Skunked at the Beach....

Went to the west coast of Florida this morning to try some BIF. The morning sun and wind direction totally conspired against the effort. All the birds coming at me were coming from the sun (backlit). Once they passed I could get some well lit butts. No matter, I clicked away to see how the AF did on BIF. First disclaimer; I have not used a dslr in about 10 years and I was only bearly serviceable at flight images when my rigs broke. So, I am far from an expert on this subject. OK, that out of the way, here are my findings. The AF system on this camera is bipolar(or schizophrenic). This applies to all modes (servo or one shot). When it acquires the subject correctly it hops right to it and does a great job. There is certainly no more hunting than I ever saw in my old rigs (bad reference as these were the 10d and 1dmkIIn). In fact, I think when it is in good mode it actually makes my old glass better. Now for the bad; occasionally (don't have hard numbers) it totally fails. When I say fail I mean there is a big OOF blob in front of it and it doesn't hunt or get soft focus, it just fails completely and thinks it's in focus. If you reset by releasing the focus and trying again it usually pops right back in. Sometimes it stays confused for one more try. This is with nothing changing, not the light, the contrast or where it is pointed. I believe this is a bug and will eventually be fixed with firmware update. But, who knows. For tracking, once it's on, it seems pretty **** good at staying on. I have been using it like I used to use my old rigs with single point plus the 8 surround with hopefully enough DOF to get the whole bird if I'm on it. Hey, I'm no Arash, that is for sure.
That is the mode I was in when this osprey gave me some backlit images, just like the others and then passed me for some well lit butt shots. Then as he was just far enough past me to require a big crop, he turned back right with only head and shoulder in the morning sun light (and overexposed I'll ad) and both underwings in shadow. The only reason this is even remotely presentable is the reflection of the sun off the white sand did help light the shaded areas. Again, this is a big crop (little detail) and the head and shoulder whites are hot. Just to show I went and played with the servo AF.

There was another mode I wanted to try as I hear this is really the way to do BIF with mirrorless. That is the area AF which supposedly works better in these because of the much greater number of AF points. So, I set that mode with the smallest of the area modes(a big square) and left it in the middle of the frame. I only got one chance this morning in this mode on a bird very far out in the surf. When I got home, I discovered it was another osprey as it stayed very small in the frame. What you get in the viewfinder is a big box. When I pointed it at the far off bird, I could see much smaller boxes inside the big one following on the bird as it flew and I was holding the shutter just so I could see later if it even acquired correctly. It did and I just had to keep the big area on the bird. I would like to try this mode with a bird in range to see how it does. At any rate...
EOS R EF 400 DO f5.6 1/1600 ISO 1000

Certainly nothing wrong with the focus on this bird David. Not every day that we see an osprey so TFS!

This is a frame from the second method using the smallest AF area mode. I tried to crop as close as i could to the outline of the defined AF (a big square) area. The crop is a little larger than the zone and about 1/3 of width and height of full frame. This bird was small in frame as I didn't even know it was an osprey. Again their was a 5x5 matrix of smaller boxes that you could watch follow the bird within the larger area. It stayed on through many frames.

The composition is nice and the bird is sharp. Pretty steep angle but you take what they give you.

Wing pose and details look good, but obviously would be better to have the bird lower. Not much you can do about that though...

Flight photography in full sun is always difficult, and yes, more difficult with the wind from the west or NW on sunny mornings. The image in Pane 1 is sharp and well exposed but the near wing needed to be in the same position as the far wing. I am quite confused by your comments and the image in Pane 3.

with love, artie

Thanks, as always, to everyone for the helpful comments and suggestions.
Sorry Artie, for the confusion. The pane 3 was a follow on to my comments in the original post (second paragraph). Before we left for the morning, I wanted to try a zone AF mode rather than single point with expansion(one point with 8 surround) I was using all morning. I remembered in my old DSLR days the zone AF options were usually not used due to lack of precision compared with the single point modes (single, single with 4, and single with 8). In researching mirrorless cameras, some suggested the zone AF modes work much better for BIF due to the large increase in AF points. I only had one chance to try the zone AF before we had to leave. It was the smallest of three zone settings for the R. It is a square zone and is shown as a 5x5 matrix in DPP.
So, I only had one chance with a bird far out in the surf. In Pane 3, I was just showing how accurate it was on acquiring the bird. I tried to crop to the size of the zone. Hope this helps.

Thanks for the explanation David. One thing to note, once you get focus on a distant subject you will have a huge ton of d-o-f ...

with love, artie

Yepper, didn't think of that. I will try with birds in range and see how she goes.
Peace,
David