Why isn’t AF picking up these birds?

Got my R6 today and tried to get it set up. First with the 24-105l and this one with the RF100-400, the AF just isn’t finding these birds. What am I doing wrong?

It kept locking on the fence. Earlier when I was using the shorter lens, it kept locking on a lawn chair in the corner.

I’d suggest that the bird is too small. Even the spot AF area would be bigger than the whole bird. The line where the fence meets the house offers strong contrast. You have to get closer, or get the RF800 f/11, or manually adjust focus.

Heck, they might even be in focus but by the time one blows them up big enough to see on a 1080 monitor, they’re all pixelated and appear to not be sharp.

You’re also at 1/60th. I know IBIS and IS on the lens are supposed to be good, but that’s a tall order at 400mm shooting that small of a subject hand held.

You're too far away, the birds are too small, the fence has too many knots, your settings might not be optimal. you weren't using crop mode (might be all of the above).

R2

I’ll try the closer birds tomorrow and move the chair out of frame because it was catching too much of frame I believe.

And they were pretty small on this lens as well.

The chair is not in focus.  The pole holding the bird feeder is.  As is the bird bath.   I’d sit right where you were and use the 100-400 on the feeders, not the fence.  Set up your animal eye af and make those birds as big as you can in frame.  That lens has a very short minimum focus distance allowing you to use 400mm from three feet away.

If full AF isn’t working for you, try spot or single point and use touch and drag to put the square right on your subject.

JustUs7 wrote:

The chair is not in focus. The pole holding the bird feeder is. As is the bird bath. I’d sit right where you were and use the 100-400 on the feeders, not the fence. Set up your animal eye af and make those birds as big as you can in frame. That lens has a very short minimum focus distance allowing you to use 400mm from three feet away.

If full AF isn’t working for you, try spot or single point and use touch and drag to put the square right on your subject.

That’s what was on tap for tomorrow - longer lens and closer targets.

Texchappy wrote:

Got my R6 today and tried to get it set up. First with the 24-105l and this one with the RF100-400, the AF just isn’t finding these birds. What am I doing wrong?

It kept locking on the fence. Earlier when I was using the shorter lens, it kept locking on a lawn chair in the corner.

I would say way too far away for that little bird.  Even if the camera did focus on it, at that distance with a 20mp sensor you wouldn't get much detail anyway.  Even with the R5 45mp sensor your bird details would be muted.  You need to somehow get closer and/or find bigger birds to photograph.

Texchappy wrote:

Got my R6 today and tried to get it set up. First with the 24-105l and this one with the RF100-400, the AF just isn’t finding these birds. What am I doing wrong?

It kept locking on the fence. Earlier when I was using the shorter lens, it kept locking on a lawn chair in the corner.

Which pixel is the bird?

birdbrain wrote:

Texchappy wrote:

Got my R6 today and tried to get it set up. First with the 24-105l and this one with the RF100-400, the AF just isn’t finding these birds. What am I doing wrong?

It kept locking on the fence. Earlier when I was using the shorter lens, it kept locking on a lawn chair in the corner.

Which pixel is the bird?

The one with feathers obviously;)

birdbrain wrote:

Texchappy wrote:

Got my R6 today and tried to get it set up. First with the 24-105l and this one with the RF100-400, the AF just isn’t finding these birds. What am I doing wrong?

It kept locking on the fence. Earlier when I was using the shorter lens, it kept locking on a lawn chair in the corner.

Which pixel is the bird?

Lol , funny

Using the 100-400 on the closer birds. Was my plan yesterday but the dog scared them to the fence.

From just now…

Why f/16 and why 1/60th? IS is great for static subjects but that feeder moves in the breeze. The bird makes small movements.

I’d be at f/8 with a minimum shutter speed of 1/500 or 1/1,000 and auto iso. Your R6 can handle the ISO’s

JustUs7 wrote:

Why f/16 and why 1/60th? IS is great for static subjects but that feeder moves in the breeze. The bird makes small movements.

I’d be at f/8 with a minimum shutter speed of 1/500 or 1/1,000 and auto iso. Your R6 can handle the ISO’s

Wasn’t laying much attention, had it in auto and was concentrating on the autofocus points.

It seems unlikely that Auto would have selected such a slow shutter speed or small aperture at 400mm.

I think all of the images you have shown here, including the first one were at 1/60th - perhaps check that you are not in Manual or Tv modes ?

As mentioned above, even with good IS, at 400mm you want to be at a minimum of 1/400th, preferably faster to get good sharpness. Also, for many (most ?) lenses diffraction is becoming evident at f16. With my EF 100-400L ii I generally only stop down to around f6.3 or f7.1 and often use f5.6 at 400mm to maximise shutter speed, so I would expect f8 or f9 to yield decent results with your lens.

Your latest photo, while better, is still incorrectly focused - IMO the light below the feeder appears to be much sharper than either the bird (the bird is very OOF) or the feeder - perhaps both were moving across the slow 1/60th, or something has gone wrong quite badly with the focusing.

Colin

Andy01 wrote:

It seems unlikely that Auto would have selected such a slow shutter speed or small aperture at 400mm.

I think all of the images you have shown here, including the first one were at 1/60th - perhaps check that you are not in Manual or Tv modes ?

As mentioned above, even with good IS, at 400mm you want to be at a minimum of 1/400th, preferably faster to get good sharpness. Also, for many (most ?) lenses diffraction is becoming evident at f16. With my EF 100-400L ii I generally only stop down to around f6.3 or f7.1 and often use f5.6 at 400mm to maximise shutter speed, so I would expect f8 or f9 to yield decent results with your lens.

Your latest photo, while better, is still incorrectly focused - IMO the light below the feeder appears to be much sharper than either the bird (the bird is very OOF) or the feeder - perhaps both were moving across the slow 1/60th, or something has gone wrong quite badly with the focusing.

Colin

Checked the AF point and it shows basically the top of the bird’s head. Thought I was on the A+ auto mode but it’s possible I was on something different. I’ve started using the flexible priority mode as I’m paying more attention to other aspects of the camera as I’m getting comfortable with it.

If it was windy and the feeder (and bird) were moving around, then you probably needed at least 1/1000th to freeze the bird (assuming it was correctly focused on the bird's head).

You could achieve the same exposure by using f8, 1/1000th and ISO 800.

Colin

Andy01 wrote:

If it was windy and the feeder (and bird) were moving around, then you probably needed at least 1/1000th to freeze the bird (assuming it was correctly focused on the bird's head).

Colin

Going to try to go sit out this evening and give it a try. They didn’t cooperate this morning. There isn’t a lot of times in west Texas that there isn’t wind. One of the set that morning had the birds tail oof so that should have given me a clue. Was focused (no pun intended) on the AF settings/operation that I wasn’t looking at the other aspects of the shot. Now that I’m figuring out more settings and functions I’m looking more at those things.  Having shot Fuji for the last decade, I’ve had to pay much more attention to those things on the dials.

Slowly getting things in place…