I'm going to post this again, because I don't think it ever made it through the first time.
I shoot high school sports on a weekly basis. I use pz1ps. My primary AF lenses for sports are the F 35-135/3.5-4.5 and the FA* 300/4.5. High school football is notorious for bad lighting, especially when I have to go out to a little country town's game. The pz1p performs very admirably with the lenses mentioned above. The only time that I ever had a problem was last year about this time. I noticed that whenever a player was running towards me, the area of focus was behind the athlete. Since I had not used AF lenses extensively for sports before this I assumed that Pentax's AF was simply not up to tracking a player running straight at me. In Decemeber last year, I had to send my camera in for a repair and had it CLA'd while it was there. Since then the AF has no problem keeping up with any subject that I've thrown at it. I've even taken photos of a stationary object on the side of the road from my car moving about 65 mph using a 28-70/4 with servo AF and the focus was great. Granted, it has it's peculiarities; but once you get to know them they are really no problem at all. For example, if the players are stationary for one reason or another it seems as though the AF is continually hunting. I posted my concerns about this last fall. But after a year of using the 300/4.5 I don't think that it's a problem at all. It may sound like it's hunting but the great majority of shots come out in focus. When I was borrowing my friend's D60 the other day I noticed that it did the exact same thing. Canon's AF "feels" more stable, I think, because it is quiter so you don't notice that the lens is moving slightly. The second major quirk that I've noticed with pz1p AF is that you have to be consientious about what you're aiming at. Sometimes with football, if the team has single colored jerseys with no stripes or anything then the AF might hunt. In that case I simply make sure that I aim the sensor at a part of their jersey with a number or something. Now I should also mention that I had the same problem with the d60 that I borrowed. In fact, I was quite surprised at how much of a problem that I had with this. With the d60 I had to keep a sensor on the player's face or it had much difficulty focussing. Granted, I'm not used to the camera so I do not know it's quirks. But I had always believed that Canon AF would lock onto a subject more readily than Pentax's. I still have many shots from last year's season on my website if you'd like to see actual examples. Also, on the pages for the Whitewright team I included every shot that was taken of the game. You can see for yourself the number of in focus versus out-of-focus shots. -- Nick Wright http://www.wrightfoto.com/
