A few weeks ago, my kennel club hosted an agility trial. I thought it would benice to take some shots of the dogs running through the course. The fastest drive I have is the motor drive A for the Program Plus. I think it runs at about 3FPS. Here was my technique: I would set up and prefocus on one piece of equipment. As the dog approached, I hit the shutter button, and shot a burst of 4 or 5 frames. My failure rate using this method was close to 100%. Out of 8 rolls of film, I got a half dozen usable shots. I read somewhere once that a motor drive, no matter how fast, only guaranteed that you would get pictures taken just before, and just after what you wanted to capture. My experience with the agility trial proved this to me. Anothe guy who uses a Pentax SF1 uses a similar technique to what I was doing. The big difference is that he takes one frame only at what he feels is the right time. His timing is superb, and he got more usable shots on one roll of 36 than I got on my 8 rolls of 36.
My best failure was a picture of the empty end of a tunnel, with the tip of a dog tail showing just at the edge of the frame. These darned Border Collies are pretty quick, I must say. Anyway, I would suggest that all the carping about the MZS frame rate being to slow is not valid. A high speed drive does not supplant knowledge of what you are shooting and good technique. William Robb - This message is from the Pentax-Discuss Mail List. To unsubscribe, go to http://www.pdml.net and follow the directions. Don't forget to visit the Pentax Users' Gallery at http://pug.komkon.org .
