All the gear...

First outing for the Sony, at least with a birding lens. In short, no idea. It's hard. Things I immediately dislike: electronic viewfinder. I guess there is no getting away from this particular feature of mirrorless cameras, and it seems not to matter for landscapes or cities, but somehow it just isn't as clean or intuitive for bird photography. I also very much dislike the lack of permanent manual focus on the lens, what I call the 'twig defeater', but you can program a button to do it albeit that you need to keep it pressed down. Some much more expensive lenses do have this feature. I kind of dislike the small form factor, it's much harder to use than a Canon 1D, sits in your hand far less naturally, and in particular the rear wheel is miniscule which is awkward as I've set it to control the exposure compensation and so use it all the time. But then again I bought it precisely because of the small form factor.

But I already like many things about it. I love the weight for starters, it is crazy how light it is versus what I used to carry. It's actually heavier than the Canon R7 + 100-500mm that most birders seem to use, but I much prefer the internal focussing of the Sony 200-600mm, and one tiny twist can get you from one end to the other. The AF system is terrific on the A6600. So far I think I prefer zone mode, but I've programmed a button to be able to cycle quickly to wide and spot. The eye detection feature, programmable for animals as well as people, is pretty incredible for someone not used to it. One of the primary reasons I used to use back button focus was to able to focus on the eye using a central point and then recompose. Here you just point the camera vaguely in the direction of the bird and hey presto it locks on. I've set back button focus regardless for old times sake, but it's probably not necessary any more with this feature combined with zone or wide AF. Another brilliant feature is the zebras, which is a live over-exposure blinkies feature. I've never had this before as its obviously only possible through an electronic viewfinder, but it makes exposure a complete doddle.

As with nearly everything photographic there are compromises in every area, but such is the sophistication of the camera that you can work around most of them. What I can't work around is f6.3, there is no getting away from the fact that this is a slow lens, especially on a murky November morning. I guess I need to get used to very high ISO. Or get back to working with a monopod, as opposed to arrogantly assuming I can handhold it for everything (as I did this morning with some pretty grim results!).

With VizMig dead I wandered over to Jubilee to have a play and to see what worked and what didn't on a variety of tame waterfowl. Not exactly a tough test but this was just for really basic things like which autofocus mode to use, how to focus manually, how to adjust exposure, which buttons to set up to do what. In short I am both frustrated and enthused. Frustrated that I have this amazing tool in my hands that I cannot instinctively get to do what I want it to do.  Frustrated that my years of experience with Canon are holding me back. Frustrated that something that was second nature and that I used to be pretty good at now seem inordinantly difficult. But enthused that my transferable knowledge is already being used to bend this setup to my will, and excited that there are many features of this new world that are game-changing and that will make my images better than they used to be, at least in time. But most of all I'm delighted that I'm not carrying around 5.1kg any more. Although in truth I've actually gained 2.6kg as I simply didn't bother carrying the Canon very much and it has been months and months since it came out with me onto Wanstead Flats. Whatever.

Anyway, loads to do. Here are few straight out of the camera. I don't yet have any software that can read a Sony ARW file so these are JPEGs at the moment. I don't fancy any kind of subscription model so I'm on the hunt for a one-time payment option. So far DXO photolab seems like it might be the pick of the bunch, but I also need to download Sony's own program, Imaging Edge to see what that is like.