I met Chris Dodds a last summer on a Atlantic puffin trip. My gear at the time was a 5DIV, 1DX, 400mm DOII and 600mm f/4. Most of the other attendees on the trip were shooting A9's with the 100-400 gm. I got some great Puffin flight shots over three days of shooting, but my keeper rate (those in focus) sucked compared to the keeper rates of those with the A9. I am definitely not the best fight photographer, but I'm not too bad either. I don't have my big Canon glass any longer which has been replaced by the a9, the 100-400 GM and the 400mm 2.8. And now, I learned last night that Sony is offering a 600mm f/4 and a 200/600mm zoom. Better focusing capabilities that the (any) Canon gear and faster frame rate. One of the complaints some have had about the Sony system for sports and wildlife is the lack of glass. That is no longer the case.

Dodds was also a Canon representative (like Morris) but dumped all his Canon gear for Sony. Why, its just better than Canon for his work (flight photography). Morris dropped Canon for whatever reason, went to Nikon, and now is experimenting with Sony.

I know the difficulty of parting with the investment in glass. I went thru it. But will I get more puffin shots with fish in their mouths flying right at me this summer. I know the answer is YES.

And PS: I am seeing no issues as far as focus speed and IQ with both the 1.4 and 2X expenders with the A9. The A7RIII definitely has focusing issues with the 100-400 gm plus 2X extender, but works well with the 400mm 2.8 plus 2x. The IQ of the 400mm 2.8 plus 2X is very very close to the 600mm Canon plus 1.4x.

Sorry for putting any splash on the 1DXII goals, but I just couldn't resist.

If you have the need and the money then I say go for it. I will have had mine for 3 years in October. I spent a few months looking at options before buying. I could have had a 5D4 and 7D2 for the same money at the time. But the 5D4 was just coming out at the time. I prefer the rugged build and built in grip of the 1 series. I prefer one camera to several and a few great lenses. I feel the MkII is the best all around camera that Canon makes if you need high speed and high ISO capability. It can shoot anything from drag racing to portraits. I have no regrets. If a better body comes out you can decide if you want to trade up. Meanwhile enjoy it today for what it offers.

Check out Mark Rebilas on web and Facebook and you can see the kind of action shooting he does with Canon gear. Jeff Cable also. Arthur Morris for birding. Interestingly enough he uses a MkII but I believe dumped his 7D2s for a pair of 5Dsr bodies. Doesn't seem like a birders body but he seems to like them...

I took a picture recently that really A] is not very good and B] contains some difficult areas of exposure. Since fooling around (AKA experimenting) with post processing is, for me, educational and potentially useful, I...

1] used Raw Photo Processor 64 (RPP64), a Mac-only raw developer that has some interesting features to save the raw file as an untagged 32-bit tiff. A screen capture of that, displayed via Mac's Preview app, is attached.

2. opened the original raw file in RawDigger and took a screen capture of both the image view and the histogram view. That's also attached.

3. displayed the original, the untagged tiff and a tagged tiff (both tiff's are from RPP64) in Fast RawViewer. A screen capture of that is attached.

4. opened the original in Luminar, used the recommended "develop" adjustments and exported to a jpg. The screen capture of that is attached. I also included a screen capture of how the original looks when opened in Luminar before any adjustments.

Note that the image contains some very dark areas and some blown areas and RawDigger makes that obvious. Also note, however, that the tiff from RPP64 shows that except for the extreme, blown areas, the picture contains much more useful content than one would suspect. All the detail in the black cat's fur is there. The area on the gray cat's back that shows as blown is not.

The thumbnail view in FRV shows the untagged tiff correctly but the larger version applies a different viewing method.

The jpg from Luminar demonstrates that the useful shadow and highlight content can be preserved and exported fairly easily.

Lessons learned:
* Even a picture with some difficult-to-use areas may have better detail than it first appears.
* The way the tools work varies a lot and it can be worthwhile to learn what they do
* The underexposed areas are much more useful than is obvious at first.
* The overexposed areas are not as bad as it first appears; RawDigger shows that only the green channel is maxed out. I did not try to fix those but it would be relatively easy to lower just the green channels and proceed from there.
* It's worth shooting raw images at least in cases where the initial results are crappy.

I know most of the men here and probably some women have back problems...I do.

Standing behind a tripod or sitting without proper support is uncomfortable even after only a short time. So I got this idea and tried it...its like I've died and gone to heaven.

Its tricky getting in and out but its manageable and I feel so good sitting in it.

Not exactly. I would rather think of it as not erring at all.

If you see blinkies (where you don't want them), back off by reducing the exposure or the ISO until they go away.

Expose normally - neither overexpose nor underexpose. You may end up with a decent looking JPEG that can be improved when you develop from raw.

An extra 1/3 or 2/3 stop is not going to provide any visible benefit.

It takes very little testing to learn how your camera behaves. It is not rocket science.