danwu wrote:
I have used A1 II for five sessions or five days since 12/21 last year. I would agree most observations people sharing above. However, I also want to report I did encounter the situation when the camera didn’t try to focus at all. I had a golden eagle directly fly to me, which filled roughly 70% of the frame. But the EVF only showed a big white box around the bird body, all of 200+ photos are OoF. I quickly remove the battery and insert the grip back, at that moment, the bird was flying passing me filled with 80-90% of the frame, but still, none of the series were in focus at all. I was using zone without tracking but bird eye/head/body enabled. The LCD was turned off. I haven’t seen it since then. ...Show more →
I'm curious what lens this was? I've had it with a 200-600G and my old A1 but I don't use that lens any more. Great lens...but needs a V2 to deal with some of the weird AF issues that its had especially on the newer bodies.
I've had one similar sounding glitch in a fortnight's use. This feels like the kind of thing that should be fixed in the first firmware point revision.
Goodrich wrote:
I've had one similar sounding glitch in a fortnight's use. This feels like the kind of thing that should be fixed in the first firmware point revision.
Thanks for sharing!
How is the IBIS improvements on the longer lenses?
Do you see improvement on the 600GM? Or is it mosly on the shorter focal length? I have always been reading that the OSS is what matters on the long lenses.
I took my new A1ii out for its first big outing this week to shoot short-eared owls. I was able to reliably shoot perched birds at 1/500 and get tack sharp images with the 300/2.8+2x TC as well as the 400/2.8+1.4x TC (so 600mm and 560mm focal lengths).
On my A1, 1/500 was usually too slow for me to reliably get tack sharp images.
jhapeman wrote:
I'm curious what lens this was? I've had it with a 200-600G and my old A1 but I don't use that lens any more. Great lens...but needs a V2 to deal with some of the weird AF issues that its had especially on the newer bodies.
I just have mine for about 5 days, but for small birds if even a twig is in front of the bird it focus on the twig. I must not have it set up right will keep trying different settings ,but wish I had kept my A1, the auto focus and stabilization in video is amazing. This morning I went down to the beach ,it was very cold with the wind chill about 20 and it just shut off, I turned it on and said battery exhausted, was only using it for half an hour ,got back to the car put a charger on and it said it was 57% charged, it worked fine after that.
johnsigs wrote:
I just have mine for about 5 days, but for small birds if even a twig is in front of the bird it focus on the twig. I must not have it set up right will keep trying different settings ,but wish I had kept my A1, the auto focus and stabilization in video is amazing. This morning I went down to the beach ,it was very cold with the wind chill about 20 and it just shut off, I turned it on and said battery exhausted, was only using it for half an hour ,got back to the car put a charger on and it said it was 57% charged, it worked fine after that....Show more →
Odd, I was about to update on my experience the last two days and it's the exact opposite. I wonder how much has to do with settings?
I also don't ever expect any AI focus to find a bird in a mess of twigs, at least not as fast as I can find it. I deal with it like I did with my A1: I have the AEL button set to swap between extra small and wide AF. On my A1 it was small and zone, but the AI has so far been so good on the A1II that I can use wide in most cases with no issue.
One thing I have found is that with the extra small focus spot if I find the bird in the branches and twigs, it will then jump to the eye of the bird, even when its not in the extra small spot--it just has to be nearby. I can also swap to wide once I've got the bird in focus and the AI will find it just fine.
I can also say that the AI helps when using the 600GM with the 2x TC. I get a much larger percentage of in focus shots and there's much less jumping around on the AF. Overall the AF seems to be a bit faster with that combination as well. Not quite as noticeably faster as I found the A9III but definitely quicker at finding and then locking in on the subject.
As for stabilization, why would you wish for the A1? The A1II has three full stops more of stabilization. That's also something I have noticed with the 600/2x combo--it definitely helps increase the percentage of sharp shots at lower shutter speeds.
As for the cold weather shooting, your battery might be the issue, not the camera. I spent almost three hours outside in 30F temps with very cold winds and snow blowing Saturday and had zero issues. I was using a battery grip and I flipped the screen around and just chimped in the VF figuring I'd save some battery power that way given that batteries will perform more poorly in the cold, and I noticed that I only used up about 25% of the total battery capacity over that time while also taking a few thousand photos.
What are your AF settings? Maybe I can guide you there?
jhapeman wrote:
Odd, I was about to update on my experience the last two days and it's the exact opposite. I wonder how much has to do with settings?
