[wpompen]

As promised:

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Last edited by wpompen; 02-24-2014 at 12:30 AM.

[RonHendriks1966]

As promised:

Oh please, make it a smaller image or put it inhere as a link instead off an image with the [url] things.


I went out for our Dutch Atletics Indoors Championship today. Didn't do many images today. Spend some time on talking about some projects for the coming year.

This is Nadine Broers, new Dutch champion high jump. Not much competition for her, since the only atlete competing with her on this level wasn't there today.

[rfg]

A query on AF Hold. I like the idea but don't understand the problems of using it with sports yet.

Dan.

Same here. One question: if my subject is coming right at me and I am burst shooting, so I want the camera continually re-focusing, do I leave AF hold off?
Dan, case in point is your recent long jump photo. What AF hold setting did you use there?

[crewl1]

This is Nadine Broers, new Dutch champion high jump. Not much competition for her, since the only atlete competing with her on this level wasn't there today.

Yes can you tell us lens and settings used, this a great shot!

[derekkite]

Same here. One question: if my subject is coming right at me and I am burst shooting, so I want the camera continually re-focusing, do I leave AF hold off?
Dan, case in point is your recent long jump photo. What AF hold setting did you use there?

Hold is when your subject goes out of the focus area, and how long before focusing on the background or foreground object. For example, if you are panning following a running player, and they change direction, you lose them, there is a delay that allows you to regain them and not lose focus and have the thing hunt. Or if someone runs between the subject and the camera, it will keep focus on the far object for a time.

I find the most useful setting is a user mode for single point focus, and a second one for multiple point. Single point works very well if you can keep it pointed. The multiple points will give an expanded area to keep the initial center point subject in focus. In low light or low contrast situations single point afc works very well.

[bass3587]

Yes can you tell us lens and settings used, this a great shot!

+1
Yes we would love to know what the setting were. That shot is worthy of SI (Sports Illustrated)

[wpompen]

Oh please, make it a smaller image or put it inhere as a link instead off an image with the [url] things.

I'm sorry... fixed! :-)

[RonHendriks1966]

Yes can you tell us lens and settings used, this a great shot!

I shot this from the ballustrade and used K-3, DA*300mm, f4.5 iso3200 and 1/800th. It is also a little crop (not only the 16:9 for my screen) from the Original. To make it directly like this I would have needed a 350mm lens, so not to much cropping. Some working on it in LightRoom with it. The noise is pretty much in the image and cleaning does smoothen the skin a little bit more then I would like. With K-5 this is easier.

---------- Post added 24-02-14 at 11:33 ----------

+1
Yes we would love to know what the setting were. That shot is worthy of SI (Sports Illustrated)

Oh thanks, but I don't know. I still think it's a pitty that those legs are in the image. I knew Nadine would winn today, since she is the holder off the Dutch record. So I had to move around to have her jump in my image while she also was looking towards the camera so we could look into her face. Unfortunatly then the background is a little spoiled, since a blue background floor would be nicer. For a newspaper the face is essential, but no publication, since the closing in Sochi fills the papers overhere.

---------- Post added 24-02-14 at 11:33 ----------

I'm sorry... fixed! :-)

Thanks.

Looks like a great image to me.

[Canada_Rockies]

Great post. Please keep up the review as you get more familiar with the settings that work best with the K-3. I cannot buy one yet, but it is getter more and more tempting.

[Alex Nostalgix]

Didnt know if I should make a thread or just ask here but what 70-200 is everyone using with the K3? I shoot motorsports that move around quite fast, so Im in the market of finding good 70-200 that wont miss too often! Kinda makes things easier in a way where theres only 4 choices for 70/80-200mm tamron, sigma, tokina and pentax. Leaning towards the Tamron as of now since my funds allow me to get more stuff and same goes for the sigma HSM II, how does the new Sigma 0S fair against the older model on the K3...pentax too much and tokina not so much info. Thanks!

[RonHendriks1966]

Didnt know if I should make a thread or just ask here but what 70-200 is everyone using with the K3? I shoot motorsports that move around quite fast, so Im in the market of finding good 70-200 that wont miss too often! Kinda makes things easier in a way where theres only 4 choices for 70/80-200mm tamron, sigma, tokina and pentax. Leaning towards the Tamron as of now since my funds allow me to get more stuff and same goes for the sigma HSM II, how does the new Sigma 0S fair against the older model on the K3...pentax too much and tokina not so much info. Thanks!

I only used two of those lenses myself. The Pentax FA*80-200mm/f2.8 and the Sigma 70-200/f2.8 EX DG OS HSM. Both are very good, but I own the Sigma. The Sigma OS I only use for panning, it has a separate function for that on the OS (Switch II) or else I set it off and use incamera SR.

[Mallee Boy]

Sigma 70-200 here.
In camera OS, have never used the Sigma option.

