On Jan 10, 2010, at 5:13 PM, Joseph McAllister wrote: > > 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. > > The K7D does a much better job of that. I had a good hit ratio when shooting baseball, soccer and moving cars. Far more hits than with the K20. Paul
> > 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] > > > > > > -- > PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List > [email protected] > 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 [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
