Best Camera for Eagle-in-fly

[Einst_Stein]

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Many years ago, Nikon D850 and Canon 5D mark IV are among the best full frame cameras for bird-action. Leica has never been a target in this area. Recently I watched Mark Smith's YouTube, he was a D850 fan (and D500), but about 3 years ago or so, he was converted to Sony, now Sone A1x is his main tool. One of the main reason is the no-mirror blocking and the frame per second.

I checked the specs of SL3, SL3S and  Sony A1 II. Leica's spec is no inferior to Sony A1ii. I mean in terms of frame per second, etc. Why Leica SL3x is rarely mentioned by the bird shooters?  

The lenses are not up to the expectation? or the price?

[PhotoCruiser]

Good and interesting question.
I am not a birder nor a wildlife photographer but did some occasional wildlife, my D800 could do that easily and she never missed a shot, except i made a mistake.

• cost may be a point, but thats always a "problem" with Leicas
• the lenses are certainly out of any discussion and Sigma has excellent lenses for any use
• the not very fast autofocus may be another problem for moving wildlife

If i would need a camera for a longer safari or getting into birding or similar i probably would choose again a Nikon on a D800 level for speed, function and ergonomics.

Chris

[Einst_Stein]

33 minutes ago, PhotoCruiser said:

Good and interesting question.
I am not a birder nor a wildlife photographer but did some occasional wildlife, my D800 could do that easily and she never missed a shot, except i made a mistake.

• cost may be a point, but thats always a "problem" with Leicas
• the lenses are certainly out of any discussion and Sigma has excellent lenses for any use
• the not very fast autofocus may be another problem for moving wildlife

If i would need a camera for a longer safari or getting into birding or similar i probably would choose again a Nikon on a D800 level for speed, function and ergonomics.

Chris

I have D850, but rarely use it because I don't have many interesting bird around, no, not the camera problem. 

However, I admire Mark Smith's photos and his shooting skill. According to his experience, the mirror-less can make big difference, and fast frame rate too.  Of course it must have fast and accurate AF. While D850 is very capable, what people may not know if he has not compared with the modern mirror-less. Basically, there is nothing "good enough".

Now D850 + 200-500mm cost about US$2800. I think it is about 90~95% capable comparing the ~US$10K A1-2. So it would still be a best choice, at least for advanced beginner.  

I wish Leica SL3 can catch up, if a fast AF lens is required, maybe Sigma can fill it? 

[PhotoCruiser]

Sigma has some interesting tele lenses, their Sport series for example.
https://www.sigmaphoto.com/lenses/sports?sigma_mount=13000

However not sure how fast their AF is on a Leica and the lenses itself are not very fast either, 5.x to 6.x. what can be a problem in shady places. However, i had several 5.x+ zooms and they worked reasonable well.

Chris

[Ko.Fe.]

For BIF, it has to be lens with really fast AF and camera firmware AF following object, while back button is pressed for AF.

If this works, it is not about frame burst, but how clearly you could see the object.

I don't think LCAG will ever achieve AF with following capabilities like Canon. And Canon L series AF was so fast and precise, I just used Canon 500D for BIF. 

[wjdrijfhout]

Lee Scott has a YT video testing the Sigma 500mm/SL3 combi for wildlife. Little bit of BIF, but mainly wildlife. His conclusion was that this combo was not suited for wildlife/BIF. Biggest issue was AF, and not enough high-ISO performance to balance the relatively slow f/5.6 aperture. 

Both aspects seem a lot better with the SL3-S, so perhaps that would work. But then only 24MP, so less room to crop in, which for BIF might be a problem.

My experience is that Sigma lenses are faster on SL bodies than Leica lenses. 

[LD_50]

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4 hours ago, Einst_Stein said:

Many years ago, Nikon D850 and Canon 5D mark IV are among the best full frame cameras for bird-action. Leica has never been a target in this area. Recently I watched Mark Smith's YouTube, he was a D850 fan (and D500), but about 3 years ago or so, he was converted to Sony, now Sone A1x is his main tool. One of the main reason is the no-mirror blocking and the frame per second.

