I find those statements far too categorical. That the R1’s AF may be the best on the market—maybe it is for sports, photojournalism, or other specialties, I won’t argue with that. But for wildlife, it’s light-years behind Sony.
On the hardware side, I won’t deny that the cross-type AF points, the chips, all that—yes, they’re excellent, innovative, and impressive. But what good is it to focus almost instantly on the spot you choose, if the spot you choose isn’t actually the right one? As you rightly said, that camera is the sum of its parts, and in this case, the software or firmware to interpret the scene (for wildlife) is a disaster.
Of course, if you have a standard subject in a clean scene, it will track well—I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about situations like animals behind grass, birds in unusual positions, or what I mentioned about a musk ox in a snowstorm, where the AF wasn’t capable of focusing on the ox’s eyes—or even on the ox at all—because the snowflakes distracted the camera.
So your claim seems wrong to me—it’s not all black and white. Same with saying Canon is ahead of Sony or Nikon: the vast majority of people I know are either already on Sony or have switched to Sony because of the gear. The 200-600 is a fantastic lens, and the autofocus for wildlife is objectively much better than Canon’s.
In my own circle, I’ve been seeing this for years now. Even though I once decided to stay with Canon, in the end it became impossible, because it really feels like they ignore wildlife photographers. Some Canon users I know have even told me their “solution” is to avoid testing Sony gear so they don’t get tempted to switch (because of the financial hit of selling all their Canon gear, etc.).
That’s the reality I see around me, no matter how much Canon insists that 24 MP is enough or that agencies want smaller files.
Best regards!
I think i will sell my R6m2 low-light camera and buy Fuji or Hasselblad 100-megapixels camera.
