I know how to shoot manual - I started photography with '50 era rangefinder 35mm and a handheld exposure meter. I've been learning how the K-r's various automatics handle a scene. Last Saturday I was in landscape mode with a kit 55-300 and ISO 400. I was standing at the edge of a patch of woods, turned and saw these critters. Moved to 300mm and let the AF (spot mode) do its thing.
From the RAW image. The only editing was a color rebalance to remove the blue cast of the late afternoon shade and resize. In retrospect, I wish I had been using sport mode to boost the shutter speed a tad. At high magnification, I can see where handheld, 300mm and 1/350, even with shake reduction, was just barely adequate. Even a half-stop faster would have helped a lot and not drastically reduced the depth of field.