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As some of you may have seen yesterday from my Jay images, I do quite a lot of my current bird shooting with my Micro Four Thirds setup. As good as this set-up is (and it is incredibly good, especially with the 40-150 F2.8 and 300mm F4 pro lenses), when the light levels drop (which they tend to do at this time of year), and the EM1 MK II hits ISO 3200-ISO 6400 or higher, despite the admirable battle put up by M4/3, the image quality does start to suffer, and no amount of world class IBIS is going to help when the shutter speeds drop to 1/80 or 1/60 sec wide open with fast moving darting birds.
There's been talk (or should I say rumours) that the new Olympus EM1-X to be launched next year will be some sort of game changer, but that's in the future, and we all know promises don't always make a good reality.
I have therefore been looking at my alternative options for bird and wildlife shooting equipment as a back up to the Olympus stuff. To date, I have to say the best system I ever had was my Nikon D500 coupled with the stellar Nikon 300mm F4 AF-S and one of the teleconverters (or my slightly less sharp Tamron 150-600). The 300mm F4 with the 1.4x converter would net me approx 630mm focal length at F5.6, so typically ISO's would be up at ISO 6,400 or even in some case ISO 12,800, but despite reviews to the contrary on the web, my little D500 was stellar, and with a bit of NR, the images came out superb (see images below for example), and the AF was just incredible. Now I did sell off all my Nikon gear last year including the D500 as mine had a persistent battery issue that Nikon UK couldn't or wouldn't fix that would flatten a battery in around 250-350 shots when it was supposed to go over 1000 (the same batteries did on my D750, D810 etc.).
Fast forward to now, and I am totally without any Nikon gear at all (glass or bodies), but I do have the Fuji X-H1, however my longest lens is the still great 55-200 F3.5-4.8 (300mm max in FF terms). So I've been debating if the Fuji system coupled with a long lens (like the Fujinon 100-400), at these high ISO's can compete with what I used to get from my Nikon D500. Reading reviews on line seems to indicate that the X-H1's high ISO is at least as good as the D500, but without a proper lens try it with at these ISO's I'm not 100% sure. Has anyone shot with both systems and can comment or instead shot with an X-T2, X-H1 or X-T3 etc. with a long lens and can comment or post some examples at ISO's 3200, 6400 or 12,800 please ? Obviously it woudl be great if the X-H1 could complete as I'd rather not switch or add yet another system, even though I know the D500's AF still probably rules.
Anyway, here's a shot I got on the D500 at ISO's 12,800 and 8000 as examples (funnily enough these are Jay's as well )
There's been talk (or should I say rumours) that the new Olympus EM1-X to be launched next year will be some sort of game changer, but that's in the future, and we all know promises don't always make a good reality.
I have therefore been looking at my alternative options for bird and wildlife shooting equipment as a back up to the Olympus stuff. To date, I have to say the best system I ever had was my Nikon D500 coupled with the stellar Nikon 300mm F4 AF-S and one of the teleconverters (or my slightly less sharp Tamron 150-600). The 300mm F4 with the 1.4x converter would net me approx 630mm focal length at F5.6, so typically ISO's would be up at ISO 6,400 or even in some case ISO 12,800, but despite reviews to the contrary on the web, my little D500 was stellar, and with a bit of NR, the images came out superb (see images below for example), and the AF was just incredible. Now I did sell off all my Nikon gear last year including the D500 as mine had a persistent battery issue that Nikon UK couldn't or wouldn't fix that would flatten a battery in around 250-350 shots when it was supposed to go over 1000 (the same batteries did on my D750, D810 etc.).
Fast forward to now, and I am totally without any Nikon gear at all (glass or bodies), but I do have the Fuji X-H1, however my longest lens is the still great 55-200 F3.5-4.8 (300mm max in FF terms). So I've been debating if the Fuji system coupled with a long lens (like the Fujinon 100-400), at these high ISO's can compete with what I used to get from my Nikon D500. Reading reviews on line seems to indicate that the X-H1's high ISO is at least as good as the D500, but without a proper lens try it with at these ISO's I'm not 100% sure. Has anyone shot with both systems and can comment or instead shot with an X-T2, X-H1 or X-T3 etc. with a long lens and can comment or post some examples at ISO's 3200, 6400 or 12,800 please ? Obviously it woudl be great if the X-H1 could complete as I'd rather not switch or add yet another system, even though I know the D500's AF still probably rules.
Anyway, here's a shot I got on the D500 at ISO's 12,800 and 8000 as examples (funnily enough these are Jay's as well )