Ha, a tough couple of days learning the hard way about new stuff.
Lens collar
During the first day of shooting at Zealandia I would hold the camera body and the lens collar foot. This meant my left hand was too close to the camera body and that the lens was not well balanced. I believe this contributed to a higher number of shots that were soft due to camera movement (despite IBIS working in the body and the lens).
Today for Zealandia’s shooting I moved the collar so the foot is offset to the right, allowing my left hand to comfortably hold the lens further down the lens barrel for greater stability — it appeared to work better.
M and auto-ISO
With a max ISO of 10,000 images are noisy but usable. I made the cardinal error of not watching my shutter speed, and had for some shot ramped it up to 1/1600, and forgot about it. This was forcing an ISO of 10,000 even in bright shots. Moron! I did get some good captures but the high ISO has blown out highlights, and given in some dark shots that could have been lower ISO there is a very over smoothed high-ISO look to them.
I need to remember I am not in Aperture Priority and to look more closely at shutter speed. The fact is when shooting birds with the 180-600mm I am in f8 to allow a slightly greater depth of field, and will be changing aperture a lot less than shutter speed.
To be fair a lot of the shots are birds under canopy, so it is dark, even in the middle of the day in summer.
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