Author: DMcA

  • AF for birds in flight with the Sony A9 and the 200-600 zoom

    ByDMcA

    The Sony A9’s PDAF array is linear — it detects vertical contrast well but struggles with horizontal contrast like a bird in profile, unlike the Olympus EM-series cameras which use cross-type sensors that detect any pattern orientation equally. This structural limitation, combined with the 200-600mm’s single focus motor and 2.1kg weight, explains why the A9 hit only 39% accuracy in the demanding afternoon session at the Hawk Conservancy Trust against the EM1x’s 45%.

  • Sony 200-600 zoom: 4 cameras, two lenses

    ByDMcA

    Across four Sony cameras and two copies of the 200-600mm lens, the pattern was consistent: the A7R4 produced 100% out-of-focus shots at Gigrin Farm and 97% out-of-focus at Andover with a replacement lens, while the A9 and A6400 performed better but still fell well short of the Olympus system in demanding conditions. The same autofocus failures appear across all four cameras with both lens copies, ruling out user error or a single defective unit.

  • A7R3 OOF examples Andover

    A7R3 focus accuracy. These are screenshots of the thumbnails of the out-of-focus (OOF) images for the At the HCT, Andover. You will note that the bird is front and centre in almost every image, and it is not operator error or technique that is causing the problems.


    Touch or click any image to go to a lightbox view and then touch the full screen icon in the top right hand corner to get the best viewing experience. And for information on the shot and the location, be sure to click the little ‘i’ icon


  • A6400 OOF examples Andover

    A6400 focus accuracy. These are screenshots of the thumbnails of the out-of-focus (OOF) images for the a whole session at HCT Andover. You will note that the bird is front and centre in almost every image, and it is not operator error or technique that is causing the problems.


    Touch or click any image to go to a lightbox view and then touch the full screen icon in the top right hand corner to get the best viewing experience. And for information on the shot and the location, be sure to click the little ‘i’ icon


  • A7R4 OOF examples Andover

    A7R4 focus accuracy. These are screenshots of the thumbnails of the out-of-focus (OOF) images for the Andover HCT session (all day). You will note that the bird is front and centre in almost every image, and it is not operator error or technique that is causing the problems. 692 out of 854 images were out of focus.


    Touch or click any image to go to a lightbox view and then touch the full screen icon in the top right hand corner to get the best viewing experience. And for information on the shot and the location, be sure to click the little ‘i’ icon


  • A9 TC 1.4 Falcon OOF

    A9 focus accuracy. These are screenshots of the thumbnails of the out-of-focus (OOF) images for the falcon session. You will note that the bird is front and centre in almost every image, and it is not operator error or technique that is causing the problems.


    Touch or click any image to go to a lightbox view and then touch the full screen icon in the top right hand corner to get the best viewing experience. And for information on the shot and the location, be sure to click the little ‘i’ icon


  • A9 Thumbnails Afternoon OOF

    A9 focus accuracy. These are screenshots of the thumbnails of the out-of-focus (OOF) images for the afternoon session. You will note that the bird is front and centre in almost every image, and it is not operator error or technique that is causing the problems.


    Touch or click any image to go to a lightbox view and then touch the full screen icon in the top right hand corner to get the best viewing experience. And for information on the shot and the location, be sure to click the little ‘i’ icon


  • A9 Thumbnails Morning OOF

    A9 focus accuracy. These are screenshots of the 126 (of 456 total) thumbnails of the out-of-focus (OOF) images for the morning session. You will note that the bird is front and centre in almost every image, and it is not operator error or technique that is causing the problems.


    Touch or click any image to go to a lightbox view and then touch the full screen icon in the top right hand corner to get the best viewing experience. And for information on the shot and the location, be sure to click the little ‘i’ icon


  • A9 Hawk misfocus

    I tested the A9 with the 200-600 f5.6 plus the Sony 1.4 TC for the afternoon falcon flying, where a long focal length is required, and the Sony could in theory get out to 900mm . The falcon test is quite demanding as the bird flies incredibly fast, and at a long distance away. The starting position is usually known though so these are slightly easier shots than the kite feeding ones. The results were very poor, with the AF points all over the place, except on the bird.

  • A9 Vulture TC failed focus sequence

    This is a sequence of shots taken with the A9, and the 200-600 plus 1.4 TC. The focal length was an FF equivalent of 840mm, the lens was wide open at F9, and the shutter speed was 1/2000 s. This was a large vulture flying slowly from right to left. It couldn’t be easier. In this series of 52 shots, there was only 1 in focus. This series shows 35 of them. At the beginning there are no green AF points activated, only the orange final focal point. The orange FP loses the bird after 3 or 4 shots. Then you see the AF points and the FP at the right hand side of the frame, miles from the bird. Then they randomly dot around the screen, almost always missing the subject. It doesn’t begin to find the subject until shot 26 of the series, and even then it keeps missing the bird. All the shots were out of focus on inspection.


    Even if the shots had been in focus, I could not have used the images, as the resolution and noise levels were dreadful.

  • A9 wrong focus point

    I got a surprisingly low focus hit rate for the A9 camera I tested. Was I just missing focus? I checked 850 A9 shots with afv.exe for where the actual focus point was in the image. Here are 50 examples of where the bird should have been in focus, but the camera laid all the the focus points in thin air. On the testing day, there were 443 images where the camera failed in this way.


    Touch or click any image to go to a lightbox view and then touch the full screen icon in the top right hand corner to get the best viewing experience.


  • A9 thumbnail run through Afternoon