Last week I did a dedicated video on the Sony Alpha 1’s 30 Frames Per Second (FPS) feature (link). This week I wanted to share my first thoughts on the bird eye auto focus feature.
NOTE: Link to download the sample files is down below the video
One thing I keep getting asked about is how the Bird Eye Focus does with birds in flight. I didn’t talk much about it in this video but I’ll probably do another separate post on it. To me, in flight is actually the last of all bird photos where I need bird eye auto focus. Most modern cameras can do a good job of tracking a bird in flight and in most cases, the bird is never close enough to you that focus on the eye or wing matters much (not all, but most). Basically, where ever it focussed at these distanced and f-stops, it’ll be in focus. Anyway, when I want bird eye auto focus is when they’re perched and I used to need to quickly change from my flight focus to something to capture them perched in a tree (because continuous auto focus wasn’t always the best option, especially if I was able to get close to a perched bird). Again, stay tuned for more on this topic and I’ll be able to demonstrate it better. Thanks!
Want to Pixel Peep?
If I know anything about most of you reading this, you LOVE to pixel peep (well… I do to!). So here’s a few photos in a ZIP file. Quick note… the uncompressed raw photos are 50mb, and it would crush me in extra bandwidth charges to let thousands of you download a bunch of them. So, I’m giving you one raw file (with a good amount of dynamic range to play with) and several other SOOC (straight out of camera) JPG photos. These are exactly the same resolution as the raw file, but I saved them as JPGs. No sharpening or noise reduction has been done.
Files included:
- Raw Eagle Photo – sorry, you get the wing cropped version – full wing span version is mine 🙂 This is a good one though, as it’s got some dynamic range to it. So you can play with shadows and highlights too. This photo is taken from a moving boat. (Eagle and Osprey boat tours at dvwildlife.com)
- Osprey in flight and an osprey perched. Flight photo taken from my kayak. Perched photo taken hand held while standing.
- Egret and Heron – both taken while standing on beach.
- All photos are hand held. Open any photo in Photoshop and go to File > File Info to see settings and lens choice.
- CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD
I love teaching and photography... In that order. I feel that enjoying photography, and photo editing can get WAY too complicated. So my personal mission (and favorite thing to do), is to create education that simplifies the process of taking great photos, and how to edit them to get the results you’ve always wanted.
Hi Matt, I really enjoyed your Bird photography course last night. Since the Videos 1 and 2 had audio feedback, I was wondering if you would made those videos available. I have a Sony camera and I am trying to understand the various focus modes. To be able to understand your audio would be a great help. I checked the reply and it still has the feedback. Thanks. Ron
Hi Ron. Here’s another reply without the echo. Thanks!
What is the name of the program by SONY that you mentioned toward the end? Imaging____View?
Great bird images, Matt. Just curious. At what shutter speed, fstop and iso did you shoot the eagle. I up my iso to 500, shutter speed priority and it still seems to lack sharpness.
Hi and thanks. If it’s a bird in flight I am almost always at 1/3200 for shutter speed. f-stop is always the lowest it’ll go for that chosen lens combo. Usually f/5.6 or f/8 depending on the lens I’m shooting. ISO is whatever it needs to be to get me a well exposed photo at that shutter speed. If you’ve got a blurry bird in flight it’s usually two things: 1) Your camera didn’t lock focus. And with most cameras these days, they show green boxes around your subject when shooting, so you should know while shooting whether you did or not. And 2) To low of a shutter speed. Nobody ever saw a razor sharp photo and said “darn it… I wish I used a lower shutter speed”. Don’t be stingy with shutter speed. Nobody else but you cares about ISO and noise so do what you have to do to get it sharp. Good luck!
Thanks, Matt. That’s quite helpful.
Always, a great and interesting presentation.
How impressive. I agree with GT – the Sony video capabilities are wonderful but hopefully for those of us who use a camera primarily for photography the price is steep. That said, I really did enjoy seeing what is now possible – really nice presentation of the feature.
It is an awesome and technologically advanced camera. Sony has come a long way and been doing an outstanding job in the photography and video world. I hope Sony would take 8K out and put everything else in another form factor with a price which more affordable to everyone who love photography. Thank you for sharing, Matt.