[Kerrowdown]

Is manual focus that big a disadvantage for action?

It's all about practice, photographers managed for many years before AF was even invented.

[keyofnight]

Yes, practice and practice and practice at manual focusing.

Sure…but are there any good exercises people can do for practice? For example, some writers do certain writing exercises to generate ideas, guitarists do practice exercises to target techniques they're having problems with, etc.

It's all about practice, photographers managed for many years before AF was even invented.

Wait…didn't you know? There was no such thing as action before autofocus…

[Hornet]

try catch-in-focus with manual lenses and moving subjects - works great most of the time for me

[Sagitta]

Are there any exercises that you've done to beef up your focusing skills? (:

Find a comfortable spot on the side of a busy roadway, and shoot cars. It worked nicely for me when I decided to try to get back into things a few years back after a long break away from the SLR world.

If your car-shooting location is near a place with lots of other stuff moving about (trees for birds, a harbor, whatever) all the better.

[andre-mz5]

For action/sport shots you just need :
- know the sport so you can anticipate where the action will be
- practice
- practice
- and last but not least : practice

[blacknosugar]

Thanks for all the feedback. I don't know why I find it so hard to get into my head that it's the photographer that needs the most improvement, not the equipment!
It's like an instant knee-jerk reaction; 'I don't like this photo' = Gear Acquisition Syndrome.

I must admit that focus settings didn't even cross my mind, nor did I understand them on my K-x before this thread. I only half understood Shake Reduction until the other day when I was troubleshooting some tripod shots (I didn't know that the K-x switches it off in 2 sec delay mode so I was wrong about the problem anyway).
Does SR work in Drive mode? I didn't think it would have time to 'lock'.

I shot the rally in Tv mode, on a hunch I switched SR off as I thought it wouldn't play well with panning and sort of tried to pre-focus the AF on the bit of road I expected the car to be so it would hunt less. It was getting thrown off by grass and also the speed cars were passing close by. I guess a monopod might have helped. I seemed to do particularly badly with Drive mode and was happier when I picked my moment and grabbed a single shot.

It's all about practice, photographers managed for many years before AF was even invented.

Excellent point, next time I should take a manual film camera out to do action, shoot Sunny16 and quit complaining.

After trying to get some shots with the 135mm M lens the other evening I have so much respect for old-school wildlife photographers; failing evening light that changes by the minute and makes you use a slower shutter & shallower DOF, the camera moves, the wildlife moves...

[crossmr]

Pre-focusing works great for racing sports, but I don't find it particularly useful for many other types of sports (e.g., basketball, volleyball, football, etc.). With those kinds of sports, there are no definite areas on which you can pre-focus unless you want to end up with cliche armpit shots, like at the basket in basketball or at the net in volleyball.

It's just tough to shoot a lot of sports well, especially in those instances where you need to follow the action. I think focus is the biggest culprit. I have always been a fully manual shooter (both with focus and exposure), and I've never really trusted autofocus.

What I do find is that I really, really have to "warm up" my fast-focusing skills when I get to an event. I will show up early and practice focusing on players who are, similarly, going through their own warm-ups. After I get into the focus groove, I find I have a better level of confidence as I shoot the real thing, and I am more likely to get decent results.

Focus is hard. But in my opinion, it's easier with the control manual focus gives you than it would be without that control.

I shoot a lot of hockey and agree. Unless I'm going to mount a camera and point it just at the net (which one photographer at the games does), trying to pre-focus doesn't work as the action happens everywhere. I find that auto-focus in this case generally isn't bad except when they are slamming into the boards in front of me. It sometimes gets confused at the fast approaching guys and craps out, refusing to lock.

[hcc]

Pre-focusing works great for racing sports, but I don't find it particularly useful for many other types of sports (e.g., basketball, volleyball, football, etc.).

I respectfully disagree. Pre-focusing works very well in volley-ball (VB), and I shot of lot of VB players in poorly lighted sport centre.

VB is in fact pretty easy to shoot, because each team is constrained in a 9m by 9m square, and each player tends to play to a dedicated spot (eg outside spiker, deep 6 defense). When I want to shoot VB, I try to sit close to the bench or close behind the net posts. (Not easy of intl matches, but pretty simple in regional matches, especially if you know the teams). A few tricks may help for VB shooting:

- Try to sit close to the side line or behind the net posts.
- Select the position that you want to shoot (1 to 6).
- Guess the typical distance of the player (typically between 3 to 12 m max.)
- Pre-focus the focus ring to that distance (assuming that you pre-calibrated the focus ring distances before).
- Adjust manually using a player shortly prior to the serve.
- Shoot MF + Hi continuous shooting.
- I found that lenses between 50 to 100 mm will give you great shots from the side bench: eg 50-70mm for a couple of players in action, 80-100mm for one player's action

The attached photographs were taken with (a) FA77mm f1.8 in AF-C and (b) VL58mm f1.4 in MF + distance pre-focus. Both photographs were taken from the sideline. (I was standing on the team bench.)

In my case, my favorite lenses for VB are my VL58mm f1.4 and CZ85mm f1.4, Both are fast primes with MF, and they combine great with my older K-7.

Hope that the comment may help.