I am now about 75% of the way through processing the ~4,000 shots from my shooting day at Willows Bird of Prey Centre and have generated over 200 images I sent to the centre. AND I will find more as I go through the B, and C rated options in my grading.
But first a summary of the day - I took two Z9 and 400/2.8 TC, 600/4.0 TC, Z100-400/4.5-5.6 and Z 70-200/2.8 and used all 4 lenses.
We had 2 shooting environments and 4 handers through the day -- clear skies and low sun -- which was great when the targets were out of the shadows and less good when not:
-- one an open paddock/field but relatively close trees on each side and behind me and some high grass/fences -- this made tracking and shooting fast movers somewhat of a challenge as they would fly behind the closest trees and pop in to view while at full speed -- but a joy to try.
-- the other was a deep wooded glade arena and this was a challenge with the low sun. We abandoned the glade later on in the day when I was regularly having to shoot with ISO levels above 10k and too slow shutter speeds to remove motion blur on the face of the owls flying towards me. Wing blur is fine, but face/eye blur less so -- one cannot fast pan an approaching subject, while lying in the ground to try to get under the flight path.
Most of the day in the paddock the larger birds were flying generally towards me but starting in a very shaded perch under trees - which caused its own issues.
The falcon and kite did their own thing as one flew to a lure or food thrown for them to catch.
I chose to use the 600 with the Falcon, Harris Hawk and a Palm Vulture (in the morning session); but switched to the 400/2.8 for the afternoon session when the light was much worse and we flew a 2nd Harris Hawk, a Red Kite and 2 owls in the main paddock.
All the shots in the Glade were with the 70-200 and 100-400.
I generally choose to shoot both the 400 and 600 wide open, 20fps Lossless RAW and at 1/4000th or 1/5000th for the faster birds and 1/1600th for the slower vulture.
For one pass I stopped the 600 down to give the Harris Hawk more DOF for its landing close to me.
I also choose (or was it an error just lived with) to stop down the 400 to f/22 (fully closed down) to shoot one short flight of a Red-Kite -- just to see what would happen -- I regularly shoot Kites so not an issue for me, but pushing my limits and the limits of the gear was part of this.
Almost all fast birds were shot at 20fps using Wide-Area C1 (19x11) with Animal Subject Detection enabled -- absolutely no possibility or need to hand off to 3D for the fast movers. I used a range of Fn1 and Fn2 activations to focus in on Single AF-area C1 (1x1) and Dynamic-medium -- but found in general C2 with Animal-SD worked well.
Overall I have sent roughly 353 images from the day (so far) to the centre to pick what if any they want to use. I have about 2 times this number that could easily be used with similar wing positions etc. AND 5 times more with wing/body positions less pleasing to me, but still very useable. [Why so many -- to give the Centre and its design team choices with what they have and I can give them more options to provide space for headers/text as they want/need. For now their social media is the short term use.
PLEASE NOTE that where I have cropped images, the crops are for use on social media and so exemplify the subject's head or claws AND they have been denoised and sharpened for web viewing.
A full set is viewable
HERE -- those shown below are downsampled significantly.
Some 25% of the 1,500 shots I took with the 600 are ideal and a further 40% are still very useable but tend to show the birds in less flattering positions. That is a tremendous % for me. While I "missed focus" 13% of the time with the 600 -- most often when the target was in deep shadow and backlit, but on occasions when the bird was flying close to the ground with high and more contrasty "options" to "pull it off. In most cases the AF was spot on - but for a few cases the focus remained "stuck" on a bright object near to the bird -- like the perch and did not track the bird as it took of -- but focus fairly quickly shifted to the bird as I tracked its movement (and the area it was focussed on left the EVF). Some times when the bird dipped and was partially obscured the focus grabbed high grass in-between me and the bird and it took a beat or so for the system to reacquire the subject. I also believe for part of on one pass I was holding/touching the focus ring on the lens and the focus simply stayed at one position -- definite user error.
I am not counting the shots where I (the user) failed to keep the subject in the frame and it flew out of frame -- in focus or not.
A Palm Vulture flying towards me is a tough one for Animal-SD when the bird is at distance and partially obscured -- there was a tendency for the AF to grab the chest/body rather than the head -- and had I not choose to shoot wide open (say stopped down to f/8) then the head would have also always have been in focus. But no issues with more "classical" looking birds.
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The success rate with the 400 was far higher and miss rate dropped to 3% -- I consider the reason for this is simple I was using the 400 to shoot slower moving birds and it is simply easier to keep the target centred in the EVF with a the shorter focal length. That said I did shoot a sequence of a Barn Owl with the internal TC engaged so at 560mm f/4 and 1/800th -- Barn Owls tend to be fine at 1/800th when they are somewhat further away even when using 560mm. Later in the pass I moved back to 1/2000th and then 1/1250 just for added crispness and yes at the cost of slightly higher ISO but not generally over 3,200 and the results are fine.
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The Z 70-200/2.8 is a spectacular performer - great when used in dark woods with the owls - a couple of passes when the subject was heavily backlit I missed focus for the bulk of the pass. 6% misses is not bad given the dark and challenging lighting/environment. I was able to use this at 1/1,000th and either wide open or close to it.
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The 100-400 is clearly an inferior lens of the 4 I had on the day -- meaning relatively far slower to focus lens than the 70-200, 400 and 600 -- as a result the % of useable shots when I used this lens were lower. I used it most often in the dark woods and really pushed ISO -- upto 25,600 and while the shots look in focus the results are "not great".
With 15% misses -- I should perhaps have stuck with the 70-200, but the ability to zoom in to 400 when the target is a tiny owl was a strong pull. Almost all the shots I have used with this lens were taken level with the bird - so lying or sitting on the damp ground -- using 1/800th and 1/640th -- motion blur is clearly visible for those shot at 1/640th -- but really only visible when zoomed in. I have 21 shots of a small owl - the 8 at 1/800th are clearly sharper, even though these were taken using ISO 10,000-20,000. The 13 at 1/640th show motion blur in the head/eyes even when zoomed out from 400mm to 270mm. Zooming out provided an opportunity for wider landing shots and a few of these are OK -- when not viewed overly zoomed in. AND a very useful lens for contextual shots.
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Findings
Both the
Nikkor 400/2.8 TC and 600/4.0 TC are "stupid" -- both lenses are easy to handhold for 30+ seconds at a time and paired with the Z9 neither lens "failed" to keep up with the subjects -- Unlike the USER !!.
Shoot Falcons and Kites with BOTH EYES open -- you need peripheral vision to be able to maneuver the lens/camera to the trajectory these birds choose to fly particularly when the sweep out of woods/trees from every direction. My tracking improved significantly when I did this.
While I am waiting for Lenscoat cover to arrive -- I have NOW applied tape to the switches on the lens that selects between Full focus rang and 10m - Infinity to ENSURE it stays on full range AND applied tape over the A - M switch as well. This reduces the chance I will do something "stupid" during the heat of the shoot.
It is clear that I need to find a better way to hold the 600 while shooting handheld. In the meantime have removed the option to adjust aperture with the lens control ring (this ring is now disabled), which is where I tend to hold the lens, when also using the Fn2 buttons and the fn ring while hand holding. AND I can see for a couple of passes the lens stayed focussed on one point and that meant I had interfered with the focus - presumably by grabbing the focussing ring -- I will probably try to disable this as well, but this probably is a general setting and I loathed to have one set-up for the 600 and different setups for other lenses. Lenscoat lens covers can help make it harder to move the focus ring AND so does more gaffer tape. I am not ready to do that yet.
