If you have zero interest in photography or indeed video work then today’s blog post isn’t going to interest you at all and I will see you hopefully on Monday. I think that some of you here are interested in the visual side of things though, so I thought I’d talk you through a big change I have made to my working setup…………..

For a fair few years I was shooting Fuji camera gear and for the most part I was really pleased with the stuff. There is no getting away from how much lighter a lot of the mirrorless stuff is when compared to the full size SLR kit I was more used to, and the WYSIWYG viewfinders are really helpful once you get used to them and learn what to trust and what not to trust. I found the Fuji cameras pretty easy to get to grips with for the sort of photography I do the most (fishing!), but pretty quickly I did find that their continuous autofocus system wasn’t exactly the best if I was trying to track my girls with their running or sailing or surfing and so on.

But I could mostly live with that because photographing fishing is what I need to do a lot of, and the lighter and cheaper camera bodies and lenses were a great help to me. I did find that for some reason I could never quite fathom the cameras would randomly miss focus on a small percentage of static shots (angler fishing, grip and grin etc.) when everything was telling me that I had nailed focus. Again I could live with this because of how well the Fuji stuff was working for me, and whilst most of the YouTube stuff I have been messing around with has been with GoPros, I found the focus tracking on the Fuji gear when in video mode to be pretty crap. Again though, video wasn’t a big thing for me and I could live with it.

What this missing focus on random photos did for me over time was cause me to then have to check photos in the camera after I had shot them. The missing focus problem for some reason was getting worse with the newer Fuji camera bodies, and being literally forced to check focus on photos I had just shot in turn caused me to miss a few shots because I was having to check stuff and see if I could quickly reshoot it. With fishing you can’t simply repeat what I call “fishing action” shots though, not exactly anway, because the angler is fishing away and the sea or light or where they are standing or a combination of it all is never going to happen exactly the same as when you shot it - and possibly missed focus.

Fishing is a slightly weird thing to shoot, and if there is one thing I need to be able to trust when something suddenly goes off - light, fish, waves etc. - is the autofocus system on my camera. I need to know that if I am doing things correctly on my end and there’s that telltale “beep” which tells me that what I am focusing on is actually in focus, then the photos I shoot are actually in focus. What I am actually focusing on and why is down to me - the eye on a fish or the angler in a frame etc. - but I need to be able to completely trust my camera gear to work with me. I was gradually losing trust in the Fuji gear though, and after talking back and forth with Fuji UK who were really kind but could not get to the bottom of what I was experiencing, I decided that enough was enough and it was time to explore some other options. I really examined my own way of working of course, but I have been successfully photographing all kinds of fishing all around the world for many years now, and having to delete a number of images because they weren’t pin-sharp has never been an issue. For sure I am going to make mistakes and/or the light or conditions are sometimes working against you nailing focus, but I know my photography, I know the “rules” as such, and I knew that something between me and my Fuji gear and what I shoot wasn’t quite right.

I had had my eyes on the Sony gear for a fairly long time, and after a lot of research and also getting some decent part-ex quotes for dumping my Fuji gear and changing over, I actually rented a Sony A7 IV camera body and a 24-105 f4 lens over Xmas to see if I could get on with it. Muscle memory is a big thing with photography when you the photographer is in control of the camera and not just hitting a virtual shutter button on a mobile phone. I need to be able to move my hands around the camera and change various settings without taking my eye away from the viewfinder, so using a different camera body when my hands were used to the Fuji gear was a bit strange - but I knew from the first time I took the rented Sony gear out fishing and photographing (one and the same for me) that this was the gear for me. It just worked, and the RAW files were fantastic.

So I took the plunge and I couldn’t be happier with what I have done. I don’t worry about megapixels and sensors and all that sort of stuff. To me that’s for the pixel-peepers online. The real world of shooting photos and selling or using them is very different. I went for the Sony A7 IV body with a few of the Tamron f2.8 zoom lenses and I can’t believe how good the gear is. It’s the first time I am 100% happy with shooting at f2.8 when I want to for creative or lower light reasons, the flashgun I went for is a complete game-changer for night photography, I can live with the 10fps against the 15fps I was getting on my last Fuji camera body, and I am closer and closer to the Sony camera body feeling completely natural as I change various settings while looking through the viewfinder. I am happier shooting at higher ISO values on the Sony stuff although the A7 IV is not a low-light beast, but this is where the outstanding and SO nice and lightweight Tamron f2.8 lenses come in so handy. Sony RAW files play nicer with Lightroom than Fuji RAW files used to, and even though I haven’t played around a huge amount yet with the extensive video capabilities on this Sony A7 IV, it’s face-based focus tracking in video mode is extraordinary.

But it wasn’t until a few weeks into this new camera system that I found out about one of the most useful features on it for me. I am a bloke and I do a lot of research into stuff like this, and I stumbled across a YouTube video I think it was where somebody was talking about how you could lock focus on a static subject like I would tend to do with an angler fishing in a static position - as per above - and then when that subject (angler, fish, bird, animal etc.) suddenly starts to move you can programme a button on the back of the camera to track your subject as I hold the button down (Tracking On + AF On, game changer!). Release the button and the camera holds focus on the one position, hold the button again and it tracks. This might mean nothing to you, but it’s literally everything to me! Coming from cameras when I would be shooting in AF-S mode and then have to change settings and focus position to move over to AF-C mode was always holding me back from nailing a few shots, but now when an angler suddenly moves I can track them so much more easily and get a few shots I’d have missed in the past. The photo below is a very simple shot - f2.8, correspondingly high shutter speed, focused on Mark’s head/face - but he suddenly moved from fishing in a static position to wading through this minefield below. I knew it would make a good shot and I never missed a thing because I could stay in position and track him moving across the rocks and gullies. I would have obviously been in the the right position as well if he suddenly slipped and went for a swim!

Anyway, apologies, I got rather carried away with talking to you about this new Sony and Tamron gear. There is so much more to it than I am on about here, and changing camera systems is not something that any photographer does remotely lightly at all - but I could not be happier with my decision to do so. The autofocus on this Sony gear is insanely good, and although fishing photography is what I do, I have also shot a huge amount of photos this year of my youngest girl at various cross country races, my eldest girl sailing, and of course Storm! It’s even a lot easier to shoot the odd photo of myself fishing. I am driving my youngest girl up to Loughborough in a couple of hours because she’s running in a big cross country nationals race up there tomorrow, and then I am going to drive home on Saturday afternoon with my phone and radio switched off so I can’t hear what’s going on with the England v Ireland rugby and I can watch the recording of it the moment I get home tomorrow evening. You all have a good weekend, see you next week………….

Changed over from Fuji to Sony camera gear, couldn’t be happier

© Henry Gilbey 2023