On Apr 13, 2010, at 9:56 PM, Doug Franklin wrote: > On 2010-04-13 20:25, Graydon wrote: > >> I find the FA100 is an excellent general purpose things-out-of-reach >> lens; inside at the zoo, flowers, stuff across the room, etc. > > Geez, I feel so out of place around here sometimes. There don't seem to be > nearly as many "long glass" shooters on the PDML as there used to be (I know > /you're/ there, John Francis :-) ). > > I rarely use anything shorter than 200mm. I have the 16-45 and 50-200 DA > lenses, but it's relatively rare that my usual "topics" admit the use of such > short lenses for reasonable compositions. > > Last weekend, Road Atlanta and the USERA (http://www. had a big event to > celebrate 25 years of the Spec Racer Ford(now)|Renault(then) class, 40 years > of Road Atlanta, and some other anniversary that I don't remember. It was > great racing and awesome weather. > > On Saturday I exposed 1,973 frames and on Sunday 500 more. Far more than I > expected, or really realized at the time I was doing it. Though I /did/ > notice the "SD card wallet" getting kinda thick. Of those nearly 2,500 > frames, I got about 1,200 that passed the first cull, which I think is pretty > darned good, considering it's been so long. > > I was mostly practicing for Walter Mitty, which is the last weekend of April > at Road Atlanta. Technically, it's the Historic Sportscar Racing Mitty > Speedfest this year, but that's marketing BS. :-) I haven't gotten much > shooting done at the track for the last year or so, so I needed the practice. > > Of the 2,500 exposures, 2,100 or so were with the FA* 200/2.8, F* 300/4.5, or > the Sigma APO 400/5.6 Macro. The rest were on the DA 50-200. I don't think > I dropped the shutter once on the 16-45. I'd have used the hell out of an > FA* 600/4, if it made economic sense for me to spend that kind of geld on a > hobby (other than women or racing :-) ). > > I'll toss a few of my personal favorites from the event out there in the next > day or two. I got lucky a couple of times. > > There were several cases where I could've used a faster machine gun than the > K-10D. I don't generally "machine gun" exposures, but when something goes > wrong on track, you don't have time to think and compose. You have to grab > every frame you can as the action evolves. Or I do, at least. When the > entire fracas is over in two to three seconds, or a lot less, and still can > cover a couple of hundred meters, well, my brain has never worked /that/ fast. > > The frame rate isn't nearly as limiting as the buffer size. I need at least > three to five seconds of buffer at the highest frame rate the camera can > achieve at max resolution, no dark frame subtraction, no lens distortion > correction, nothing, DNG or raw, to handle those situations without luck > playing the dominant role. > > But, basically, it sometimes seems like I'm on the other end of the boat from > most of the PDML faithful a lot of the time, any more. Not whining, just > noticing, maybe myopically. And realizing full well that I shoot in a niche > of subjects for the most part. There just used to be more fellow niche > dwellers a few years ago. :-) >
If it's any consolation my DA* 60-250 is my most used lens, and I still use the A400 5.6 quite a bit. I haven't shot a race in a long time but hope to again one of these days. Paul > -- > Thanks, > DougF (KG4LMZ) > > -- > PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List > PDML@pdml.net > http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net > to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow > the directions. -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List PDML@pdml.net http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
