jhapeman wrote:
One thing this highlights is that there is an opportunity for Sony to have some default settings that just work better. Like "Perched Birds," "Birds in Flight", etc. I guess they just expect us all to figure it out, but not everyone will. It's like a Mac vs. Linux. Not everyone wants to tweak every setting. That's why even Linux has distros for the less technically-inclined.
Hmmm, since this camera is not specifically or intentionally a bird photography camera are you suggesting that Sony should provide default settings for each of the wide range of uses for this camera? Take sports for example. Settings for Sports-soccer, Sports-hockey, Sports-Football, Sports-Baseball, Sports-Basketball, Sports-Tennis and so on. (The setup for team field sports will be different than for basketball with overhead lighting and tennis with a single player and baseball where the pitcher and batter are stationary and motorcycle racing vs horse racing and … Maybe rather than settings they could provide a supplement to the Users Guide that provides starter-settings for a variety of common scenarios. But as I view videos by Steve Perry (wildlife) and Mark Galer (people, racing motorcycles, general photography) and Albert Dros (landscapes, macro) and others I find that each has developed their own approach.
danrhiggins wrote:
I am honestly confused. I see posts like this one and others where people are struggling or disappointed with the AF. Then I see posts with images of people who are getting great results and sharing those results. Are their differences in settings? Lens? Technique? Expectations? Can the camera bodies be that different? I have an a7r5 but I have never used it for BIF. I found it too slow for soccer so couldn’t imagine that it would have the speed necessary for BIF. But I’m not really a BIF shooter.
When you say too slow for soccer, do you mean the 10fps is limiting ? I got good action and BIF pictures with the A7RV, with the mechanical shutter (EFCS). AF object detection and tracking were solid.
I reviewed some of my recent BIF pictures from the A1II with the Sony Imaging software : in many cases the AF box is just not where I expected it to (= on the bird or eyes of the bird when it was close enough). I need to dig in the menus and see if I can improve some of the AI AF parameters.
Fair question about the a7r5. As I suspect is the case with nearly everything, I certainly could get “some” soccer action pics. And occasionally some good ones! The fact is, I used to get good action pics 20 years ago when I was using Canon 1D cameras with 5-8 fps! But it was harder and took more time. When I shoot soccer it is for youth teams and I am trying to get at least one good action pics of each player. For some players, the opportunities are limited. And when they come, I need the camera to respond and to give me a rapid sequence. 20-30 fps and good locked on tracking is a huge benefit. I shot for a couple of years with the original A1 before adding the a7r5 into my kit primarily for landscapes. I found attempting to do soccer with the a7r5 was extremely frustrating after having used the A1. I just couldn’t get the percentage of keepers. Can’t speak to BIF as I have never done that.
Yup same experience with soccer here. I was able to get good captures with the original 1DX despite its low fps. I had been shooting soccer for many years and at that time the 1DX was a definite improvement however compared to the Sony A1s I'm now using the difference is night and day. I've read other experienced shooters have indicated the a7r5 was somewhat of a disappointment when attempting soccer. I've been tempted to try the A9-III but would probably not be happy with its 24mp files when shooting action at the opposite end of the field with a 400 2.8 and having to crop a significant amount.
So far, I have only used the A1 II for landscapes and some family photos.
The A1 was very good, but the II just feels a bit more polished, to the extent that I can say that I take pleasure in shooting with it, which is not something that I feel about the A1, A7RII, or A7R, which felt like tools that got the job done.
I enjoyed the Leica SL, in its day, over the A7R/II. The A1 was better than the SL2, when better AF was required. The SL3 is great (the SL lenses help), but I more often find myself reaching for the A1 II and 28-70f2 or another GM lens, even thought they are not quite as perfect as the SL lenses. Weight may be another factor, although the SL series cameras feel more solid and precise ("premium") than their Sony counterparts!
I don’t photograph enough wildlife to know if this is an improvement over the original A1. Or a regression. But from what I’ve seen in other videos, I feel like other brands, Canon in particular, have a slight edge in subject recognition. Especially when using wide or zone area modes.
Not sure if that’s a result of more comprehensive AI training or what. But I have noticed a difference.
