“I can resist anything but temptation”

Until last year, I’d always been a Nikon man. Then it all changed, first gradually and then all of a sudden.

I’m a wildlife photographer, and I always try to keep abreast of the latest technology. That means reading online reviews and watching the occasional YouTube video.

I don’t follow many other photographers, but people like Steve Curry, Tin Man Lee and Matt Kloskowski were all posting DSLR vs mirrorless comparisons. Matt K even showed an amazing through-the-viewfinder video of the Sony a1’s ability to track a bird moving around the frame.

All in all, I was hearing so much praise for mirrorless cameras that I thought I should take a look.

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Problems with the Nikon D850

I guess the problem really started in 2019 when I spent four months working as the resident photographer at safari lodges in Kenya and Tanzania. I had a D850 paired with a Nikon 800mm f/5.6 FL lens and a D810 with a Nikon AF-S NIKKOR 80-400mm f/4.5-5.6G ED VR lens.

(I also took with me an 18-35mm, a 105mm macro and a 28-300mm, but I never used those.)

The 800mm was a great lens, offering sharp images with smooth and creamy bokeh—but it wasn’t very easy to use. First of all, it was so heavy that I couldn’t handhold it. That wasn’t generally a problem in the safari vehicles because I could just rest it on the roof or the armrests.

However, it made capturing a bird or a cheetah in full flight pretty tricky, so I was getting a bit frustrated. Things got worse when the connection between the lens and the camera came loose, which meant the aperture reading ended up at f/0, and the autofocus stopped working.

That’s pretty catastrophic if you’re any kind of photographer, but especially if you shoot wildlife.

I took off the lens when I got back from my game drive to find out what was going wrong. It turned out that the screws on the lens and camera mounts had come loose, which meant the lens wasn’t as tight as it could be, and all the EXIF data wasn’t being passed properly from the lens to the camera.

I guess that’s what happens when you spend four months bumping around on the backseat of a Toyota Landcruiser! Both my cameras also took turns falling off the seat, so I guess I shouldn’t have been too surprised…

The 80-400mm lens was much lighter than the 800mm, and the zoom range made it very handy for slow pans of the big cats or handheld shots of larger animals or animals that were quite close. However, I was never happy with the sharpness of the pictures I was able to take with it, and it became a constant source of worry.

Was it my technique that was at fault, or was it just the lens? Either way, I wasn’t getting the image quality I wanted.

Finally, the D850 itself also had its problems. Yes, it may have been the best DSLR for wildlife with a 45.7 MP sensor, 3D Continuous AF and 1,840-shot battery life (even without the high-powered battery grip), but I couldn’t ignore the fundamental design issues:

• The maximum frame rate was only 7 fps (or 9 fps with the battery grip).

• The focus point couldn’t be moved outside the central area.

• It didn’t offer blackout-free shooting—which was a real problem when shooting a sequence of slow pans because I could hardly see the subject!

• Switching settings to take slow pans was cumbersome as there was no way of saving and recalling all the settings, and I had to change the ISO manually to 32 as well as set the new shutter speed and aperture

Those problems could only really be solved by a full-frame mirrorless camera, so that was my next stop…

Key Features of the Sony Alpha 1 and f/2.8 G Master 400mm lens

The main attraction of the Sony Alpha 1 was the autofocus system. It offered bird, animal and human eye tracking, and the videos I saw convinced me that it was the best system on the market. I was desperately seeking sharpness, and this promised to help me find the holy grail: award-winning shots of a cheetah kill.

Apart from the AF system, the Alpha 1 seemed to have all the basics covered:

• large, 50 MP sensor for great image resolution—even after heavy cropping

• high frame rate of 20 fps (lossless compressed RAW) or even 30 fps (lossy compressed RAW) to capture fast-moving action

• blackout-free shooting to make slow panning a lot easier

• three custom modes on the main dial that I could tailor for portraits, action shots and slow pans

I also needed a lens, of course, as my Nikon lenses had a different mount. The one I decided on was the Sony f/2.8 G Master 400mm lens. I have to admit here that I was heavily influenced by Tin Man Lee—perhaps even too much!

