Mirrorless viewfinders and wildlife photography

unfocused

Photos/Photo Book Reviews: www.thecuriouseye.com
Jul 20, 2010
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I had an interesting experience today. I was shooting some portraits (using speedlights) in a setting where the light was less than ideal, but not horrible. On some subjects the R would hunt and hunt before hitting the focus. I'm not talking about slightly out of focus, but rather completely blurred. I'm going to have to review my autofocus settings, to see if it's something I did, but it is troubling.This is something I'm finding with the R, is that when it finds focus it is spot on, but when it misses, it often misses by a mile and is difficult to get back on target.

Similarly, I've found with birds in flight the same problem. If it can catch the focus, it is spot on and tracks beautifully, but it often hunts and goes completely blurry when you're trying to first get a bead on the bird/birds.
 
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AlanF

Desperately seeking birds
CR Pro
Aug 16, 2012
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22,524
More fair comparison might be 1DX or at least a 5D IV with a grip.
https://camerasize.com/compare/#812,655
Fairness isn’t the point. The M1X was touted as small but it is of similar heft to FFs of twice the sensor size and larger than a Sony A9 even with a grip. Olympus’s new 150-450mm lens is also huge according to our local Olympus rep and the photos of the pre-production model.
 
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I've read many posts saying just the opposite. I'd wonder if a defective lens was involved.
Thanks for suggestion. I cannot verify whether the brand new lens is defective or not, yet. But after sudden change of the focal length, say going fast from 24 to 105, it takes a moment for the lens (focus by wire mechanism?) to settle down and then another moment to acquire focus. This is not the case with the EF long zoom lenses (e.g. 100-400L II) on the same R body.
 
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koenkooi

CR Pro
Feb 25, 2015
3,574
4,110
The Netherlands
Thanks for suggestion. I cannot verify whether the brand new lens is defective or not, yet. But after sudden change of the focal length, say going fast from 24 to 105, it takes a moment for the lens (focus by wire mechanism?) to settle down and then another moment to acquire focus. This is not the case with the EF long zoom lenses (e.g. 100-400L II) on the same R body.

Canon mentoren off-handedly in an interview that RF zoom lenses will emulate being parfocal. It could be that on the 24-240 it gets a bit confused by fast changes.
 
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