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by Lensmaster on Sun Dec 27, 2020 4:28 am
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DChan wrote:
Lensmaster wrote:As Gene says superior autofocus is more important than bird tracking ...

Autofocus tracking to me is also part of autofocus so what you said seems weird to me. I don't ever have a camera that can auto-focus tracking well but not able to autofocus on a stationary subject. Autofocus tracking to me is focus stay on the subject all the time while the subject moves, not just a box on your screen moving with the subject but focus is actually off. Since the birds and animals I photograph do move, I definitely would like to have a camera that autofocus tracking well in addition to being able to get a focus lock on the subject fast and accurate time after time. So to me a camera which is good at the latter but not the former is not good enough for me and likely most people who photograph birds I'd say.
I was referring to C-AF not C-AF + Tracking.

Rob.
 

by Gene Gwin on Sun Dec 27, 2020 9:45 am
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Patrick, That looks pretty darn good. Will have to see how it does with small birds--they takeoff significantly faster and without warning. Thanks for posting the image.
 

by PV Hiker on Sun Dec 27, 2020 4:10 pm
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Location: Carson City, Nevada
Gene here is another opinion on Pro Capture low with Bird Ai you can read. He was getting Owls.
https://www.mcaughtry.photo/2020/12/em1 ... o-capture/
Patrick
 

by Gene Gwin on Sun Dec 27, 2020 6:36 pm
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PV Hiker wrote:Gene here is another opinion on Pro Capture low with Bird Ai you can read.  He was getting Owls.
https://www.mcaughtry.photo/2020/12/em1 ... o-capture/
Thanks for the link.  This give me hope.  Looking at the images, the shots that were not extremely sharp was, I think, because a shutter speed of 2000 was too slow.
 

by DMcA on Sat Jan 02, 2021 2:28 pm
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Gene Gwin wrote:
PV Hiker wrote:Gene here is another opinion on Pro Capture low with Bird Ai you can read.  He was getting Owls.
https://www.mcaughtry.photo/2020/12/em1 ... o-capture/
Thanks for the link.  This give me hope.  Looking at the images, the shots that were not extremely sharp was, I think, because a shutter speed of 2000 was too slow.
Hi, I took those shots, and where the wings were blurred may have been due to the Dof, which at f2.8 was less 25cm at the distance the bird was away from me.  Just about every BIF shot at my site is at 1/2000 and they include some very fast birds like falcons.  Might have been shutter speed, but for sure DoF was at work also. BTW, Bird AF generated sharpness on the birds eyes that I have rarely seen before with the same lens and camera and f/w 1.3.

My experiences in with f/w 2.0 and Bird AF are here for owls and also here for other birds, and my setup details are here.  For general BIF work, I cannot get Bird AF tracking to work very well, and certainly not better than normal 9 or 25 point CAF.  But still trying.....

best

DMcA
 

by Ron Niebrugge on Wed Jan 13, 2021 11:35 am
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I finally updated my firmware and gave bird AF a go, and I thought it worked great. I had trouble trusting it, as I kept wanting to focus on the eye, then compose thanks to years of shooting. That said, I only used it on perched birds. This is what I thought it was primarily designed for as I found airplane mode very effective on birds in flight. I'll have to compare the two. I love Pro Capture.
 

by Gene Gwin on Thu Feb 25, 2021 12:53 pm
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Finally got the chance to try the bird detection autofocus using the E-M1X and the 300 f/4 pro lens on songbirds.  I found it pretty much worthless.  When the songbird is next to water, the focus shifts between the reflection and the bird constantly.  If two or more birds are next to each other, the same thing happens.  Using Pro Capture low mode so the camera is constantly focusing also did not work.  Tried probably twenty times using the Pro Capture low and not one time did the autofocus keep focus on the songbird when it left the perch.  Didn't try the bird detection autofocus on birds in flight because it just seems easier to use the camera's regular autofocus system.   Hopefully they will fine tune the bird detection system.
 

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