----- Original Message -----
From: "Tom Reese" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <pentax-discuss@pdml.net>
Sent: Tuesday, July 19, 2005 7:58 AM
Subject: Re: I'm Getting an Auto Focus Camera
I started by prefocusing the lens to a distance that I thought would give
me a good shot, putting the camera in focus AFS mode then I held the
shutter button down and tracked the birds from left to right or right to
left hoping one would come into focus and trigger the shutter. It just
didn't happen. The birds were flying too fast and I couldn't keep that
center AF sensor on them long enough to trip the shutter.
low DOF didn't help.
I felt like one of those WWII gunners trying to hit the enemy planes
zooming by. My Manfrotto 3421 head really helped that illusion:
http://www.adorama.com/BG3421.html?searchinfo=bogen%203421&item_no=2
but may have been part of the problem.
anything else would have been foolish with a 600mm lens and flying birds. i
have some flying eagle pictures taken with my 400/2.8 + 1.7X on the *istD.
most are blurry because of focus, but a fair number aren't. they happened to
be uninteresting bird attitudes though, so i never ended up putting any into
my selects pile. my lens combination has an effective FOV of over 1000mm on
a film body. i was on continuous AF mode using the center sensor.
I then tried holding the shutter button down, tracking the birds and
focusing at the same time thinking that would improve my chances but the
shutter never fired that way either.
improved is not the same as usefully good enough.
That's when I went to the 200/4 AF lens. The birds only took a couple
seconds to fly across my field of view and the lens couldn't focus fast
enough to get the shot before the subject was gone.
f2.8 might have helped, and it might not have. Art Morris prefers a 400/5.6
for hand holding flying bird shots on his film camera. i'm sure lots of
practice helps, but i think so does being farther away. the angular movement
is less and it's easier to keep the bird in the middle. also, high speed AF
doesn't hurt either. 200mm might have been just too short and working with
the birds farther out may have made the difference, albeit with a fuzzier
final image because of the additional enlargement needed. i bought Butch's
FA* 300/4.5 specifically to hand hold large flying bird shots. haven't had a
chance to do anything of the sort yet, but i intend to try. it's the closest
to a 400mm equiv FOV that Pentax offers for the *istD.
Herb....
