Sony A1 Review For Wildlife Photographers

[Music] hey everyone steve from backcountry gallery here this time around i'm reviewing the sony a1 from as always the perspective of a wildlife photographer before we begin full disclosure i've only been shooting sony a little over a year now along with my canon nikon gear so when i make comparisons most will be between the a1 the a92 and my nikon gear with a little canon tossed in as well as always i don't just rent a camera for a few days and shoot it at a local park instead i've been using this camera pretty much exclusively for the last five months or so and it's been a very busy five months the camera has seen action all over the place i've shot it locally i've taken it to places in the us like the smoky mountains for instance i've used it for nearly a month in costa rica and most recently for several weeks in botswana africa all told i've shot over 60 000 images with this camera all wildlife i've done action i've done wildlife portraits everything in between it's taken some time but i really feel like i've put this camera through its paces and you'll see a selection of the resulting images throughout this review as with my other reviews this is not sponsored in any way and i have no affiliation with sony as always what makes these reviews possible is your support through book and video sales at my site as well as your site contributions and thank you so much if you're one of those people that help so my a1 was purchased with my own funds and the trips to review it were at my own expense no sponsor paid me to say anything you're getting my unbiased unpersuaded opinion of the camera and also note that i'm heavily invested in all three major brands so i really don't have a horse in this race i can use whatever i want also like my other reviews this is not a full technical review where i go over every single spec and feature instead this is a real world field report from a wildlife photographer this video will tell you what i've discovered about the camera and the features i use as a wildlife photographer but it won't discuss the features that i don't use or that i haven't used and like video for example is one of those so all that out of the way let's get started building ergonomics ostensibly the a1 looks and operates a lot like my sony a92 and to a lesser extent the a7r4 this similarity in control placement makes jumping from one body to another incredibly seamless something that's not always true for other manufacturers the body itself is constructed of a magnesium alloy and sony claims it is sealed against both moisture and dust it weighs in at one pound 10 ounces or 737 grams relatively petite for a pro body this lighter weight and compact size is always welcome when traveling though especially by air and i have enjoyed that with this camera one place sony gets beat up a bit is on the ergonomic front and i think well maybe possibly the camera's grip could be a little bit more comfortable overall the buttons the controls and the dials all have a very good feel to them and are easy to use with your eye to the viewfinder each control feels slightly different so it's easy to tell the difference between something like the rear shutter speed dial and the exposure compensation wheel i found that i can comfortably use the camera for long periods of time and once you get used to the control layout it's very fast and intuitive to operate of course you know everyone is different but overall i have zero real issues with the ergonomics of this camera adjusting my settings and options with this camera is as easy for me and as fast for me as any nikon and in some ways it's actually faster for example as a new sony shooter i really like the exposure compensation dial it's so much easier to use when shooting manual with auto iso then when i have to like press a button a dial to change those values i know that seems incredibly minor but from a field workflow standpoint slight differences in speed really do make a difference in addition i'm a fan of the control wheel on the back of the camera as mentioned i frequently shoot manual and auto iso so i have this wheel set for iso a quick spin and i'm instantly out of auto iso and setting my own values when i want to go back i just rapidly spin counterclockwise until auto iso is selected and i'm back to my manual and auto iso auto exposure mode again it's really fast and very very handy and again this seems minor but split second differences resulting from fast control options are sometimes the difference between getting a tricky wildlife shot and going home with an empty card i also like the way the control wheel acts as a button at all four cardinal points and you can customize the top sides and bottom presses with different functions i'm also happy to see the articulated touch screen on the back as a nikon shooter and this applies to canon as well flip screens were never available on the dslr flagships well i do understand wanting to maintain the best possible weather sealing and durability so you know they don't they didn't put those flip screens on there but as a wildlife photographer i find the flip screen incredibly handy when i'm trying to shoot really low so i'm glad to see it now one criticism is that i wish sony had used a better lcd panel on the back the camera uses an older three inch 1.4 million dot panel and the funny thing is shortly after they released the a1 the updated a7r iv came out with a 2.3 million dot panel looking at the competition the canon r3 currently the closest competitor can enhance to the a1 features a 3.2 inch 4.1 million dot rear lcd well the nikon z6 and z72 feature a 3.2 inch rear panel with 2.1 million dots now honestly i don't use the rear lcd panel that much anyway it just kind of seems like a camera of this caliber should come with a better lcd panel