Is it worth upgrading R6 mk1 to mk2 for wildlife/birding/BIF?

steeldrake wrote:

R2D2 wrote:

steeldrake wrote:

And finally if you have the experience, is the AF and animal/bird tracking really noticeable better in mk2?

Yes, better subject detection

With R6 AF often struggles in these scenarios

I think first you need to verify that all of your settings are optimized for the kind of shooting that you’re doing. It takes a while to develop a good setup and good technique.

1. while shooting fishing Ospreys the background changes quickly when following the bird and water splashes all over when the bird hits water.

Diving ospreys are indeed HARD. Follow that sucker as perfectly as you can, keeping it in exactly the same location in the viewfinder (don’t let it wander or you’ll get subject motion blur). Keep your shutter speed up.

Remain aware of your depth of field. You’ll often have enough DOF so that you can let off of the autofocus as the bird hits the water (so that the focal plane doesn’t wander due to the splash). Back button focus helps with this, but you can also program a button to Stop Focus if that’s your thing. We’re fortunate that an osprey’s dive is so vertical

Thanks. Yes, I know all this, I am pretty experienced in this type of BIF and have configured BBF (actually 3 button BBF) for my R6, and do prefocusing on estimated place of hit if applicable etc.. I was just wondering if there is any difference R6 vs R6 mkii - but i assume it is hard to see as - like you say - this type of BIF in hard.

OK, good! Sounds like you have the technique down pat.

I haven’t taken the R6ii birding yet (as I have an R5), so I can’t compare with the R6 for birding. I have shot sports with the R6ii though, and I think it does a little better than the R6 in that regard. The biggest difference between the two though is the AF configurability.

R2