These arent too bad to get, the AF copes quite well and the keeper rate is 70-80%
Attachment 208376

Attachment 208377


Similarly this generally a safe shot as a bit of panning is involved. Can occasionally back focus. Keeper rate on this type of thing 80-90%

Attachment 208379


This is the hard one. The bikes are out of sight until they appear in front of you and travelling at speed, the camera has little time to acquire and hold and if it doesnt get it right the first time the series is generally out.
Keeper rate on these is 60-70%, most misses will come from shots like this one where there is no high contrast area to focus on, although this one has pretty well nailed it.


Attachment 208378


PS: I have the Tamron on another make of camera and it is equally as good as the Sigma inmho.

[wpompen]

I own a Sigma 70-200 2.8 APO DG HSM and a Tamron 70-200 2.8 Di... Pros and cons to my opinion:
Pros, Tamron: sharper at 2.8/3.2, lighter, cheaper

Pros Sigma: OS (which is redundant for my purpose)

I mostly shoot sighthounds at +/-50km/h, relatively close at 10 meters and can't accept the IQ of the Sigma at 2.8 that's why I added the Tamron.
I'm quite surprised by the AF in combination with the K3.

Okay, they both are sharp from 4.0 and up but what's the use of a 2.8 lens when images are too soft???
At this moment I've got the Sigma on hold and shoot everything with the Tamron...

[crewl1]

I use the Sigma 70-200 OS version now and previously owned the HSM II version.
Both are very fast to focus but at f2.8 the OS is sharper than the HSM II.
I would put it up against the Tamron in terms of wide open sharpness.
Both Sigmas even out at f4 for IQ.
The responsiveness of the AF in the Sigmas I believe is the best option for sports on Pentax at the moment.
I also do not use the lens OS as I prefer the in body SR of the K-3 and the OS will drain the battery faster.

(The OS is more effective than SR when you use longer focal lengths like in the Bigma in my experience.
With that lens I do prefer the OS but I have to bring extra batteries. )

[DSims]

Here's some stats. Today, I shot 1,582 K-3 raw files at a weekly daytime athletics meet. That took up 46.0 GB. Based on the 59.4 GB available space (with 1GB = 2^20 bytes, not 10^9) on a Sandisk 64 GB Extreme Pro SD card, I estimate that I'd be able to fit 2,042 shots on the card.

This was on the same battery. There was still charge in it. I don't normally look at the battery indicator, since I don't find them very linear, so I'm not sure if it was still showing all the bars or not. Much of this were AF.C bursts. The vast majority of these were shot with a Sigma 70-200/F2.8 II HSM (non-OS). So for sports use with this type of lens and this type of shooting, it appears you should be able to get at least 1,500 shots from a battery.

Since I only covered a portion of the events, namely hurdles, sprints and mid-distance, I can see that it will be easy to shoot 2,000+ shots at a meeting (I try to take multiple shots of every competitor) and get really bogged down in the selection, cropping, leveling (I shoot on a tripod to reduce this) and raw adjustment process.

Oh no, you're shooting RAW too? Events like sports and parades are about the only time I don't shoot RAW. Culling 1000-2000 photos is bad enough. Having to PP them can be even worse. It's too time consuming for what most viewers will appreciate - especially if you're not being paid. And for that one "really great shot" you wanted the RAW for it's surprising how much manipulation you can still do on the JPEG. If the shot's that good in the first place you were probably close enough on the exposure and so-forth to be within the adjustment range you can handle on JPEG.


Something of a happy medium is using the free beta of Perfectly Clear Desktop (Windows-only for now, but I'll use whatever OS gets the job done): Desktop | Perfectly Clear

You can use it on either JPEG or RAW files to quickly get improved results in batches without a huge temptation to tweak them more.

---------- Post added 02-25-14 at 03:17 PM ----------

I mostly shoot sighthounds at +/-50km/h, relatively close at 10 meters and can't accept the IQ of the Sigma at 2.8 that's why I added the Tamron.
I'm quite surprised by the AF in combination with the K3.

Didnt know if I should make a thread or just ask here but what 70-200 is everyone using with the K3? I shoot motorsports that move around quite fast, so Im in the market of finding good 70-200 that wont miss too often! Kinda makes things easier in a way where theres only 4 choices for 70/80-200mm tamron, sigma, tokina and pentax. Leaning towards the Tamron as of now since my funds allow me to get more stuff and same goes for the sigma HSM II, how does the new Sigma 0S fair against the older model on the K3...pentax too much and tokina not so much info. Thanks!

Alex, perhaps you already realize this, but I just want to point out that there's a significant improvement in screw-drive AF performance over the last few generations of Pentax bodies. I noticed a real improvement going from the K-5 to K-5 IIs. And the K-3 reportedly improves upon that.


So if someone says the Tamron AF is too slow, it's important to note which body they're using (and it was probably a memorable and frustrating experience for them). It may well be fast enough if you're using a K-3. (I've been using only screw-drive primes, so I can't comment directly on the Tamron, but I know I wouldn't try it on anything less than a K-5 II/IIs).