What I do know is the Auto subject recognition mode has lead me to change my custom buttons slightly vs. the original A1. When generally walking around, I find the auto setting useful. Not having to constantly change what subject to focus on. But at the same time, it can give a lot of false positives or focus on things I don’t want it to. As a result, I have reprogrammed my AEL to toggle subject recognition on/off. So I can quickly override it if I disagree with what the camera thinks it sees.
Well-done and interesting video. While I don't shoot birds, one can extrapolate to other situations. The main takeaway for general shooting seems to be that the narrower the focus area, the more reliable is the focus acquisition. Narrower is best.
Wide often has difficulty with interferences that confuse its ability to select a body-head-eye from a scene. Processing power is not sufficient for scenes where multiple objects meet some of the criteria for selecting a focal point. In less challenging and confusing situations, Wide functions well or at least does better.
As the areas to be processed get smaller, the processing engine does better. Zone is better than Wide. Expanded Tracking Spot is better than Zone and almost as good as Small Spot. Small Spot does best of all. Though they are not tested here, one would think that Medium Spot and Large Spot and Center Tracking would also be very good.
Tracking seems to be quite robust in the sense of not losing a target once it has been acquired.
It can sometimes make a difference whether one is trying to acquire focus from a previous focus point that is closer vs. one that is farther away from the target.
Anyone contemplating R5ii or R1 as an alternative to the Sony’s might want to familiarise themselves with the Canon pre-capture implementation - seems autofocus may not work if the subject moves towards/away from the camera during pre-capture !!
A bit of a joke for wildlife! I supposed it is designed for golf or baseball or cricket where the person doesn’t move.
Spent a couple of hours shooting swallows in poor light with the R5ii/100-500 and reposting my thoughts here for the benefit of anyone contemplating the R5ii as an alternative to the A1 or the A1ii.
I don't think subject detection/tracking and AF performance is up to the A1 level for my favourite subjects and the subject detection seems to get stuck for a few frames occasionally and then suddenly catch up in a single frame while shooting swallows - which is a little odd. However subject detection and focus acquisition speed appears not to be the problem since it catches up in just a single frame. I know this because I checked the focus box positions on each frame in the sequence.
Occasionally it would also completely lose the subject for no apparent reason - perhaps when unable to recover from one of the above mentioned tracking failure episodes - which is a little disconcerting particularly when the background (water) is completely featureless as shown in the sample image below.
You can also expect to see artefacts (jagis) of the slower sensor scan speed on anything moving fast enough down the frame such as wing tips on small birds - see upper wing tip in the image below. They are clearly visible on a 5K display - and appear to be far worse on birds with even faster wing beats e.g. humming birds, wrens, etc.. I don't recall ever seeing these on any A1 image, not doubt they are present but perhaps far less visible.
As expected the overall rolling shutter distortion appears slightly worse than is typical from the A1.
I can't comment on the bird launch tracking as there weren't any opportunities to test this.
Ergonomics is similar to the A1 with back buttons quite flush with the chassis and a little hard to feel and some a little too close together for my thumb. Gloves would be difficult I think. I prefer the more raised version on the A9iii/A1ii bodies.
Grip size seems nearly identical to the A9iii grip, perhaps a tad better comfort.
The EVF doesn't support 240p which I use exclusively on the A1 and A9iii so that feels jerky and a bit of a downgrade but you would not notice this except while shooting fast action or when panning quickly.
Other than that very nice and light and it feels very similar to shooting a Sony so an easy transition but you are getting what you pay for and you need to be willing to accept some of the compromises. I doubt this matters unless you are shooting fast subjects close up like I do or panning with vertical backgrounds a lot.
For best wildlife fast action still image capture performance I would still recommend a secondhand A1 if you are unable to afford the A1ii or A9iii.
Shooting fast flying birds like swallows in poor light with the RF 100-500mm F4.5-7.1 L IS USM lens, in my view is showing the capabilities of the lens not the camera.... I maybe wrong but I'm thinking you''re at the long end of the lens 99% of the time shooting swallows.
Wonder how the R5 II would perform with the RF 400 f/2.8 or the RF 600 f/4?
Pius
duncangr wrote:
"ARE WE THERE YET?"
Spent a couple of hours shooting swallows in poor light with the R5ii/100-500 and reposting my thoughts here for the benefit of anyone contemplating the R5ii as an alternative to the A1 or the A1ii.