while the rear lcd panel isn't overly impressive it can be argued that the a1 more than makes up for it with its 9.44 million pixel oled evf i think it's absolutely outstanding and it's currently the highest resolution evf between the big three manufacturers by a comfortable margin the clarity provided by this viewfinder really makes you forget you're using an evf well i can become accustomed to evfs and other cameras this one is the first that consistently makes me forget i'm not looking through an optical viewfinder the a1 also allows you to control the refresh rate of this viewfinder with choices of 60 120 or 240 frames per second i mostly left it in the middle at 120 and even for fast birds it seemed just fine if you do feel like there's more leg than you'd like then you can crank it up to 240 frames per second but keep in mind the faster the frame rate the lower the resolution in the viewfinder and the smaller the actual screen inside that viewfinder appears overall i'm very happy with the evf and i find i can look through it for long periods without any eye strain jumping around a bit the body also features dual card slots that support either a cf express type a card or an sd card and you can mix and match putting a cf express in one slot and an sd card in the other however there is a slight drawback here in order to realize the best buffer performance from this camera you really need to spring for the cf express type a cards and those things are crazy expensive i have a pair of the 160 gig cards and they set me back 400 bucks each you can get smaller 80 gig cards but this will still set you back 200 bucks each thankfully third parties are starting to produce cf express type a cards now so hopefully we'll see an overall reduction in price as time goes on also fast sd cards can work but the effective buffer is a bit smaller and it takes about twice as long to empty on the side you can see we have all the ports you'd expect to find on a modern camera including usbc and hdmi ports next let's chat about battery life mirrorless cameras in general are often criticized for poor battery life however that wasn't my experience with this camera i never once ended up anywhere close to using both the batteries in my battery pack on any given day or shoot there were times i did exhaust one battery and the camera was working on the next one but i never once and all of my travels had to stop shooting and grab a spare battery with the grip attached with the two batteries in it sure i agree that the nikon d6 or canon 1dx would likely last longer but the bottom line is from a practical standpoint battery life just wasn't an issue for me speaking of the grip i wanted to note that because the body design is so similar to other sony cameras in this generation the grip can work on any of them so i can swap the grip between the a92 and the a1 or even the a7r4 oh that's pretty sweet the grip itself is full featured and has all the controls you'd expect now personally i'm kind of on the fence between having a detachable grip and having an integrated one on one hand i like that i can take it off and go with a more compact setup when i need to but other cameras with integrated grips just feel better in the hand to me overall i think i favor the integrated grip over the detachable one but only by a smidgen and by the way people have been concerned about the battery grip and weather sealing but it does maintain weather sealing with a rubber gasket on the battery compartment insert as for build quality i know that's another place where sony gets beat up and it actually was an area of concern for me as well i'm accustomed to the ruggedness and reliability of nikon's pro series dslrs and i wasn't sure if this little camera was going to hold up but so far so good of course five months isn't a long term trial still i've used the camera in a wide range of conditions in north america central america and africa it's seen plenty of nice days but also has been out in both rainy and dusty conditions without a single issue it's been bumped splashed bounced and generally abused in vehicles running down rough roads for miles and miles on end and it even fell about two feet from a boat seat onto the hard floor ones no issues so far so far it seems rugged enough for my use now as a comparison though we had various minor lock-ups with both the z62 the z72 and the r5 on our trip so there you go if i have one criticism it's the lack of gasketing on some of the doors neither the memory card door or the doors under the ports have any kind of rubber seal and instead seem to rely on a tongue and groove design to keep the elements at bay so far it seems to have worked but i'd feel better if i saw a little bit of rubber there customization and menus one thing i really like about the a1 is the sheer number of customization options you can assign upwards of 164 functions and they're assignable to 17 custom controls as a comparison my nikon d6 has 46 customizations and 14 customizable controls with the a1 it seems virtually everything on the menu system can be assigned to a button and while some may find that level of customization a little intimidating i found it to be a valuable asset the thing is the customizations i've assigned to my buttons and dials have a direct and significant impact on my ability to put keepers on the cart they make me far faster in the field than i've ever been before with any camera i'd go over the settings i'm using but honestly it would take forever to explain them here in this video so let me know in the comments if you're interested in an a1 setup guide for this camera if enough people are then i'll do the video with those settings now the menus on the other hand i think maybe could be a little bit better here's the thing sony has used their new menu system in the a1 and admittedly it does seem