Here are some recent photos I took with the A7R4 and 100-400 4.5-5.6 G Master lens. These are all cropped at least 50%. Being able to crop by 2.5x, and still being left with a 24MP image is amazing for wildlife. I wish the 100-400 was an F4 but it is really amazing. Sharp as a tack to the edges and zero CA. The cost of 61MP is noise. With minimal cropping of 10-20%, images are good up to about ISO1200 before I start noticing a drop in quality. For birds and small wildlife, if you regularly crop 200+%, as I do, ISO 400 is the highest I will go before the images get almost unusable. With this camera, Topaz DeNoise is a must-have. Other than that, this combo is amazing.
Great shots! Love the heron (both the color and b&w)
I agree that a 100-400mm f4 would be great. But you do realize, don't you, that such a lens would weigh about 7 pounds and cost about $11,000, don't you?
And no, I am not exaggerating the affect that one extra stop has on weight or cost. You need look no further than the Canon 200-400 f4.
I'm pretty familiar with lenses. I'd love the 600 F4 but I don't want to spend the $12k. The 100-400 already weighs about 5lbs. The 200-600 loses 1/3 of a stop. I use a monopod attached to my belt to take the weight off my arms but still mobility of hand held. Makes a world of difference. I'd love the sigma 200-500 2.8, but it weights 30 lbs, costs $30k, and is the size of a bazooka. Lol. Photography is all about trade offs. The cannon lens is great, but just switched to Sony.
Great shots — yep, photography is a constant game of trade offs. I’m shooting an R6 and have opposite problem with resolution as the limiting factor, noise not so much
This is how insanely good this camera/lens combo is. The distance photo of the cardinal was taken at 400MM. I was about 60-75 feet away. The tight shot was cropped from a 9,504x6336 61MP image to a 1182x934 image 1.1MP photo. 550%!. I then scaled it back up to a 4728x3736 = 17MP using topaz gigapixel and got this. With my Nikon D750, I would have needed a telescope to get this tight and keep this much detail.
That’s pure insanity—400mm looks like plenty. Ppl say gear doesn’t matter…and I know what they mean, but when it comes to wildlife photography it matters more than other areas. Especially if you are not going out in the field 7d/wk. When I switched from MFT (first camera) to my current FF setup with great IC and vastly superior AF, my problem became culling through lots of sharp in focus pics. With my old setup I was just happy when I had a clean shot.
Very nice images. I am surprised that you have to keep the ISO that low to have good images.
I use a Sony A6000 and the Sony 70-300g and only get concerned when ISO approaches 2000.
I typically crop significantly in LR and have been using its enhance feature to bring the resolution back up after cropping.
I am no professional, but have been happy with the results.