I’d seen his unboxing video of the Sony 400mm, and he was so excited by how light it was that I decided that was the one for me. I was perhaps a little hasty, and I had a bit of buyer’s remorse when I realised that it left me in between two stools: it wasn’t long enough to replace my 800mm, and it wasn’t a zoom, so it couldn’t replace my 80-400mm!

Fortunately, the answer came to me in the form of a Sony SEL E Mount 14TC 1.4x Teleconverter…

What I Bought

Two years had gone by since my Africa trip, but I was finally ready to take the plunge—not least because I’d just made nearly five grand betting against England winning the 2020 Euros! They had me sweating a bit in the final against Italy, but it all turned out in the end.

In any case, I was a winner either way: if they lost, I’d get a free camera, but if they won, I’d be delighted! That’s the advantage of betting against your favourite team if you’re a keen sports fan: you always end up either rich or happy…

Anyway, after reading up on the Sony Alpha 1 and discovering that the Nikon Z 9 was still not in production, I decided to jump in with both feet. I bought a Sony Alpha 1 with a 1.4x teleconverter and an f/2.8 400mm G Master lens.

I was due to go to Canada in November 2021 and to Antarctica the following month, so I decided going mirrorless was the next step I had to take in my photography journey.

My Experience So Far

And it turned out to be one small step for man, one giant leap for photographers!

I was delighted with my new kit—so delighted, in fact, that I hardly used my DSLR. The combination of the 400mm lens and the 1.4x teleconverter gave me the equivalent of a 560mm prime, which offered plenty of reach for polar bears.

The only problem came when they got ‘too close’: I couldn’t get full-body shots with my Sony kit, but the 80-400mm on my D850 kept freezing up in the sub-zero temperatures! That caused me to miss out on a few occasions, including the time when two male bears started play fighting in the tundra…

I had pretty much the same experience in Antarctica. I used my Sony Alpha 1 almost exclusively, whether I was shooting penguins, seals, whales or birds, and it hardly ever let me down. The images were almost always pin-sharp, and the only time I was really disappointed on the trip was when I was trying to photograph a whale disappearing beneath the waves, but I just couldn’t get the AF system to focus on the fluke…

What Else I Bought

When I got back home after the Antarctic trip, I decided to go the whole hog: what was the point of keeping my old Nikon kit if I was never going to use it? Far better to trade it in against another Sony Alpha 1 and a lens or two.

So that’s what I did. I sold everything to London Camera Exchange and bought another mirrorless Sony with a battery grip, 180 GB CFexpress Type A memory card, a Sony FE 24-70mm f/2.8 GM lens and a Sony SEL E Mount 20TC 2x Teleconverter.

I wasn’t sure about the lens. The problem was that I already had a 400mm lens, so I couldn’t very well buy a 600mm prime because then I wouldn’t have anything left for wide-angle shots or slow pans. The range of the 24-70mm wasn’t great, but the 2x teleconverter offered a bit more reach, and it was the best I could do.

And then I decided it wasn’t enough. I still couldn’t reproduce the length of my old 800mm, so I solved that problem by getting a NatWest bank loan and buying a Sony f/4 600mm lens. With the 1.4x teleconverter I had already, that would make it the equivalent of 840mm.

And then—you’ve guessed it!—I decided even that wasn’t enough, so I splurged on a Sony FE 12-24mm f/2.8 GM lens and a Sony FE 70-200mm f/2.8 GM OSS II lens, both in the same G Master series.

What do you give the photographer who has everything? More…!

Verdict

I may have slightly overdone the retail therapy (ahem!), but I’m now a happy Sony user. My only slight regret is that I didn’t wait until the Z 9 came out. Perhaps I was too impatient, but I wanted my new equipment before I went to Canada and Antarctica.

However, I’m getting great results with my new Sony kit, and I’m sure there’s much more to come. It just goes to show that if you’re looking for Nikon D850 replacement, you can switch from DSLR to mirrorless, and you’re not locked in to one particular brand for ever.

Anyway, enough about DSLR vs mirrorless, what I want now is a new Apple M1 MacBook Pro with a Studio Display…!

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