seeing a set of flying bald eagles mating and not being able to capture that
except as out of focus blurs while my companion with his D70 gets sharp
captures was the final straw, especially when my camera locked up writing
its buffer. the birds were too close for effective manual focus as they were
falling vertically and changing their distance to me as they fell.
on my trip to Calgary, i witnessed a Swainson's Hawk dive down and pop up
from behind a set of rushes to try and catch one of a set of shorebirds.
this is unusual behavior for that type of hawk. since the bird came almost
straight toward me and then turned across my field of view, manual focus
tracking of the bird was out of the question. i might have had a chance with
a camera that did much better AF. i had about 3 seconds from the time i
spotted the hawk before it was among the birds. i know for sure that the
Pentax would not have captured the entire sequence because its frame rate
isn't fast enough. i got a set of shots of it flying away to land on the
opposite side of the lake, but with only sky in the background, it was just
another shot of a bird in the distance. a sharp shot of the hawk among the
shorebirds would have made me a lot of money. lighting conditions were just
about ideal with the sun at my back. i was close enough that with the focal
length i was using, the hawk and several escaping birds would have just
about filled the frame. i had enough time to aim the camera and track the
hawk, but not to focus. would the equipment have guaranteed the shot? of
course not. would it have made it more likely? you bet.
Herb....
----- Original Message -----
From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Saturday, September 24, 2005 4:20 PM
Subject: Re: Re: How Pentax Could Survive
I don't mean this personally, but in my experience, it's definitely the
one who pushes the release that makes the difference, not the equipment
although I've been told a few times that my images were pushing the limits
of my equipment (with Pentax lacking a tilt/shift lens).