I checked the specs of SL3, SL3S and  Sony A1 II. Leica's spec is no inferior to Sony A1ii. I mean in terms of frame per second, etc. Why Leica SL3x is rarely mentioned by the bird shooters?  

The lenses are not up to the expectation? or the price?

I’m not sure how a look at the SL3, SL3-S and the Sony A1 II would indicate that Leica’s specs are not inferior when considering shooting BIF.

Sony — higher resolution = better cropping capability than SL3-S, slightly less than SL3

Sony — much much better AF than both SL3 and SL3-S

Sony — pre-capture — doesn’t exist on SL3 and SL3-S

Sony — 30 fps at 14-bit — better than SL3 and SL3-S

Sony — no blackout EVF — better than SL3 and SL3-S (overall EVF quality is subjective, but for BIF I would choose the blackout free Sony solution)

Sony — lens selection — better than SL3 and SL3-S

There are a lot of reasons to shoot Leica (hence my only shooting Leica M and SL2-S), but I wouldn’t begin to argue they’re competitive for BIF with Sony. The Sony A1 II takes the best high speed aspects of the SL3-S, improves upon those, and combines with the high resolution of the SL3. I’m sure there are some who shoot BIF successfully with the two Leicas and also some who shoot successfully with lesser tools.

[lightsourcekauai]

I have tried the Leica SL3 with the Leica 90-280 and the Sigma 500 f/5.6 for birds in flight. I found the SL3 with 90-280 to be unsuited to the task. It was very difficult for the camera and lens to focus on the bird. So much so that the bird was often out of frame before the camera could achieve focus. The Sigma 500 f5.6 performed better. It was still difficult, but better. If you are able to track the bird from sitting to flight you will get a few keepers. Also if you have very good light— front light on the birds— your hit rate will be higher. Larger birds like herons and eagles are easier, but please do not expect anywhere near the same results that cameras with faster and more advanced animal tracking AF and fast prime lenses will provide. And of course practice, practice, practice is important, too. This is at least my experience. 

[helged]

7 hours ago, lightsourcekauai said:

I have tried the Leica SL3 with the Leica 90-280 and the Sigma 500 f/5.6 for birds in flight. I found the SL3 with 90-280 to be unsuited to the task. It was very difficult for the camera and lens to focus on the bird. So much so that the bird was often out of frame before the camera could achieve focus. The Sigma 500 f5.6 performed better. It was still difficult, but better. If you are able to track the bird from sitting to flight you will get a few keepers. Also if you have very good light— front light on the birds— your hit rate will be higher. Larger birds like herons and eagles are easier, but please do not expect anywhere near the same results that cameras with faster and more advanced animal tracking AF and fast prime lenses will provide. And of course practice, practice, practice is important, too. This is at least my experience. 

+1. Actually, most of the native Leica lenses have somewhat slow-ish AF mechanisms. The lenses with fastest AF mechanism that I have experience with, are Sigma 70-200mm DG DN f2.8 (generally too short focal length for birds in flight; the Leica-version should be equally fast as this is a rebrand of the Sigma lens) and Sigma 500mm DG DN f5.6. SL3 is far from tailored for birds flight; continuous AF isn't that fast or sticky; max 5 frames per second with AF-C is low(ish) and the sensor readout time is long, so higher fps-rate with the electronic shutter may lead to distorted wings, etc. 

For situations where AF-C is wanted, the best L-mount can offer presently is Lumix S5ii with the fastest Sigma lenses, and SL3-S, also with the fastest lenses.

Compared to the state-of-art cameras from Canon, Nikon, Sony, Olympus (smaller sensor), S5ii/SL3-S are lagging behind wrt AF-C, tracking, fps, view finder black-out and sensor read out time.

Personally, I prefer to have one system, so I have sold eg Canon R5 and Canon 100-500 and thus been 'down-grading' relative to the above parameters. But this is fine for my type of shooting. Eventually, L-mount will come with bodies close(r) to the current state-of-art cameras from the big players, possibly in 2025 with two or three bodies coming from Panasonic.