ElenaH
Well-known member
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As a foreword I‘d like to emphasis that the tests were undertaken on the particular copies of the equipment which can differ from your particular copies of the same equipment.
I was taking pictures of European bee-eaters during the last 3 years with different cameras and lenses. The colony is not far away from the place where I live and I was always parking on the same spot about 20m away from the nesting wall.
Tests were made using Z7, Z7 II, D850, D500, Sony A7R IV, Sony A1 cameras and 500/5.6 PF and 400/2.8 (Nikon) and 200-600mm (Sony).
(The picture above is taken with D850)
I was using Nikon cameras, Nikon 500/5.6 and Sigma 150-600. My partner was using Sony cameras and Nikon D850 with 400/2.8. We are using Auto ISO in manual mode.
My shutter speed was between 1/2500 and 1/3200 sec. But I recommend to use 1/3200-1/4000s for bee-eaters in flight if you have a professional lens like 400/2.8. I was just trying to use the maximum possible shutter speed to compensate the ISO.
The bee-eaters are flying very fast and erratic, but they have a kind of “approach procedure”. It was possible to foresee their movements. However, there were also 2-3 more skilled individuals using other flying patterns without procedures and the biggest challenge was to follow the bird with the camera and keep it in the frame.
My observation on the Nikon cameras AF Tracking and lock-on settings (a3): there is a big difference between camera+lens combinations you have.
For example, Sigma 150-600 has a slow AF and I need to set a3 to a Quick AF Response because it will not change the distance due to the slow lens-motor. Tracking with Sigma and Group-Area AF was working good. The 500/5.6 PF with Group Area AF was hunting when using mentioned settings.
I used fully automatic AF (Af Area = auto) with Nikon cameras and 500/5.6 PF. Why? Why not group or some other?
Because it was working the best. Try it! The auto AF focuses what is the closest to the camera. The algorithm is simple and because of that simplicity AF is very fast. The DoF of F5.6 would be enough to have the head of the bird in focus if the camera focused on the wing.
My partner has been using Sony cameras for 8 years. He owns Sony A7R IV and wanted to test A1. He used both Sony cameras with Sony 200-600mm. He also used D850 with 400/2.8 FL ED with and without 1.4x TC. And as I said I used Z7, D500 and borrowed Z7 II. Later I did the test with a new D850 I bought for myself.
My partner was also using AF Area Auto on Nikon and analog to that setting on Sony.
We came to the following summary (Auto AF):
- All mirrorless cameras have a big numbers of keepers when focusing a bird in the sky (no foliage behind) And it is also clear why: mirrorless have contrast AF algorithm. Trying to find something to focus they find a bird (an object) on the empty sky and focus it fast. DSLR struggle to keep the bird in the sky, AF is hunting, much less keepers than by mirrorless.
- DSLRs (Nikon) perform excellently when bird is in the front of the foliage or other background (wall). There are much more keepers by DSLR than by mirrorless. I think that is because the focusing system of DSLR has cross-sensors in the middle of the frame and they are more sensitive (or working different way) than line contrast sensors of mirrorless. So, if the bird is kept in the middle then the camera easily focuses it independently on the busy background. Remember, I use the simple Auto AF! The closest object is focused! And this is a bird! That is why background was not focused by DSLRs. The focus area of mirrorless covers almost the whole sensor and for mirrorless it is easier to focus on the background than on the fast moving birds, it doesn’t have enough time to detect the bird. The processor power and read-out are not enough for bee-eaters! (looks like)
Moreover Sony A1 had a very interesting phenomenon: when the files were a bit overexposed (one stop) a lot of noise was introduced and the files couldn't be recovered. It was not clear why the files sometimes were differently exposed under the same circumstances; we couldn’t explain it. But the worse was that those files were suddenly full of noise. Perhaps, it was/is just a software issue and could have been already solved. I read about the same experience by other users who solved the problem by not using Auto ISO.
In contrary the D850 over- or underexposed files are easily to recover/process and they don’t loose on quality. The better files and easier processing was a point where my partner turned back to Nikon. He mentioned that he was even more satisfied with Z7 than with Sony cameras because of consistent quality of files. Nikons were more reliable for him.
The other thing is the focusing ability of the camera or of the photographer. I think, A1 has the best AF focusing system and it was probably inability of my partner to handle the camera.
I was using Z7 II and brought that camera even to focusing bee-eaters in front of the foliage, but it was not consistent. Z7 II is better than Z7 but not much better. The birds in the sky as I said before were ca. 80% in focus by Z7 and Z7 II but in the foliage the both cameras had problems, Z7 mostly couldn’t focus and Z7 II could focus sometimes.
The focus of my D500 was hunting and produced bad results for birds in the sky. So, I even don’t use it for that with 500/5.6 PF. D500 with Sigma and group AF was better. For birds in the foliage it was very good and I was able to capture even unpredictable individuals.
The best was a brand-new D850 which was excellently focusing on birds in the sky and on birds in front of the foliage. I took more than 1000 pictures, deleted all which were not in focus and came to 78% keepers. I don’t know why there was such a difference between D850 and D500 for birds in the sky. My D500 has more than 140000 releases, it is already 6 years old and I suppose that the cross-sensors which are on the bottom of the camera are covered with dust and I don’t know how I can clean them because it is difficult to get to that place. The AF-points coverage of D500 is probably also not an advantage in all cases. I noticed that I preferred a strong middle coverage rather than a whole sensor coverage for the flying birds.
Conclusion:
We ended by using mirrorless for birds in the sky and DSLR - for birds in front of busy backgrounds with AF Auto. And it always works!
I encourage everybody to try it! Maybe you will be surprised.
Or test each AF-area with each AF lock settings on the same objects and figure out what is working best for you. When bee-eaters are not here I am using flying pillows ;-)
I will post some examples but I think, I am limited to 5 pictures in this thread.
Here Z7 II focuses on bee-eater with busy and lighted background:
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the old Z 7 focuses courtship of European bee-eaters. However, I must say that Southern Carmine Bee-eaters make more often and much better performance than their European friends (a bit of noise here and shutter speed is not really enough but you got the point ;-)
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D850 focuses even on birds flying toward the camera:
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The bird is between busy background and the plant. D850 keeps the track or it is just too slow to change the track ;-)
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I have more examples but I cannot post them in this thread (need to post in Wildlife Presentation Thread).