better than the one in the a92 however i still don't think it's quite as intuitive as nikon's and canon's menus it sometimes seems like things are in weird places bury too deep or the nomenclature just isn't very easy to understand or is too similar to other features it's not that the menus are horrible to use it's just that i think they could stand some improvement or at least a little better clarity of purpose however that's just my opinion obviously everyone is going to have a different take on it and of course the amount of customization is so extensive you know to give sony credit it's probably tough to shoehorn all of that in there frame rate buffer and blackout free shooting first let's start with frame rate as you probably know the a1 can knock out 30 frames per second if all the stars are lined up those stars include a compatible lens switching to lossy compressed raw or jpeg afc mode drive mode set to high plus electronic shutter afc priority set to release and using a non-tracking af mode since i preferred not to use lossy compressed and instead use lossless compressed raw most of the time i stick with the still incredibly adequate 20 frames per second option i realize that you may be thinking that even 20 frames per second seems fairly excessive and before i had access to that kind of frame rate i would probably have agreed however the truth is that faster frame rate can often make a significant difference the thing is faster frame rates are all about giving you more opportunities to capture a perfect moment for each second of shooting i get 20 or even 30 chances at a perfect position perfect expression or perfect wing beat take the shot of a toucan coming in for a landing although he was shooting 20 frames a second the shot before and after this one will very good weren't quite as good as this shot this shot had the best wing position as well as creating a perfect balance between the bird and the branch so it's not that using a different camera with a slower frame rate wouldn't catch you a keeper it's that 20 frames a second can often get you a better keeper than you otherwise would have had this has even proved surprisingly valuable when capturing expressions of stationary subjects like this monkey this isn't a scenario where you'd think that 20 frames a second would really have much of an impact but this image really is just slightly funnier than the one just before it in just after it overall i'm really enjoying the extra opportunities these faster frame rates afford and i'm absolutely capturing more perfect or ideal moments especially with action by the way the faster frame rates are with the electronic shutter engage if you use the mechanical shutter frame rate is still limited to a still pretty respectable 10 frames per second however i realize not every subject requires blistering speed and this camera allows you to assign different frame rates for h plus it's always the maximum frame rate the camera can output given the current lens raw compression etc i have my normal continuous high set for 20 frames per second continuous mid for 15 frames per second and continuous low set for 10. note that sony only allows fixed frame rate increments so unfortunately you can't set something like 12 or 18 frames per second so how about buffer capacity as you can see there are a lot of options and combinations that can make a difference i did some quick buffer tests with the cards you see pictured below and these were the results using what i think are probably pretty common settings for most wildlife photographers overall the buffer is adequate too outstanding but there is one little nitpick i have using the maximum file quality lossless compressed at the maximum frame rate actually gives us our lowest buffer capacities with either card the thing is well the actual number of images is more than adequate for wildlife work buffer is less about the number of images and more about how long you can keep shooting if the action persists personally i think a flagship pro camera should offer more than a five second buffer using the maximum quality at top speed it's not that i need it very often it's just that i did run into the buffer just a time or two during prolonged action and flight sequences when i was testing the camera now thankfully the buffer empties amazingly fast with those cf express type a cards so it wasn't the end of the world like i say just just a minor nitpick however any minor nitpicks with a buffer are more than offset with blackout free shooting as someone who is drawn to action sequences a blackout between each frame was an irritant that you simply lived with the price of admission if you will with the a1 and of course the a92 that's no longer the case blackout free shooting is truly one of the technologies that falls into game changing territory and it makes tracking fast moving subjects noticeably easier as you can guess this directly translates into more keepers on the card the funny thing is at first it does take a quick adjustment period to become accustomed to it the first few times you use it you can feel like you're actually not shooting but after what i would call the world's shortest learning curve you'll wonder how you ever got along without it so although it may sound gimmicky to some don't underestimate it it's incredibly useful and it works flawlessly sensor performance the a1 uses a high performance 50.1 megapixel stacked sensor with a native iso range of iso 100 to 32 000 and has no optical low-pass filter as with any high-res sensor it delivers remarkable detail when you fill the frame and also gives you plenty of cropping options as well it's a little like having a 50-megapixel full-frame camera with a pro-grade megapixel aps-c camera built right in in fact i have the delete key on the camera programmed to flip to aps-c mode when