Today while shooting at Zealandia there were several brief instances where I could not acquire focus when it seemed the conditions, while challenging, should have allowed it.
The first occurrence was when the battery was low. After that I suspected it could have been due to the buffer being full. The other odd thing that occurred was the programmable control on the end of the Nikkor 180-600mm didn’t appear to work a couple of times. I have it set to zoom to help with acquiring or checking focus, so I assume there was a link between the non-responsive autofocus and the zoom not working. These could have been buffer related but I had never encountered that before.
While this was happening I did start to think more about how much I am pushing the Z 6. Under these extreme circumstances how many shots do I miss completely? How much would my keeper rate increase if I had a Zf, Z 6ii, Z 8, or the upcoming Z 6iii. These are not the sort of thoughts I want to be having as a) gear is expensive and I don’t have the cash; and b) my kaupapa at the moment is 100% focused getting the most of my gear.
The main issues for missing focus are related to the following points, which I suspect might even challenge an autofocus beast like the Z 8 or rumoured specs on the Z 6iii:
- under the canopy in NZ it is quite dark, even in summer, let alone as we approach the shortest day.
- usually the birds are behind layers of branches, twigs, and leaves. The Z 6 cannot use a pinpoint focus in AF-C which means it struggles without a pinpoint. Coupled with the low light, that is a big ask.
- most of the birds are very small.
- most of the birds move fast and don’t sit still.
There are options I have not explored yet, such as enabling eye detection or animal detection, which I need to add to a shortcut (in fact I may have already).
But, out of curiosity I started to record my overall keeper rate, and those that I rate above bare minimum, and if I can remember I will do it after each wildlife shoot.
