On Oct 23, 2006, at 9:35 AM, John Francis wrote: > On Mon, Oct 23, 2006 at 09:33:50AM +0200, Jens Bladt wrote: >> Yes, well raod racing is probably predictable enough for manual >> focusing. >> Other things may not be. But then again - Pentax AF often isn't >> fast enough >> for moving subjects. > > It's odd how people keep repeating this, and yet there are > several of us on this list who find the AF quite fast enough > to shoot race cars travelling at anything up to 200MPH. > > That doesn't mean there isn't room for improvement; I'm > really looking forward to the K10D with DA* SDM lenses. > But I miss a whole heck of a lot more shots by tripping > the shutter at the wrong time, or not quite getting all > the car in the frame, than I do to auto-focus failures.
I agree. Both of these were made using AF, and I think the DS did a pretty good job of it in both cases. http://homepage.mac.com/ramarren/photo/PAW5/27p.htm http://homepage.mac.com/ramarren/photo/PAW5/39p.htm BTW, the rendering on the second was deliberate... ;-) Much of road racing is fairly predictable with regard to focus points, but I find manual focusing to be just as effective even when it is not. It takes some skill and practice, and as John says, timing is all important. If you haven't done much of this kind of work, Jens, you probably can't really speak from experience. I've been photographing road racing events since about 1972, before there were any autofocus SLRs. AF provides a new tool for the work and has engendered a new style of photographs from what it can do, but does not obsolete older techniques. Godfrey -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
