Camera upgrade for Supermacro

@adamhanlon

Lying or kneeling on the substrate doesn't stop the subjects from flitting around

Fully agree, good AF is critical for capturing an image with multiple vectors of movement.

@hyp

Hmm... wunderpus moving across the substrate (while trying color match the background), getting the hairy frog fish shot when all the "hair" is aligned in the surge, Mandarin fish mating ritual...

All potential subjects where fast AF helps significantly. 

Then throw in virtually every blackwater scenario...

 

Obviously good and fast AF helps, but it's a relative term. I never had problems with any of the scenarios you mentioned (I did use a red colored focus light for the mandarin fish) and I'm using a 10 year old camera. I assume that anything on the market right now is at least as good. 

I've never had the chance to do blackwater, so I don't have any experience there.

I think I've said it a few times now, but I'll repeat. AF performance is important and an improvement is always wanted, but for the vast majority of subjects and cameras performance has been good enough for a while. The only thing that really needs improvement in many cameras is automatic tracking of subjects (which is seperate from AF although it often gets confused, because both form a system together). 

When I look at upgrading my camera I think about two main questions:

1. Is the new camera going to provide significant benefits in image quality? (For MFT cameras this hasn't really been true since the release of the 20mp sensor, with maybe the exception of the new GH6. The OM1 seems - after all tests have been done - to have been more hype and JPEG engine improvements)

2. Is the new camera going to allow images that weren't possible before. This is where AF improvements come in and for the type of photography I do, I've had relatively few problems, but this obviously depends on personal goals. There definitely have been more AF improvements than IQ improvements in cameras in the last 5-10 years.

On 3/7/2022 at 11:16 PM, hyp said:

I can see why you want fast and accurate af for blennies in surge but why for wireshrimp. They just sit there.

Not always.  Besides the fact that they shoot up and down the Wire Coral with some speed, there is the problem of hitting them with the AF spot. (I shoot almost exclusively in single-point AF.)   So here I am hanging vertically in the water just trying to see the little beggar that my divemaster is pointing too, and I'm holding my big rig pointing at the wire coral.   Of course the autofocus point is swinging around, left and right, up and down, and I have just an instant when the AF point hits the wire shrimp to focus on it.   With my D810, I'd say I missed 50% of those attempts because I couldn't hold the focus point on the subject long enough.   But with the D850, I was able to go 5 for 5 shots in focus of that shrimp in the image posted. 

On 3/10/2022 at 5:14 AM, hyp said:

I think I've said it a few times now, but I'll repeat. AF performance is important and an improvement is always wanted, but for the vast majority of subjects and cameras performance has been good enough for a while.

Sure, and what's left for you to shoot after four years of using an older system?   The challenging stuff.   Now get a camera with truly upgraded AF, and suddenly you're shooting a high percentage of those not-vast-majority subject.