Originally Posted by
arash_hazeghi
Hi Geoff,
Thanks for posting the large size, can see much better now. It might be just my opinion-and I do have very high standard when it comes to IQ- but this one is way too grainy and lacking in details to be a keeper in my book, I am OK with the wings showing motion blur and some noise but the face is bad. I am also surprised how coarse the grain is. Maybe it's coming from the RAW processing or just the image sensor is too noisy and can't handle low light well... either way not a keeper for me.
I just switched from Canon myself and not saying its AF is perfect, it will have plenty of misses, but honestly if the owl was attracted by call you must have had at least a few passes and with the flight path known before hand, Canon will at least nail one of them and when it does it would be better than this at ISO 5000 or even 6400. If your buddy couldn't get anything it is most likely his skills that sucked, I hate to say it. Doug and I were nailing shots like this from Jim Neiger's boat 10 years ago with the then sub-par 1D4 and first gen Canon 500mm so I have no doubt a 1DXII will be much better.
I think this is what makes the internet observations so different, what is considered an AF hit by one shooter is actually a miss/delete for another... I think the images make the point not the comments/opinions. The other day I saw some peregrine falcon images from San Pedro, a place I shoot and visit frequently, posted on FM forum by someone using the Sony camera, while the shooter was bragging about how good the AF was blah blah I would simply select all those images and hit "delete all" on the back of my camera....it maybe that the AF is better but whatever I have seen so far points to the contrary, soft and grainy images that have been sharpened for most part.... at least that's how they look on my monitor to my eye.