I don't think subject detection/tracking and AF performance is up to the A1 level for my favourite subjects and the subject detection seems to get stuck for a few frames occasionally and then suddenly catch up in a single frame while shooting swallows - which is a little odd. However subject detection and focus acquisition speed appears not to be the problem since it catches up in just a single frame. I know this because I checked the focus box positions on each frame in the sequence.
Occasionally it would also completely lose the subject for no apparent reason - perhaps when unable to recover from one of the above mentioned tracking failure episodes - which is a little disconcerting particularly when the background (water) is completely featureless as shown in the sample image below.
You can also expect to see artefacts (jagis) of the slower sensor scan speed on anything moving fast enough down the frame such as wing tips on small birds - see upper wing tip in the image below. They are clearly visible on a 5K display - and appear to be far worse on birds with even faster wing beats e.g. humming birds, wrens, etc.. I don't recall ever seeing these on any A1 image, not doubt they are present but perhaps far less visible.
As expected the overall rolling shutter distortion appears slightly worse than is typical from the A1.
I can't comment on the bird launch tracking as there weren't any opportunities to test this.
Ergonomics is similar to the A1 with back buttons quite flush with the chassis and a little hard to feel and some a little too close together for my thumb. Gloves would be difficult I think. I prefer the more raised version on the A9iii/A1ii bodies.
Grip size seems nearly identical to the A9iii grip, perhaps a tad better comfort.
The EVF doesn't support 240p which I use exclusively on the A1 and A9iii so that feels jerky and a bit of a downgrade but you would not notice this except while shooting fast action or when panning quickly.
Other than that very nice and light and it feels very similar to shooting a Sony so an easy transition but you are getting what you pay for and you need to be willing to accept some of the compromises. I doubt this matters unless you are shooting fast subjects close up like I do or panning with vertical backgrounds a lot.
For best wildlife fast action still image capture performance I would still recommend a secondhand A1 if you are unable to afford the A1ii or A9iii.
for what it's worth, I'm, probably for the first time enjoying using a Sony camera. I am using it for Land / Cityscapes, for now, but it has a range of what the Americans call quality of life improvements. For example, white balance seems more accurate than with the A1, so less editing to be done. Similarly, although it has the same sensor, my impression is that the noise is better on the A1 II than the A1. (Perhaps I should see what Adobe thinks by checking how much luminance noise reduction it applies, to check that it is not just an illusion, or an improvement in the Adobe / DXO software that I use.). Having Auto to select the subject type for subject AF recognition, is another example.
The volumes of camera chips (which are, I assume, all based off the ARM architecture) are not big enough to use the latest foundry nodes, so they are relatively power hungry. The image recognition models must be pretty crude, compared to day's large language models. Nevertheless, the technology actually works very well. The initial attempts at getting images from the camera to the cloud are laudable, but the amounts charged for cloud storage show that there is a lot of room for competition to make the workflow practicable.
gooby wrote:
I'm sure this has been answered but I can't find it... can I transfer A1 settings to an A1 II or do I need to do a fresh update of all settings?
I’ve had my A1ii since launch but didn’t have a chance to get into a challenging shoot environment since then. My kids do Kickboxing and we had a meet this week-end. Here is a few things I’ve noticed: 1) Pre-capture, wow. I really didn’t realize what a game changer this would be. Turns out I am slower than I thought I was… I just had to take more pictures than what was necessary so i could get the one I wanted. With precapture enabled, I have significantly increase my hit ratio while maintaining the number of pics to sort at the end. 2) AI tracking: this is an improvement and allowed for better tracking in fast paced combat sequence. Again, a few more better pictures, but not as many has those I got from precapture.
All in all, I’d say, this is a better camera. Could I do the same with my prevous one, yes. Does this make it simpler; I would also say yes.
ILCE-1M2FE 70-200mm F2.8 GM OSS II lens70mmf/2.81/500s1600 ISO0.0 EV
ILCE-1M2FE 40mm F2.5 G lens40mmf/2.51/400s1600 ISO0.0 EV
ILCE-1M2FE 70-200mm F2.8 GM OSS II lens70mmf/2.81/500s1600 ISO0.0 EV
ILCE-1M2FE 70-200mm F2.8 GM OSS II lens70mmf/2.81/500s1600 ISO0.0 EV
