[normhead]

normhead….. I agree so much. I often have just a few seconds and all I get is the branch where the bird was

That is so disappointing. You see and quickly compose and you think you nailed it, but all you got was a branch. And it also happens at the other end. I get three frames and it's two frames of branch pictures at the end as well. If all this has taught me anything it's that my reflexes aren't anything like what they used to be.

[barondla]

If a small creature is hyper actively moving around, it is almost impossible to capture "the pose" with one frame. Doesn't matter how quick the photographer's reflexes are. If you see it in the viewfinder, you missed the shot due to camera time lag. In these situations it is difficult to anticipate the animals movement to shoot betore the pose.

Someone here, don't remember who, had a shot a great shot with the DA*300. It was cropped to 100% and he said it was at the maximum ability of the lens. I disagree. At that point the K-1 was the limiting factor. I regularly push the 300 much harder by mounting a 5.4X crop Pentax Q on it. When everything goes well this combo is able to record sharp images. I always carry a Q with adapter in the the big dslr bag for extreme reach. The Q is a digital teleconverter. Unfortunately a manual focus one. Don't sell the 300 short.
Thanks,
barondla

[normhead]

I also use burst to make up for SR failures in low light images when I don't have time to use a tripod. If I take 3, one of the three is usually good.

For images like this.... at 1/20s I find the SR only occasionally adequate. If I press the shutter button and hold for at least 3 frames, I have mush more chance of having a good result.


If you look at the sequence this was taken from and look at the amount of time I spent there, you realize I kept 7 images... using tripod would have reached that to 2 or 3. There is a cost for being meticulous. 3 frames almost always gets me the images I want, and takes me 2 seconds. Just getting the tripod out of the cary bag takes a minute or two. My time out is valuable. I'm always looking for ways to increase my number of opportunities.

I spent 6 minutes in this area (as part of a much longer walk.) Setting up a tripod for each of these shots, I would have had a maximum 2 shots. I ended up with 7. Would you really be willing to sacrifice 5 images because you won't use burst mode?













So I'd ask, which five would you give up because you stopped to use tripod instead fo shooting burst?

Personally, I like all of them, taking a single shot ensures you will miss photos you want because your movement was too much for the SR. Using a tripod means you don't have time for them all.

This is not ideology, this is practical knowledge gleaned from thousands of photos.
The thing is, if you don't use burst out of dogmatic type stubbornness, you have no idea how it could improve your enjoyment of photgraphy.

[Kath]

I probably have a thousand bird images just posted here on the forum, although not so much in the last year. If you are used to the 8 FPS-23 shot buffer of the K-3 then the K-1 can be really irritating. The buffer fills to quickly and the time it takes to clear the buffer and get the camera back on line is too long. The K-3 is a much more satisfying camera for that purpose. Not to mention that you get better detail in the crop area with a K-3 if you end up just using crop.

In terms of IQ, I did a few shots at some point to see if people could tell the difference between K-1 images and K-3 images... they couldn’t.

Wonderful images. I particularly like the one of the weasel (??), so much of the animal’s emotion caught there. As a wildlife photog, I’m a fan of multiple bursts. So often the subjects move in just such a way... and there you have it, on image. Partly luck. But the burst strategy plays with that luck. And, sometimes, it catches the image for us. To conflate “spraying” with burst shooting is a mistake. A good buffer will help immensely with capturing just that moment you might otherwise miss.