A few birds with the 800mm PF lens

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Richard_M

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I ordered the 800mm PF lens when they were first announced in 2022. Late January 2023 I contacted the reseller if they had any info on when it might be delivered. At that time, there was no delivery information. We were heading overseas early February and I wanted to take a birding setup. I cancelled the 800mm lens and ordered a Fujifilm X-H2S plus Fujifilm XF 150-600mm lens. As the Fuji is an APS-C sensor the effective focal length of the lens is 225-900mm. The lens is not fast being f/8.0 at the long end, although it hasn't been an issue for me to-date. As much as I enjoy using the Fuji combo, I get a bit frustrated when the focus point is on the eye of the subject, turns green for being in-focus, but when reviewing the images the eye is not always in-focus. Don't get me wrong I have managed to get hundreds of nice sharp images of birds since getting the Fuji in February.

Moving forward to May 2023, Nikon Australia must have received a good quantity of the 800mm PF lenses as there was stock showing up at many resellers. I was contacted by a reseller to let me know, not only was the lens in-stock, it was also on sale. So I ended up purchasing one. This morning was my first opportunity to test the lens out with the Z 9. Now, I'm not sure if its the lens, or that I updated the Z 9 firmware yesterday. Today I had similar issues as I do using the Fuji. The focus point will find the eye, but many of the images I reviewed the eye was not in-focus. I feel the Nikon combo was more successful than the Fuji, but I was still annoyed. I don't remember having these focus issues using the Z 100-400mm or the 500mm PF with 1.4TC on the Z 9. It could be a change from the firmware update, I'm not sure.

Anyway enough ramblings...

A wander through a local garden this morning

#1 Eastern Yellow Robin
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#2 New Holland Honeyeater
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#3 Little Wattlebird
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#4 Superb Fairy-wren
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#5 Australasian Darter
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Lance B said:
Superb shots as usual, Richard!
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Thank you Lance

ssheipel said:
Nice shots!
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Thank you Steven

K9Kirk said:
Nice set. I hope you find out what it is that's causing the problem. All I know to suggest is the process of elimination.
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Thank you. I was hoping to have been out again before now, but it might not be until later this week. It's possibly a user issue. One thing I found with the Fuji X-H2S was to limit the number of shots in a sequence, this allowed me to get more keepers.
 
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Richard_M said:
Thank you Lance



Thank you Steven



Thank you. I was hoping to have been out again before now, but it might not be until later this week. It's possibly a user issue. One thing I found with the Fuji X-H2S was to limit the number of shots in a sequence, this allowed me to get more keepers.
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Funny you said that, because when I got tired of sorting through a lot of shots myself, I realize that maybe the problem was me and I started focusing more on holding the camera as still as I possible could. Turns out it actually made a noticeable difference. It's not hard to see why, I was shooting with a 150-600 mm lens and the slightest movement was magnified. Now it only takes a few shots vs a few dozen to get a quality one.
 
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