Yeah: I don't have an answer to the "too far away bit". That's unresolvable. You are stuck with big lenses, which areinactionman wrote: ↑Mon Aug 22, 2022 10:41 am Nice - I love owls, amazing creatures.
I've found the AF can get confused by background with birds in flight, so anything flying against trees has never worked well for me - which is unfortunate as anything above treeline is generally too far away.
In general I've rarely had much joy with birds in flight, and not all can be laid at the feet of the equipment. I know my technique requires a lot of work, as I tend to lose the bird when panning and by the time I've regained the framing and the AF has invariably hunted in and out and I've lost the shot. This is one area where I've found M43 really tricky, as anything that drops out of focus (at least on the early model OM-D EM5 and the GH5) would completely disappear from view, so once it's lost it's truly lost. At least with my Pentax DSLR you can still perceive the bird even if blurred, it's more that the AF would really struggle to lock - I may give MF a go.
The EM1-Xs are starting to come up a lot cheaper used, and I'd be interested to give one a go to see just how much tracking has improved. Cameras like the R3 are well outside of my price range (well, my wife's point of forbearance).
- then heavy making panning hard
- with narrow fields of view and slow apertures
- and AF being useless for moving subjects like birds
I simply abandoned that end of picture taking. If I went on a safari, I'd possibly hire a lens for the duration or rely upon the drone to get close.
I learned panning as kid going to dozens of airshows but planes are a helluva lot more predictable in flight than birds as well as being a lot bigger. So I doubt any of us is any better than you at this!
