Aaron I'm sorry you are taking things personally. Accusing me of lying isn't getting you or anybody else anywhere. I'm not even sure that I should honor your mail with an answer. Don't bother to answer this mail, Aaron, 'cause I won't be reading it.
Here are some FACTS on the subject: Fact: You don't know how skating events in Scandinavia or many other places are lit, do you (in doors ice skating, indoors hockey games, outdoor street skating at different times of the day - perhaps rather late in the day time - after school or work etc.)? Fact: For those who DO want to shoot in AF mode and continuous drive mode (which some photographers actually prefer, if you reed about the subject - provided of course, they have access to the necessary gear for this) 2.5 fps IS a bit slow - and slower than some of the competing cameras, often used by action shooters. Fact: The write speed - 8 secs per RAW file IS slow compared to the competition, which have been pointed out many time by others in this forum as well. Fact: The availability of fast lenses (F.1.4-2.8) is very limitid, which have also been confirmed by others here. Perhaps 400mm is fine for baseball. But for shooting skaters in the street at close range a tripod or even a monopod is not very useful. A focal range of 24-90mm, 28-70mm or perhaps even 80-200mm would be more appropriate, but certainly not anything above 200mm. Fact: Any checking of the photographs after/during shooting is rather slow, due to the very limited buffer capacity of this camera. I didn't say it can't be done at all - shooting action (skaters) with the D - I just said that I didn't want to recommend it. Many photographers seem to argree, that skating is one of the most difficult sports to photograph because the speed is very high - you are as fast as a vehicle, yet not inside one. So you can VERY fast change direction and speed, which most vehicles can't. That's not lying. That's my OPINION. It's offering advice. I have been photographing for more than 40 years. I have shot almost 30.000 pix with my * ist D - in all kinds of lighting with many different lenses. I AM entitled to offer advice concerning the use of this camera. You are entitled to disagree. But you are NOT at all entitled call me a liar! Don't bother to answer this mail, Aaron, 'cause I won't be reading it. Regards Jens Aaron wrote: Alright, I've had to momentarily de-lurk again because I cannot stand it when misinformation persists. It drove me crazy with "you can't hand-hold a Pentax 67" and now it's this. Jens, I e-mailed you off-list to correct some misapprehensions you had. Instead of taking that information in, you've continued to post outright lies, over and over again. Since you're not taking the hint and are continuing to insist that what you say is true, I am compelled to make this public. 1: AF is slow, compared to the competition. Focusing in low light will require 2-4 secs (according to dpreview tests). You may use MF, and save time experimenting with AF. Enjoy using old, lovely, smooth MF lenses. Low light shooting -- during skating? During baseball? At what event are you discussing? The lighting is at these events is very high contrast, an environment in which the Pentax AF excels. Yes, it is very poor for shooting in a bar. Oh well. No one plays sports in a bar. In addition, numerous people have described the proper way to shoot sports to you. In the specific case of skating, you watch the warm up, decide what you want to shoot from the routine, make your notes (mental or otherwise), and pick your shooting position accordingly. 2: Frames pr. second is just 2.5 (competition features 4-8.3 FPS). You may use single shot mode. Make sure to plan each shot carefully and try not to think too much about the athletes moving in a surprising way - you know the sports and can foresee everything that will occur. This is condescending. Have you known any sports photographers who shoot more than a couple of shots in a burst? They don't machine-gun by mashing down the shutter button, they shoot and then shoot again and shoot again, in rapid succession, PICKING each shot, not allowing luck to determine whether or not they get the image. Shutter button response is probably the most important factor here, and the Nikon guys at the ballgames constantly complain about how much quicker their F3 was for actually getting the shot off. 3: Write speed is 8 secs for 1 RAW file (36-37 secs for a 5 shot RAW burst, 14 secs for a JPEG burst). This gives you plenty of time for talking to you colleagues and for drinking coffee or smoking cigarettes. I just fired with my DS2 -- I shot 5 raw files, filled the buffer and then was able to shoot again after two seconds. TWO. Not THIRTY-SEVEN. But, as everyone has pointed out, not only do sports pros shoot jpegs (because when the hell will the process the raw files? In the car? The paper needs them immediately!), they shoot 6MP or lower jpegs because the images are going in the newspaper. Set to jpg, the DS2 can fire off a burst of 9 and then shoot again after about one second. 6: Availability of new, fast (F:1.4-2.8) lenses is very limited. Use every Monday, checking ebay for discontinued FA F.2.8 lenses. This is really entertaining - much more enjoyable than the actal photographing. I explained to you in no uncertain terms that the lens Pentax is missing that kills them for modern, night-game, digital baseball is a 400mm f2.8 with AF. 7: Only 6MP leaves very little "space" for after-cropping. Enjoy the art of cropping the images while shooting. Again, you are not speaking about sports pros. 8: Reviewing pix is relatively slow - and must await the rather long writing times. It's more fun taking chances. It's more exiting to check the images at home, later on. Uh, have you ever seen a pro checking the little LCD during an event? It's always in the lulls between plays/innings/skaters. They have instant review turned off to save battery power. 9: No immediate histogram available. Enjoy your ability to judge the exposure in advance, using the +/- settings. I turned on the instant histogram in my DS2 in custom settings. Then I turned it off in favor of the blinking "blown out highlights" warning, which made more sense when photographing teams wearing white. 10:No flashing overexposure warning available for fast checking exposure. (Same comment as above). Oh, uh, right. You know why Nikon sucks for sports? Because the F3 is manual focus and only uses film! Modern pros demand digital! I will commence re-lurking now. -Aaron