dealing with subjects that are a little too far off to fill the frame although it's exactly the same as cropping the image back home on the computer it does save space in the buffer and on the memory card in addition the sensor supports 5-axis image stabilization as well note however that i-vis systems do tend to work better with shorter lenses than with a longer glass used by wildlife photographers thankfully all of sony's longer lenses also have steady shot image stabilization built right in now sony claims 15 stops of dynamic range but that looks like an engineering dynamic range and not a photographic dynamic range the pdr on the a1 according to photons to photos is still a very respectable 11.36 stops which is within spinning range of the nikon z7's 11.6 stops in short it's really really good let's tackle my favorite thing about the sensor the incredibly fast readout speed for the wildlife photographer this fast readout speed means you can use the electronic shutter for virtually everything from stills to action with little to no worry about rolling shutter effects in fact i have yet to use the mechanical shutter for anything beyond covering the sensor when i change lenses i have silent shutter on all the time and despite shooting tons of action with this camera even hummingbirds i have yet to have any real problems with rolling shutter i can't say that about any other mirrorless camera i've used with electronic shutter even the canon r5 exhibits rolling shutter artifacts with something as simple as these goals note the distorted wing i don't think they have a six foot wingspan but it looks like it in this photo here's another note the odd swoop of the wing at the top from rolling shutter on the a1 any rolling shutter effect is minimal to non-existent and that even applies to faster flapping birds like the southern jakana in fact this fast readout speed is one area i think really gets overlooked or brushed over by many but it's a significant reason why the a1 is my current mirrorless camera of choice the thing is many mirrorless cameras including the sony and canons of the world only realize their full frame rate in full electronic shutter mode if the readout speed is not fast enough you end up with shots ruined by rolling shutter effects and the thing is if you're using a faster frame rate you're probably shooting action that's fast enough to show rolling shutter problems with the a1 i found it's no concern at all at least with the wildlife i've been shooting i can't speak for every genre of course i also enjoy the more obvious benefits of the electronic shutter and silent shooting as well i never have to worry about camera noise disturbing the wildlife or even other photographers by the way if you're a flash shooter the fast readout speed also allows you to use flash with the electronic shutter at 1 200th of a second a first for a mirrorless camera as far as i know if you employ the mechanical shutter you can use a normal sync speed of 1 400 of a second great for wildlife fill flash shooters finally the fast readout speed is also what makes the af in this camera so effective and we'll talk more about af later on iso color and files so how's the iso as you'd expect it's absolutely fine at the lower values but that's not really what you're worried about is it if you're like me you're probably wondering how the high iso compares to cameras like the a92 the nikon z7 nikon d6 and canon r5 well let's take a look but before we get into the slides i want to mention that all the a1 files were down sampled to the same resolution as the comparison cameras for comparative output and by the way if you're not sure what that comparative output is or why we compare this way check out my iso and cropping video it'll help for our iso tests i compared iso 3200 6400 and 12800 basically the iso values most wildlife photographers would think of as high iso the profiles used were simply the default lightroom profiles i converted everything to black and white in photoshop to make it easier to examine the noise and these were shot in incredibly dim light as well the iso 12800 shots were only at 1 60th of a second at f8 also these slides are available for closer examination on my site under the blog post for this video first let's start with the a1 against the nikon z7 mark ii and this would be the same as what we'd have with the d850 at iso 3200 they are roughly the same although i think there is a little more sharpening applied to the a1 files than the z7 mark ii files from adobe at iso 6400 it's the same story very very close at iso 12800 again it's really close between these two cameras and i'm not sure if one really has an edge over the other from an iso standpoint next we have the nikon d6 against the a1 at iso 3200 both look great but i think the d6 does have a slight edge the story is the same at iso 6400 both cameras are really close but it seems like the d6 edges it out i think the d6 pulls ahead just a little more at iso 12 800 to me it looks like it's about a third of a stop at least and i can almost be talked into the idea that it's a half stop ahead of the a1 maybe overall though i think the a1 had an edge in overall detail and sharpness probably due to the down sampling and of course the lack of the aaa filter next we have the sony a92 and an iso 3200 it's neck and neck i don't really see much of a difference next iso 6400 and again they look pretty close to me as with the d6 i think the sharpness and detail is better with the a1 finally iso 12800 and again this is incredibly close i just don't see much of a difference finally we have the canon r5 and the a1 and iso 3200 both are incredibly close too close to call really at iso 6400 again it's incredibly close maybe the r5 by the slightest of edges but for all practical applications this is a time finally iso 12800 and again so