I have been lucky to have had several shoots with this beautiful Great Gray Owl relatively close to home in Southwestern Quebec. It was the perfect model for my recent test of the Sony Alpha A1 for Sony of Canada. It is amazing to think back on all of the owls I have photographed over the years and I can’t remember the last time I got to photograph one completely alone without a group of eager winter owl workshop participants, so this is one silver lining of the Covid-19 pandemic that has wreaked havoc across the travel/workshop industry.
In truth, this is a big and relatively slow moving owl. I would have loved to test the camera and it’s built-in and industry leading bird eye auto-focus on some small and fast moving Auklets in The Pribilofs or Atlantic Puffins in Quebec.
The a1 locked onto the owls eye instantly and stayed locked-on to the eye until the owl’s head turned away from the camera; that is when a larger focus target locked-onto it’s head, and quickly regained it’s lock on the eye as soon as it looked back towards me. The bird eye autofocus in extremely impressive and when combined with the camera’s ability to verify focus 120 per second (twice as often than the a9 & a9II) it truly is a game changer! Does it work every time? Almost; the only time it had a little trouble so far was when pointed at a dark bird in low contract light when it tried hard, but ended-up choosing the bird’s shoulder instead of it’s dark eye.