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Comment by SAI_Peregrinus | Hacker News Reader

> Unless you are into wildlife and birds, there of course anything below a pro-DSLR, or maybe, maybe a pro mirroless action body and 600 mm OEM prime lenses, on a carbon fibre tripod, is clearly not enough.

DSLRs are far behind mirrorless these days for wildlife photography, especially birds in flight. The autofocus systems of the high-end mirrorless cameras are substantially better than any DSLR, and the frame rates (20-30 shots per second) allow far more chances to get a good shot.

Which doesn't mean DSLRs are useless. It just means you have to take more photos & spend more time to get the same number of "keepers", so depending on what you value (time editing vs time in the field vs money spent) you might want to get a wildlife-focused mirrorless for wildlife.

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Tell me! Not sure on auto-focus so, the mirrorless sytems seem to struggle with gast moving objects. If there are eyes to track they beat DSLRs everytime so. Also frame rate can be better, the absence of a mirror really helps. Not that close to 10 fps is bad by any stretch.

Fully agree that mirrorless is the future, took long enough to fully get track.

There are some DSLR snobists, there are prime lense snobists, there are mirrorless snobists, there are frame rate snobists.

In the end the picture matters, whatever helps you get good pictures is good for you.

That beimg said, as of now I'd say a Z6ii is still behind a D780 a bit and quite a bit behind a D6 (I'm a Nikon shooter, so don't ask questions about other brands). A Z9 on the other hand... That being said, none of those options beats the one you can actually afford and know how to use.

Edit: Which DSLR (Edit 2: I mean mirrorless...) gets 20 fps? The Z6ii is at 12. Everything above is, what, 5k plus for the body?

Edit 3: That seems to be Nikon's Z9 with 20-30 fps in continous mode. Up to 120 in small JPEG. Impressive, and with 6k Euros almost reasonably priced when compared to other Nikon top mofels of the past. One can still get a Z6ii and a bunch of top notch lenses. Damn, I shouldn't have looked it up...

The parent comment is saying mirrorless are getting 20FPS and thus are better than DSLR for bird photography.

Yeah it looks like you found them. Nikon Z9, Canon R3, and Sony a1 or a9 (1 or 2).

Yeah, I was thinking of the Z9 for the 20-30FPS. The Canon R5 & R3 are similar framerates, and the Sony α1 is 30FPS (at least for compressed RAW).

Nikon only recently got mirrorless cameras better than their DSLRs. Canon & Sony have had better mirorrless cameras for several years.

I've got a Sony α7Riv and their 200-600mm f/5.6-6.3 zoom lens for wildlife. Only 10FPS, and slower autofocus (and no bird eye tracking) but still a great setup for the price. I tend to be in forested areas around small ponds, so while I'd love a big prime lens for more light, being able to zoom out actually gets critical since backing up would lead to falling into the water.

Most of my photography is landscape and architecture while travelling. For that travel part alone I like zoom lenses. If birds aren't too far away, 300 mm on a DX body are good enough, for Puffins at a distance of almost 100 m not so much.

zoom lenses are great, especially for the versatility they offer.

To illustrate your last point, this[1] is a Great Blue Heron photo taken at 280mm focal length, the heron was about 56m away. This[2] is the same bird, from the same location, taken at 840mm focal length (zoomed in all the way, using the 200-600mm lens with a 1.4x teleconverter). And after a close crop, this[3] is a pretty decent photo of the heron. Somewhat distracting background and some branches in front, but I prefer not to edit everything out like some people do because I want to convey a sense of what the environment is like.

Later on the same walk, a Grey Catbird landed right in front of me. Fully zoomed in to 840mm I couldn't even get a good portrait shot showing the head and shoulders, just the head. So I zoomed out and got this[4], which I could easily crop for a good portrait. No need to back up and risk scaring the bird.

Money is one obstacle to a big prime lens (the Sony 600mm f/4 lens is $14,000!), but another obstacle is weight and bulk. I wouldn't want to give up having a zoom lens ready on a camera, to allow for otherwise impossible compositions. So I know I'd end up carrying two cameras, one with a 600mm behemoth and the other with the 200-600mm zoom, and my shoulders would hurt. And they'd be bulky and getting in my way, etc.

Primes are nice, but they're not perfect for every situation, and gatekeeping photographers for not having primes is stupid.

[1] https://www.flickr.com/photos/193634150@N07/52188406196 [2] https://www.flickr.com/photos/193634150@N07/52188661399 [3] https://www.flickr.com/photos/193634150@N07/52187390672 [4] https://www.flickr.com/photos/193634150@N07/52187392882

This are some nice pics you shot there!

I ran into some situations were a lens shorter than 24mm would have been nice, and some where something beyond 300 (400 on a DX body) would have been nice. 20mm prime lenses are cheap enough, the telezooms not so much. Currently my preferred one is a Tamron 150-600 G2. Weather sealing is nice, and the Sigma Sport is just too heavy and large, especially since I mostly shoot handheld / without a tripod. Funny so, that the Tamron is much less available used than the Sigma Sport.

And if, if, I had 14k free budget to burn on a lens I would still burn max. 1k on the elns and the reminder on travelling to nice locations where I could use said lens. But then I am no professional.

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