close i can't really make a call the bottom line is that the a1 performs in the ballpark of all the other modern cameras in this comparison if you're considering any of these cameras iso performance is for all practical purposes a wash in the field using the a1 was a lot like using my z7 or d850 i usually found myself trying to keep the iso under 6400 for most shots under 3200 or even 2000 if i was anticipating a heavy crop and occasionally i'd get brave and go beyond iso 6400 if i was really filling the frame with something special okay so what about shadow pulling i've had a lot of people ask if the a1 does as well with shadow recovery as the other cameras in a word yes i shot a large variety of test shots with varying levels of dark shadows and don't worry i'm not going to torch you by discussing all 24 comparisons because the results were all the same the a1 is on par with the competition let's quickly look at the iso 2000 shots with a deep shadow pole i pulled the shadows up by 100 with lightroom on all the files and there are some differences with how the raw files reacted however overall most of the cameras performed at about the same level also like the other images these have been resized for comparative output i left them in color though because there is one slide that's pretty interesting first the nikon z7 and the a1 as you can see the results are incredibly close i think you'd almost argue that the a1 looks just a fraction better but not enough to make a difference in the real world next we have the d6 and the same story they are incredibly close here but maybe the d6 wins by just a hair the canon r5 again the same stories both cameras are really close finally the a92 and here's where we actually do see a difference the a92 was brighter and consequently noisier with the 100 shadow pull and for these darker shadow pull examples it also shifted a bit green i didn't see that in the lighter shadow poles with the a92 but the heavier shadows did experience a color shift with that particular camera at any rate overall the a1 isn't noticeably worse or better than the other cameras when faced with a tough shadow pole i found the exact same similarities we just covered at every iso tested and with every level of shadow brightness and for the most part these results seem to hold up in the field as well although there is a little annoyance with higher iso greens that can come into play so let's move on and talk about color cameras struggle the most with color as iso climbs so let's take a peek at the iso 12800 samples again this is with the lightroom default profile so these observations may not be the same with every single raw processor but the few i have checked this seems about right for the most part the colors look good from all the cameras with the a92 looking a little overly vibrant to my eye as far as color accuracy i'd say it's a tie with the nikons and the a1 with the r5 maybe just a hair behind now for me again the a92 is slightly too vibrant and again just my opinion there though however out of the box color is one thing adjusting it is another one thing i've noticed that sometimes not often but on occasion i want to stress that i do seem to struggle to get the colors correct with the a1 files especially at isos over 3200 and dealing with extreme greens either like really dark or really light again not every time sometimes it just seems like it's tougher to get them to look the way i want when i compare similar shots for my nikons the higher iso dark greens seem especially prone to getting a little bit muddy but i can usually still make them work now on the other hand most of the time the colors are absolutely fine for normal scenes and even at higher isos and i actually don't need to do much or any color adjustment typically the only thing i may do is cool them off a bit the a1s auto white balance tends towards the warm side just a little bit at least while i'm using lightroom to sum it up on a scale of 1 to 10 if nikon files are 10 i feel like these are more of a 8 maybe so not terrible but sometimes they need a little extra love now i know some people avoid sony because they've heard sony color is horrible but in my experience it's just been such a minor thing that i personally wouldn't come anywhere near putting it into the make it or break it category for purchasing this camera autofocus finally the one everyone's been waiting for autofocus as of this video's publication date i can say the a1 has the most sophisticated reliable af system i've ever used it's responsive fast flexible and in short it just works the camera has a total of 759 on sensor pdaf points covering 92 percent of the sensor the af system itself is a direct beneficiary of the incredibly fast readout speed of the sensor verifying af 120 times a second the a1 includes a wide variety of af areas to suit just about any need all of these af areas can be used as a standard f area or as a real-time tracking af area the difference between a standard af area and a tracking af area is a standard af area stays in one place in the viewfinder and it works like what you'd have in a traditional dslr the tracking areas identify your subject within the af area and then put a tracking box around it before chasing it around the viewfinder once locked on the camera also features iaf for humans birds and mammals first let's talk about just the standard af modes with all the sophistication shoehorned into this camera you'd think there'd be little use for such archaic areas but the truth is i think my most used af area was simply the normal spot area i found the standard style af errors were all useful they all performed really well basically if i did my job and put the af area where it needed to be the camera did its job and i got a nice sharp photo for action i used zone quite a bit i had eye detection