Originally posted by Erictator A rather long sequence of shots, but it's not my fault, I blame the K-1 and DFA for giving me so many keepers.
These are all sequential, with 1 dropped frame that was because the eye was OOF, but the AF still tracked the main subject.
The Pelican went from crossing my path to flying away from me, and the AF seemed to keep pace fine.
HD PENTAX-D FA 150-450mm F4.5-5.6ED DC AW ƒ/6.3 450.0 mm 1/2500 iso200 (all same)
Probably not the best photo artistry wise, but one of my favorites just because of the action of him skidding in on his webbed feet and opening his beak sideways to get the best angle to scoop up fish at just the moment before he goes in.
When his beak caught the water, it actually spun his whole body around to face me, I'm always amazed they don't break their necks!
Excellent series of shots.
In regards to AF tracking, I find that situations like this AF manages just fine. It could be a plane or a helicopter in the sky, or a bird flying against the sky or against the sea/river, the AF knows what to lock onto. I don't think Pentax has ever struggled in this regard. And because there is typically an abundance of light (at least here in Australia) you can stop down plenty (as there's not such a need to separate/isolate a bird flying in the sky from the sky with wide open DoF) and thus everything looks pretty sharp and decent.
Pentax's AF struggles only in a handful of action situations, and this isn't one of them imo. Stuff where a target is coming fast towards the user (on busy land), or fast paced sport with lots of 'stuff' going on in the scene making the contrast areas harder to identify is gonna be problematic for it. That and of course burst frame rates and buffer clearance. Let's not forget other brands will also not get good focus at times, but due to the higher burst rate and faster clearing of buffer they get more
chances to nail a good shot. So AF is just one aspect of that whole experience in getting a nice shot.
But really there are plenty of sports that are easily captured with Pentax's AF system, just a handful of those that aren't well suited. The bird or plane in the sky thing often gives the illusion of being something that would be tricky to capture and must therefore be an amazing AF situation, but in reality I think it's a situation that any camera handles very easily, it's quite favourable AF environment!
Absolutely excellent shots, I loved seeing the whole series