Hello, friends!
This was something I planned on sharing with you from the time I did it.
During my previous trip to the seaside, I got into a situation where I only had my small mirrorless camera on me but the swallows had decided to make beautiful near-the-ground flybys. It could last only briefly so I thought there was no time getting to the other side of the beach where my big 70-200 lens mounted on a Canon EOS 30D body (old but solid, both literally and in terms of performance) waited for me. The swallows would probably not wait.
It is pretty hard taking the small, fast birds into the frame when working with such a lens, anyway. But they were flying at an angle straight along the wet sand and it was possible to stand against them and shoot as they came.
They looked as if flying right at me and then making their evasive maneuvers only when they were pretty close.
So, having the situation working for me but the equipment being far from optimal, I still decided to test the tracking capabilities of the Sony Alpha 6000's autofocus.
The problem is, it is not a dot on the frame, but a whole rectangle which covers a relatively large area of the frame and the algorithms would just pick what they decided was worthy of focusing on based on contrast. Black birds on the background of the sand...there was a good chance.
Looking at the result on the relatively tiny display, it all seemed well done. But when I brought the frame to my screen...
A bit of disappointment settled in. The framing was nice, the moment was nice, the angle of the swallow's wings was beautiful...
The focus was behind it and the bird was not sharp, though.
Camera Settings:
Aperture F 8; Shutter Speed 1/400 sec.; ISO 100; Focal Length 50 mm.
In truth, the relatively low Shutter Speed might be eligible for some blame, too. I say Relatively because 1/400 is fast. Just not fast enough for birds in flight. But some blur on the wings wouldn't bother me that much. It was just the tracking focus that did not hold its ground.
Here's a larger view of the swallow during the same exact moment. It is the same frame, only cropped more tightly around the bird itself.
And here is the Preliminary shot made while the bird was still far away. A little bit better, meaning the autofocus was at that point not distracted by the background. Yet.
By the way, sometimes making a preliminary shot would screw up the tracking focus but I think there was plenty of time for it to catch up in this case. It just...
I just...
failed.
But let's be honest. I am not sure I would have made it with my big lens. The shot was a hard task in general.
Given enough time, a photographer could rely on manual focus, aiming for a specific spot at a certain distance and then waiting for the object to get to that exact plane before pressing the trigger. Bearing in mind the slight trigger lag, too.
In Conclusion
It did not surprise me that it did not work. I can't be angry at the equipment in such a situation. It would still have been nice if it did work. Alas...maybe next time.
Cheers,
Manol
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