M43 Musings

Jim Salvas wrote:

Birders are a special breed in photography, as they are always attempting the near-impossible and thus are always pushing the technical envelope of photography. Thankfully, they buy a LOT of the most expensive gear, so the manufacturers pay attention to them and try to keep up with the demands.

Not so much different than what a motorsports or action photography is. Relative speeds across the frames and subject magnifications are nearly same or same. Where the difference comes is when photographing fast moving subject at closer distances as the AF motors needs to work harder closer the subject is. Example when a person runs toward camera 20km/h speed at 50m range, it is relatively far easier than the same person running at same speed toward camera at 5-7m distance.

Why example any C-AF test done at shorter distances are invalid for comparison for telephoto.

The very idea of shooting small and fast BIFs was unheard of until just a few years ago. Almost nobody could do this with anything other than the grainiest film and early DSLRs were incompetent at the task. But, better sensors came along, with longer, faster AF lenses

Not so. For decades there has been excellent wildlife photographers who have photographed birds in deep dark forests and so. The thing just is that majority of the people didn't hear about those photographers as they made the bird books and education books and even had own special meetings and were more like a war photographers who gathered together once a year to pick best photographers among them.

Now it is like people believe cameras does the tricks and every camera should do it just with push of a button.

While it is a fact that AF is radically improved, but there is huge difference when you give the same camera with same settings to photographer who have been working 30-40 years photographing birds and then for photographer who has been photographing people.

The success rate is significantly higher on experienced photographer even when he use MF vs inexperienced who use best C-AF. As knowing the animal, knowing the terrain, knowing the possibilities is so big benefit over any camera feature.

In future we do have a more software features like the ones already that can work like motion cameras, once the motion is detected then camera starts tracking it, continually focus at it and takes photos. It doesn't require much codes or even from the camera. But it is hold back because when there comes the need to apply it for improved sales, it is done.

Before that we used all kind other gear, from motion and sound detectors to pressure sensitive triggers etc to trigger cameras and flashes. It was just easy back then as you could leave a camera to weather proof box for days with motor back and then just pick it up later with frames.

Now place camera same way, use WiFi to tablet that runs special software for motion tracking etc, but you are limited to few hours because battery!