this post was submitted on 22 May 2025
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Photography
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It's a combination of megapixels, lens quality, and focus ability, all in increasing order of importance. I truly believe I could have gotten just as good of a shot at 24mp, everyhing else the same.
This was a Nikon Z8 with the "kit" Nikkor Z 24-120mm. I toyed around with different configurations but this lens was the sharpest and fastest to focus. My cheap f/1.8 lenses looked smeary in comparison.
I have done similar hummingbird shoots with my D750 with it's Nikkor N 24-120. You CAN get similar shots but the focusing will be 10x harder. Most of the pictures I've posted on this account were taken with that camera and I still consider it a treasure
I'm rocking an A9ii and when I attempt birds I'm using Tamron's 150-500, which is fairly sharp.
I think my problem with bird photography is wanting to take photos of smaller birds at decent distances and physics is simply getting in the way. For example, I was taking photos of a house finch a few weeks ago when I was probably 60 feet away. Even at 500mm, the finch still didn't fill much of the frame. I'll be posting the photo soon, but I would be amazed if it's anywhere near this good after a big crop.