The following set of still images were shot on a Sony A1 at 20fps. Images that were out of focus were dropped prior to making the clip.
Some things I did right:
- Sony A1 Ver 1.30 firmware (Eye AF was subsequently improved when I returned from Point Pelee)
- AutoISO – most shots at ISO 10,000
- Shutter Speed: 1/8000
- Sony 200-600 + 1.4TC
- Aperture: f9.0 wide open
- AWB
- 20fps high speed
- DxoPureRaw 2 noise reduction
Lessons Learned:
- Turn off Crop Mode – resolution of A1 in crop mode is 5616 x 3744 (21 Mpix). There is really no advantage to using it, however I was trying to save card space. The disadvantage is that if the bird does spring to action as in this clip, crop mode caused clipped bird wings.
- Flexible Spot AF is too small for fast action – would have preferred something much larger
- The exposure changed throughout the shoot. This is caused because when I punch in to correct AF, I also used Spot Metering. For some reason Sony reduces the exposure by ⅔ of a stop, this caused problems for a movie but the stills are OK. I have disabled Spot Metering regrettably however you could use Spot Meter with an Exposure Compensation of +⅔ as a default. May test this out some day.
- perhaps shooting in manual would be wiser than the Aperture mode I used, as the movie has changes in exposure (shutter speed).
Movie: PPelee_Blue_Heron