Originally posted by clackers Yes, there's no singing and dancing about the Sony A9 II or the A1, I've held them both, and shot with the former.
What did you expect?
You can hype up this or that, as you are want to do (your hysterical defence of stock photography as a worthwhile career change for instance), but that doesn't change things. I can tell you I would've shot the same pictures with my K-1.
My real world experience got frustrated that the focus point didn't detect the face in so many shots with that kind of angle and went for the surfboard or the tip of the hand instead, that's not the error a real photographer makes when selecting focus points. And the Sony presenters revealed that for surf photography for instance, it's often the waves that get selected. As I burnt through my SD cards, one Sony presenter virtually admitted it was a gimmick, reducing the frame rate to Medium and acknowledging that he simply took little bursts. But I bet you love gimmicks, like the 8k video in the Canon R5, admitted by Canon to be a gimmick. It overheats.
You may be swooning at every paid for review by Sony, Dan, but not me. And neither are the other members in this forum, who watched you leave Pentax for ... of all things ... a Canon 6D?
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Your friends the Northrups have done a video on turning *off* Canon, Nikon and Sony 'eye focus' because of the mistakes those cameras make.
What is their camera trying to do here, Dan? And why?
Don't go to stock photography because you have absolutely no clue of what you're talking about. As long as I can live in Romania from stock photography working a few hours/week, you can't tell me I can't make a career out of it. My income increased by 12% this year with only 30 images added in 2021. So, again, you're talking with someone who's actually making money from stock and who can live from stock. When you will live from shooting sport with K1, then we can have a proper conversation about stock or sport photography.
As for me switching for 6D, I said more than once that the Pentax system didn't provided me what I wanted at the time when I had K-3 II: no reliable flash system, no modern lenses, no full frame, no third party support, etc.. And 6D provided all I wanted at that time due to the huge system behind it with all the third party support included. And yes, 6D gave me better images than K3 II, especially at high ISO and much reliable af in challenging conditions. Part of the reasons of better images were the L lenses. Put a Canon 35mm f1.4L on a 6D and shoot against Pentax K-3 II with any lens you want in the same focal range at events and we can have a proper discussion about image quality and af. Even the basic 6D has a more configurable af than K-3 II... Then I upgraded to 5D Mark IV and when I tested K1 side by side, the Canon af blew away K1 in terms of speed and consistency. I liked the fact that af-s of K1 was accurate. That was a plus compared with K-3 II. And the most important factor when comes to Canon vs. Pentax is that Canon allows me to choose while with Pentax I only have K1 which you consistently want to make it a winner in each and every aspect of photography, from sport to landscapes. K1 it's a landscape oriented camera where it is among the best due to its features, nothing less, nothing more. For me, less work to get the job done it's important, especially at paid shooting so if I have options in the market which help me get the job faster and easier, I go for it. That's why I changed from 6D to 5D Mark IV and then I went for EOS R. If I need better, there are options available while with Pentax I don't have any. It's a reality which seems to affect you very very much as long as you keep insisting you can have the same results with K1 shooting side by side with D5 or A1/A9. Surfar said it very well in 3 words...
So again, you can never get the same results with K1 shooting side by side with a sport oriented camera like A1. That's a fact. Posting a random image has nothing to do with day by day reality. You can get a lucky shot from time to time, but A1 or D5 weren't build for lucky shots... And as Surfar said, it's the shot you can't get with a field camera that counts for pro sport photographers.
So, keep lying yourself as much as you want, but K1 it's so much far away in terms of performance for sport or wildlife that it's not worth to talk about it... It's even obvious when you see the excitement of pentaxians regarding the K-3 III af. When a guy like this has lots of in focus images with a much smaller and much faster subject than the guy on the board you posted and with water splash on lots of his images (
https://www.marksmithgallery.com/Birds/Water-Birds/Osprey-Image-Gallery/ ), I have a strong feeling that you didn't knew how to set the D5 af and I tend to believe that neither the A9 af for action... Even Jared Polin of which I'm not a big fan shows how the af of A9 II stick with the subject in a far more challenging situation than the example you gave
and you compare K1 with sports cameras by posting a random image. This shows how far you are when comes to understanding A1 target...
As for 8k, have you ever tried to edit a 30 minutes 8k video from Canon or Sony? I had a chance to be in a room with a videographer editing an 8k video. It isn't fun even with a top computer... But, for short commercial clips of 4-8 minutes it's a different story. For stock it's the best tool at the price you pay for R5 because the videos uploaded to stock should be between 8 and 60 seconds. But, since you know nothing about stock, as usual you have no idea why people pay for 8k...
As for eye af, perfect or not, when fails you have options available at a press of a button. That's why options are good and it's important to have them. It's a little odd how big is the af square in the Northrup video even when the focus is on the eye level but I don't get into such details as long as you most certainly know nothing about Canon eye af. Yet, why not? Maybe you will learn something... Northrup used the one shot af selected in order to make people understand what they are trying to explain. Nothing wrong with that, given that it is meant as an educational video, but it's not exactly how af square will look like when eye af is activated in servo mode (af-c in Pentax).
Let me educate you a little in this regard. From Canon manual:
1. for stationary subjects the Af point is displayed in green when the subject is in focus (as you can see in Northrup video, the camera was already focused on the background and no matter how she moves, the af won't track her)
2. for moving subjects, the af point is displayed in blue and tracks subject movement
See how easily you can be fooled? It took Northrup 10 seconds to do that.
As for surf images, this is what a sport oriented camera will get you and it will provide consistency over and over again instead of a random lucky shot with which you try to convince people that you can take the same images as with a sport camera. By the way, a gimmicks 8k video can offer such short videos at 3900$... And there are tons of pros willing to pay the money for such feature.