG's" straight out of the camera, it looks descent for web posting, fortunately the ISO was low so the JPEG NR algo did not massage it too much....
all with 600 GM and combinations of 1.4X and 2X TC.
I must say that I'm enjoying using the ii. The refinements just make it easier to take great-looking pictures: no more fiddling about to specify what you want to focus on; better noise reduction; better AWB, etc.
I don't know whether it's the camera, or improvements in my skill levels, or just the jolt from a new camera, but I am getting better results with the II, with just ordinary pics (no fast moving birds, etc). Even lenses that I regarded as mediocre have a new lease of life. Here's a pano from the 100-400:
You know, I'm kind of happy that there are still a few warts in the focus system. Where would be the challenge if we could capture every moment perfectly simply by pointing our cameras in the right direction. There is a lot to like about the A1II for sure.
I just spent 2 weeks shooting the A1ii every day. I have a collection of images from my last 2 New Mexico tours on my website. All of the images except the flying scrub jay and curve billed thrasher were taken with the A1ii (I used the A9iii for those). A few thoughts on the camera are that it is great. Not so different than the A1 in my opinion. I had problems with my camera in that it kept freezing up and also it reset some of my settings a few times. Hopefully it was a bug with the original firmware. The auto focus is great. If you care to have a look please follow the link to my site. Sorry it is too many images to post here.
aboutthelight wrote:
I just spent 2 weeks shooting the A1ii every day. I have a collection of images from my last 2 New Mexico tours on my website. All of the images except the flying scrub jay and curve billed thrasher were taken with the A1ii (I used the A9iii for those). A few thoughts on the camera are that it is great. Not so different than the A1 in my opinion. I had problems with my camera in that it kept freezing up and also it reset some of my settings a few times. Hopefully it was a bug with the original firmware. The auto focus is great. If you care to have a look please follow the link to my site. Sorry it is too many images to post here.
