On Jan 10, 2010, at 11:45 , William Robb wrote:
----- Original Message ----- From: "John Sessoms"
Subject: RE: How useful is SDM?
Is this something that should be ignored in making a choice? An
important factor? Somewhere between?
Fast auto-focus. How important that is depends on what you're doing
with your camera.
The sad fact is, this doesn't hold true with Pentax.
While SDM AF is nominally faster than screwdrive, it isn't a night
the night vs. day thing you will find if you pick up a higher end
Canon.
Seriously, if really fast AF is someting you really need, Pentax is
not the camera maker for you
Think back to the good old days, where you had to practice, practice,
practice to get the timing perfect to capture a shot you'd prefocused
using the carpet, a post, or a yellow spot in the grass? Remember the
time you spent follow focusing a subject that was moving towards or
away from you?
You should maintain those skills when using Pentax cameras, as they
are not capable of performing these tasks for you except in bright
sunlight with an ƒ4 or faster lens.
I know. I photograph running and playing dogs almost every day. A
large dog running towards me from 100 ft away, sunny day, K20D center
focused, high speed continuous, ƒ4 60-250 @ 135mm, may occasionally
result in one sharp image. If you don't even shoot, just watch the
image through the finder, you can see that the camera focuses, stops,
focuses, stops, etc., sometimes catching up, and never predicting the
location of the subject soon enough to actually allow the shutter to
trip when it arrives.
It's a travesty.
Seems to work in video, such as it is. Hmmm.
If it doesn’t excite you,
This thing that you see,
Why in the world,
Would it excite me?
—Jay Maisel
Joseph McAllister
[email protected]
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