Tim Driman
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The annual breeding season of the crazy, erratically-flying Carmine Bee-eaters occurs between mid October to late November in sub-Saharan Africa.
These crazy birds are some of the most difficult BIF to photograph due to their erratic flight patterns, while they catch insects, bugs, and moths etc on the wing, and when the Sony A9i hit the world stage back in 2017, I was so impressed by the specs of the body, that I dug, and researched everything I could find on the Internet about these wild claims of focus acquisition and tracking etc...
I had been a loyal Canon shooter for 19 years, and owned the 1DXii / 200mm-400mm f4, as well as the 7Dii/100mm-400mm, 5Div/70mm-200mm f2.8 MKii, and one or two w/a lenses, but none of those came close to what I achieved photographing BIF with the Sony A9i / Sony 70mm-200mm f2.8 GM+ 2xTC (At that stage, the 100mm-400mm GM was not yet available, so I opted for the 70mm-200mm f2.8 and a 2xTC GM!)
In a full six days of photographing and documenting these crazy BIF on the banks of the mighty Zambezi River, in the Capri Strip (Namibian bank), I achieved hundreds of shots similar to these. Flying with insects, catching insects, hijacking each other for their prizes, and a single aerial bird fight of 29 sequential images etc...
It was just insane! I knew that this new mirrorless FF body was a definite game changer, and a major inflection point in modern photography!
On our return to SA, I traded in all my Canon gear, and climbed aboard the Sony express! The rest is history
These crazy birds are some of the most difficult BIF to photograph due to their erratic flight patterns, while they catch insects, bugs, and moths etc on the wing, and when the Sony A9i hit the world stage back in 2017, I was so impressed by the specs of the body, that I dug, and researched everything I could find on the Internet about these wild claims of focus acquisition and tracking etc...
I had been a loyal Canon shooter for 19 years, and owned the 1DXii / 200mm-400mm f4, as well as the 7Dii/100mm-400mm, 5Div/70mm-200mm f2.8 MKii, and one or two w/a lenses, but none of those came close to what I achieved photographing BIF with the Sony A9i / Sony 70mm-200mm f2.8 GM+ 2xTC (At that stage, the 100mm-400mm GM was not yet available, so I opted for the 70mm-200mm f2.8 and a 2xTC GM!)
In a full six days of photographing and documenting these crazy BIF on the banks of the mighty Zambezi River, in the Capri Strip (Namibian bank), I achieved hundreds of shots similar to these. Flying with insects, catching insects, hijacking each other for their prizes, and a single aerial bird fight of 29 sequential images etc...
It was just insane! I knew that this new mirrorless FF body was a definite game changer, and a major inflection point in modern photography!
On our return to SA, I traded in all my Canon gear, and climbed aboard the Sony express! The rest is history
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