I also don't ever expect any AI focus to find a bird in a mess of twigs, at least not as fast as I can find it. I deal with it like I did with my A1: I have the AEL button set to swap between extra small and wide AF. On my A1 it was small and zone, but the AI has so far been so good on the A1II that I can use wide in most cases with no issue.
One thing I have found is that with the extra small focus spot if I find the bird in the branches and twigs, it will then jump to the eye of the bird, even when its not in the extra small spot--it just has to be nearby. I can also swap to wide once I've got the bird in focus and the AI will find it just fine.
I can also say that the AI helps when using the 600GM with the 2x TC. I get a much larger percentage of in focus shots and there's much less jumping around on the AF. Overall the AF seems to be a bit faster with that combination as well. Not quite as noticeably faster as I found the A9III but definitely quicker at finding and then locking in on the subject.
As for stabilization, why would you wish for the A1? The A1II has three full stops more of stabilization. That's also something I have noticed with the 600/2x combo--it definitely helps increase the percentage of sharp shots at lower shutter speeds.
As for the cold weather shooting, your battery might be the issue, not the camera. I spent almost three hours outside in 30F temps with very cold winds and snow blowing Saturday and had zero issues. I was using a battery grip and I flipped the screen around and just chimped in the VF figuring I'd save some battery power that way given that batteries will perform more poorly in the cold, and I noticed that I only used up about 25% of the total battery capacity over that time while also taking a few thousand photos.
What are your AF settings? Maybe I can guide you there?...Show more →
Thanks was using zone ,will try a small focus point, the battery was 2021 and I don't have a grip ,it never happened with my original A1,i used full time DMF found the bird as soon as I hit auto focus it went back to the twig. Again I know it must be my settings, it's been so windy on Long Island most of the birds are taking cover. The video stabilization is night and day better with the ai II over the A1. Here is one from yesterday
johnsigs wrote:
Thanks was using zone ,will try a small focus point, the battery was 2021 and I don't have a grip ,it never happened with my original A1,i used full time DMF found the bird as soon as I hit auto focus it went back to the twig. Again I know it must be my settings, it's been so windy on Long Island most of the birds are taking cover. The video stabilization is night and day better with the ai II over the A1. Here is one from yesterday
OK so that's a tough shot for almost any camera without helping it out a little. The bird takes up too little of the frame and there's a lot of other high-contrast areas for the camera to lock on to. I'll outline some of my settings that I developed starting with the A7RV in late 2022 and then perfected with my A9III and I'm now using successfully on the A1II.
I have the C2 button programmed to swap between the various AI AF subject recognition modes. Usually I have it set to Bird or Animal/Bird. I don't shoot much else with my cameras.
In the subsettings for the bird subject recognition (Recognition Target->Bird-> I have the Tracking Shift Range set to 5 (Wide), Tracking Persistence Lvl to 5 (Locked On), Recognition Sensitivity at 4, Recognition Part to Eye/Head. You can configure a custom button to change some of these on the fly while shooting as well, but for my general use for perched or feeding birds and the occasional flying birds, these work well. The Tracking Shift Range is what lets me us the XS Spot to find a bird and if I put the spot near the head it will then jump and find the eye. This is hugely useful in situations like your example shot.
You can use the regular small spot as well but I find that XS avoids even small twigs, etc, from temporarily causing any issues. I spent most of Saturday shooting a Painted Bunting that stayed buried in some deep grass, and this method helped me get lots of great photos even where there was grass in front of the bird, even covering parts of the face.
I do think that overall Sony could improve the algorithm for recognizing a bird in the "mess" of background. I haven't used one but I have heard from those who have that the Canon R5II and R1 do very well with this. However, once the subject is found it is incredibly sticky if you have your focus settings configured the way I do. Using the small or extra small focus spots also helps the camera find the subject.
BTW, you can also create your own custom focus zones now, and that's something I'm just starting to experiment with. I believe that will be a powerful option in addition to the method I outlined above depending on the types of things you are shooting.
I'm attaching two unedited images of a Song Sparrow I shot yesterday just to test how well the camera could find the eye on a very obscured bird. I used the XS spot and some DMF help to find this bird in the mess--it was so obscured by intervening plants that the whole image looks hazy from them. Once I had the eye it just stuck right on it, even as the bird moved its head around. I was shooting with the 600GM and 2x TC so the DOF is very thin and that combination in the past was very prone on the A1 to losing the subject, particularly in a shot like this. Note this isn't a "keeper" type photo, just a test of what the camera is capable of.