turned on so when it saw an eye it grabbed on and when it didn't the normal zone af area did a good job in fact zone reminds me of a large version of group af on my nikons as a side note another place where i used the standard af modes was with slower shutter speed panning when you're panning like that you want to keep the animal in the exact same place in the viewfinder as much as possible and i found the medium spot area worked really well for that next we have the real-time tracking options what i like about the a1 is that it allows you to use any of the standard af areas with real-time tracking i found myself gravitating towards both zone tracking and central area tracking i've been using zone tracking more lately though and i think it's my current favorite for birds in flight you simply get your subject inside that zone af area and once the camera finds it it places a tracking box on the target and will chase it then anywhere in the viewfinder the zone option with tracking sends a lot of keepers to the cards in fact the tracking system works so well for my wildlife action work i'm going to go ahead and call it a game changer for wildlife action shooters once the camera had a stable lock it was like the tracking box was velcroed to the subject most of the time as long as i kept the subject in the viewfinder the system did a great job of staying with it against a clean background it was nearly impossible to get the camera to surrender the lock and against busier backgrounds it still did a great job and busy backgrounds are often the nemesis of an af system now don't get me wrong it would drop the subject from time to time it's not perfect especially if it's against a busy background but less than i had with any other mirrorless camera during our testing we came upon some metal larks in the smokies and really put the tracking system to the test the day we shot this the birds were really interested in hanging out on the fence posts along the road when a car went by they'd fly off and immediately circle back i took advantage of this by locking onto them with my tracking area and doing my best to keep them in the viewfinder as they flew i mean they're fast especially at close range with 840 millimeter worth of lens attached so keeping them like perfectly centered in the viewfinder was a lost cause at least for me however the camera was able to track them no matter where they happened to be in the viewfinder at the time i pressed the shutter release and i came back with a nice selection of keepers while i could have nailed a few shots with a high-end dslr i'm confident i had probably three to four times as many using the tracking system in this camera the other interesting thing with the tracking system is that it won't give up on the subject even if it flies out of the frame as long as i kept af engaged and quickly got the subject back into the frame the camera would often grab right back on i also liked using tracking for keeping on a static subject's head and eye especially with iaf enabled it was handy to just lock the tracking area on the face and then i would just compose as needed now let's talk iaf iaf works in conjunction with any standard af or tracking area you're using so if i'm using spot af it will see the eye inside the spot af area and highlight it if i'm using it with a tracking mode it'll replace the normal tracking box with an iaf box hovering around the eye if it loses the eye it goes back to the standard tracking box you also have to tell the camera if you're shooting animals birds or humans i have my center control wheel button set to toggle between animal and bird i turn off the option for humans since i don't take too many photos of those i do wish this was something that didn't need any attention though canon does it automatically and it would be nice not to have to toggle all the time however i did notice that the camera often picked up the eye of my subject even if i had the mode wrong so go figure i guess as for effectiveness it works well but not every time i found that species with kind of a classic face presentation were better targets than species with more unique faces like things like hippos elephants and even toucans it's not that it never grabbed onto those subjects it just wasn't reliable enough to trust i also found that sometimes in difficult conditions like in low contrast dark rain forests for instance iaf wouldn't see the eye of my subject as readily or consistently as i'd like in addition it liked eyes that really stood out dark eyes against like dark fur or feathers were not its favorite targets and not surprisingly if the eye was obscured it was you know game over in those cases i'd simply use one of the normal af areas usually the small spot area to make sure i didn't miss the shot it's easy to become too reliant on the iaf and equally easy to miss a shot because you thought the camera would see it when it didn't in fact early on i came up with a method that worked well when used in conjunction with iaf i started by setting my ae lock button for wide area af and focus for static subjects i'd start with whatever af area was appropriate for the shot at hand usually one of the spot af areas and i'd use my normal af on button i'd look inside the af area and if i saw that the camera saw the eye all the time with no difficulty i'd slide my thumb over to the ae lock button and let the camera do the work in wide af mode that way i could adjust my composition any way i liked and the camera would follow the eye for me on the other hand if the camera really wasn't seeing the eye that well i'd never move my thumb over and i just stick with the normal af area so for most subjects iaf worked well and allowed me to concentrate on composition instead of chasing my subject's eye all around the viewfinder with my af point take this little fox for