On 2012-05-14 17:43, Bob W wrote:
You can't bracket a once-in-a-lifetime shot. If your subject is moving and your timing is critical bracketing is not a viable option.
I don't remember Larry invoking bracketing as a solution, I'm just using this quotation as an entree' to reply. :-)
When shooting the races, even with all of the automation the camera system can provide, I find I get the best results when I preset as much as possible and leave as little as possible to the discretion of the automation. Typically, I'll take some spot and average readings with the camera to get a feel for where things are right now when I get to a new position, or something big changes lighting-wise. Then I'll set the camera in M mode. And then I'll periodically get hosed when some car produces a big reflection of the sun, pointed right at me.
Sometimes I use AF, and sometimes I don't. It's often a burden or a whole-hog disadvantage to use it, mostly due to "lock time" problems. Everything you ask the camera to do for you requires time. Sometimes, that's too much time, even it's it's under a second. For example, in many situations, the AF is way behind because of all the cogitating it does when I trip the shutter. So much, that, if I don't compensate, on a scene with two fast cars thirty feet apart, if I'd trip the shutter when the AF confirms the first car in focus, the shot would actually have the second car in focus. We're talking a few dozen milliseconds, or less, here biasing the shot.
It was a big enough PITA with fully manual cameras, and it's worse with automated ones, even in "M" mode. At least with the manual cameras I could predict the lock time, because it was always the same. The more modern, more automated cameras seem to do more navel gazing before allowing the shutter to actually "fall". I can only speak to Pentax cameras, since I haven't used the competition.
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