Here's another example, where there was a blade of grass in front of the bird, and in the past the A1 would have struggled with this, but the A1II nailed the eye and just never left it.
jhapeman wrote:
Here's another example, where there was a blade of grass in front of the bird, and in the past the A1 would have struggled with this, but the A1II nailed the eye and just never left it.
Thanks for posting the settings ,I never use the small spot, will give that a try. There are so many more settings to try ,even if you go to say bird , there are settings in there, makes my head spin Lol
One more image with a 100% crop. The 100% isn't perfectly sharp as I was shooting over a paved path that was creating some heat distortion, but the focus on the eye is dead locked on. This was a challenging bird to even see buried in the grass, and this is one shot from a 2s burst at 20fps, there 36 of 42 shots were perfect; at one point a piece of grass blew in front of the eye and made the focus jump out for a few shots but then it locked right back in.
Question for those who have the A1II. What frame rates are you getting in Raw mode (Large) when bracketing (either exposure or focus bracketing)? I've found that bracketing on the A (exposure bracketing as it doesn't support focus bracketing) gets nowhere near the max frame rates standard shooting modes do. I'm guessing the A1 maybe get 7 to 10 fps. Is the A1II noticeably faster?
danwu wrote:
I have used A1 II for five sessions or five days since 12/21 last year. I would agree most observations people sharing above. However, I also want to report I did encounter the situation when the camera didn’t try to focus at all. I had a golden eagle directly fly to me, which filled roughly 70% of the frame. But the EVF only showed a big white box around the bird body, all of 200+ photos are OoF. I quickly remove the battery and insert the grip back, at that moment, the bird was flying passing me filled with 80-90% of the frame, but still, none of the series were in focus at all. I was using zone without tracking but bird eye/head/body enabled. The LCD was turned off. I haven’t seen it since then. ...Show more →
I have the same issue with the A9iii/300. I think initially it was because I have DMF on and was moving the focus ring but it has happened a couple of times again with DMF off - maybe two or three times over a two week period. I have yet to figure out what, if anything, I am doing that causes this. Can't seem to replicate it and I don't power off/on to fix it - it seems to just as suddenly fix itself.
Hawkmoooon wrote:
I took my new A1ii out for its first big outing this week to shoot short-eared owls. I was able to reliably shoot perched birds at 1/500 and get tack sharp images with the 300/2.8+2x TC as well as the 400/2.8+1.4x TC (so 600mm and 560mm focal lengths).
On my A1, 1/500 was usually too slow for me to reliably get tack sharp images.
I am super happy with the improved IBIS!
Hmm, not sure I can see any difference with the A9iii - I could shoot 1/40s handheld at 840mm with the A1 and get tack sharp images. Biggest issue was always motion blur from the subject moving at those shutter speeds so I shoot bursts in the hope that at least one frame with catch the subject when it is motionless. This usually results in 4 or 5 sharp frames.
duncangr wrote:
I have the same issue with the A9iii/300. I think initially it was because I have DMF on and was moving the focus ring but it has happened a couple of times again with DMF off - maybe two or three times over a two week period. I have yet to figure out what, if anything, I am doing that causes this. Can't seem to replicate it and I don't power off/on to fix it - it seems to just as suddenly fix itself.
I've seen it happen on the A9III and A1 with my 600 and 300. I feel like every time I've had it happened I've bumped the focus ring while I have DMF on, but I haven't tried turning DMF off like you. It's pretty rare and I just power cycle when it happens, but it is annoying. Seems like a broader glitch of some kind in the newer firmware perhaps?
duncangr wrote:
I have the same issue with the A9iii/300. I think initially it was because I have DMF on and was moving the focus ring but it has happened a couple of times again with DMF off - maybe two or three times over a two week period. I have yet to figure out what, if anything, I am doing that causes this. Can't seem to replicate it and I don't power off/on to fix it - it seems to just as suddenly fix itself.
I doubt it's DMF either because I always turn the DMF off.
I don't know how much I can trust the display of the focus from Sony software, but here is the out-of-focus photo with focus point displayed.
I have the Tracking Shift Range set to 5 (Wide), Tracking Persistence Lvl to 5 (Locked On), Recognition Sensitivity at 4, Recognition Part to Eye/Head. You can configure a custom button to change some of these on the fly while shooting as well, but for my general use for perched or feeding birds and the occasional flying birds, these work well. The Tracking Shift Range is what lets me us the XS Spot to find a bird and if I put the spot near the head it will then jump and find the eye. This is hugely useful in situations like your example shot. 