instance this fidgety little guy was constantly moving his head up down left right he'd dip a little bit keeping a single af point on his eye would have been a full-time job i started with just a single point on his eye and immediately noticed the camera was consistently seeing that eye so i slid my thumb over to the ae lock button and engaged the wide af area and just let the camera track the eye while i concentrated on the composition using iaf like this allows you to put your full cognitive resources towards composition and as a result you often crank out better shots iaf was also impressive for many of my burden flight shots you could literally watch the af box stick to the eye as the bird flew past in fact one of the biggest problems bird and flight photographers face is when the camera grabs a wing tip instead of a face eye detection helps to minimize this issue a little bit in addition i noticed it was often surprisingly good at finding the eye of some birds as they flew right towards the camera not a trick you can readily do with a dslr take a look at this caracara the focus was clearly on the eye note how the beak is just ever so slightly out bottom line there are times iaf is incredibly effective other times not so much in my opinion think of it as just another tool in the toolbox that you use when appropriate and don't rely on it for every animal that crosses your viewfinder also yes i have shot this camera and the canon r5 together and i think the iaf systems are about a wash with the a1 seeming like it's maybe just a bit stickier once it's on the eye in addition i was frequently shooting the a1 next to my wife who was shooting the canon r5 i mean we chat back and forth and for the most part when she had the eye i had the eye and when the r5 did not have the eye neither did the a1 sure there were sometimes differences and at times the r5 would see an i that the a1 didn't and sometimes a1 with c1 that the r5 didn't still they were incredibly close overall eye detection has been a welcome addition and i'm really glad to have it just remember it's not 100 effective so there are times you really are going to need to take over as for the overall af system again it's the most impressive i've ever used i have a higher rate of in focus images with the a1 than any other camera and i've shot some pedigrees the bottom line is if i do my job and keep the af area on the subject the camera usually does its job i'm not saying it's you know 100 perfect i have plenty of misses or near-misses in my files but it does miss less than any other camera i've used conclusion despite a few minor criticisms the a1 really is a potent wildlife camera it checks all the boxes and simply gets the job done as of this video it's the best wildlife camera i've ever used and that's not something i say lightly keep in mind that i love wildlife and wildlife action and this camera often seems like it was tailor made for that pursuit however it's wildly expensive and not something i would recommend unless you're regularly going to leverage the high-end features it offers in fact when looking at the price keep in mind that 6 500 is only the beginning if you want a pair of those 160 gig sony cf type a express cards guess what that's another 800 bucks and a grip that's going to set you back 400 bucks rapidly bringing that 6500 dollar camera to 7 700 and only you can decide if it's worth it i can tell you that for what i do and what i need this camera really is worth every dime for me i need a camera that gets the job done consistently and reliably my overall keeper rate with this camera is higher than any i've ever had and many of the features just make it more fun to shoot than anything else right now i think it's really is the best overall wildlife camera on the market of course once i test the canon r3 and the nikon z9 that opinion may change still i think this is one of those rare times where the hyperbottic camera is largely justified it's an exceptional performer and it does not disappoint if you enjoyed this review please consider sharing it with others these reviews take a tremendous amount of effort and the only way i can keep doing them is if you keep sharing them by the way if you're a wildlife action shooter i'm sure birds are on the menu so check out my new ebook secrets to stunning bird and flight photography it is jam-packed with everything you need to know to capture amazing burden flight imagery with any brand of camera each chapter is written in a friendly easy to understand way that not only explains the technical side but also how when and why to use the techniques described and of course it's not just tech talk we also dive deep into how to make your images more compelling and artistic check it out for less than the price of a lunch date at mcdonald's you can start sending award-winning burden flight images to your cards as always if you're not on my email newsletter make sure you stop by the site and sign up for that it's hundred percent free and it'll let you know anytime i post a new video i post an article workshop opportunity any of that cool stuff and as always please make sure you like subscribe and get notified thank you so much for watching have a great day you

Channel: Steve Perry

Views: 40,382

Keywords: photography tips, photography help, Backcountry Gallery, Steve Perry, nature photography, sony a1, Sony A1 review, Sony A1 wildlife photography, Sony A1 wildlife, sony alpha 1 review, sony alpha 1, sony alpha 1 wildlife photography, Sony A1 animal, wildlife photography with the sony a1, a1 for wildlife, a1, sony, best wildlife camera, wildlife photography, wildlife camera review, Sony A1 bird eye af, Sony A1 bird photography, Sony A1 BIF, sony wildlife action, a1 bird

Id: fnN2IhsYK_M

Length: 39min 31sec (2371 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 24 2021