C/C please. Be harsh....

MedicineMan999 wrote: I did ask both birds if they would reposition themselves for a better image. Both the hawk and the Chickadee ignored my request.

My guess would be that the difficulties of getting really comparable subjects are part of the reason for your doubts about the 400 apo. Chickadees and other tiny birds are super jumpy and jittery, to the point where head movements or body turns can reduce sharpness even at 1/2000sec or faster. A larger and somewhat slower type of bird (even if it's not the same hawk ) would be a better point of comparison.

And a technical detail that matters for alpha mount gear: if shooting from a rock-steady tripod, sensor stabilization should be off as you could otherwise get blur from a confused sensor shift algorithm. On top of that, the longest and heaviest lenses are never 100% steady at the moment of pressing the shutter, unless you use a remote or timed release. So it is sometimes hard to decide for tripod shooting whether sss off really is the best solution or not.

Edited by pdeley - 28 March 2017 at 19:03