[ajtour]

I often read on this forum (and others) that Pentax simply isn't good enough for sports shooting. A frequently used reason is that the FPS burst rate isn't up to par with Canon & Nikon.

But . . .

I shoot sports fairly often and never use burst mode. Ever. It's simply not practical. With my K20D, the files are so big that shooting in burst mode would blow away my memory card and then take ages to download to my laptop, sort through, edit, and post to my online storage area.

Anticipating the athlete's movement usually works just fine for me. I'm not exactly on payroll with SI, and if I were I might have a different opinion. However for the advanced amateur / semi-pro, aren't results like this good enough?


Gael Monfils - Roland Garros - 2009
K20D, Tamron 70-300mm, 240mm, 1/750 at f/6.7, ISO 800


Marat Safin - Roland Garros - 2009
K20D, Tamron 70-300mm, 90mm, 1/3000 at f/5.6, ISO 800

Most often, I find my limiting factor is the lens. If I could afford better glass, I'd get it, but I'm 100% satisfied with the performance of the K20D for sports.

---

Last edited by ajtour; 05-30-2009 at 02:04 PM.

[reeftool]

A couple of nice captures there. I shoot sports also as I have a daughter who is a pro freeskier and another who rows crew in college. I use burst mode at times and also try to anticipate movement. In a halfpipe competition I follow the skier and and fire off a burst and do the same with slopestyle, once they hit the jump and get air I use the burst mode. You do end up with a lot of shots doing that. I had over 600 from the Mt. Snow Open last March. Almost all of them were keepers as far as being in focus and exposure. Crew racing isn't as fast paced but focusing is difficult as the boats are over 50ft. long so depth of field is an issue if you are shooting from behind and want all the rowers faces in focus. Shooting straight across a close race I want to focus on my daughters boat, not the boat next to them or 3 lanes over and AF can do that if you're not careful.

I find my K10D works quite well for both. I would like a sharper telephoto than the Sigma 70-300 I am using but I am getting decent results. The faster FPS of the K7 should shut up the critics but probably won't. My shots from Mt. Snow were published by Newschoolers so they liked them also and I am still getting requests from the different competitors for pictures.

[Canada_Rockies]

I'm with ajtour on this. Know your sport, Know the lag time of your camera's shutter in your bones, and shoot to get the killer shot. That's what I was taught, that's what I do.

[code4code5]

Just to be sure, are you referring to Burst Mode (20 fps jpg) on the K20D, or high speed continous shooting mode (3.5 fps)?

[danielchtong]

I shoot sports fairly often and never use burst mode. Ever. It's simply not practical. With my K20D, the files are so big that shooting in burst mode would blow away my memory card and then take ages to download to my laptop, sort through, edit, and post to my online storage area.

I think using faster memory card and shooting in jpg helps

Anticipating the athlete's movement usually works just fine for me. I'm not exactly on payroll with SI, and if I were I might have a different opinion. However for the advanced amateur / semi-pro, aren't results like this good enough?


Gael Monfils - Roland Garros - 2009
K20D, Tamron 70-300mm, 240mm, 1/750 at f/6.7, ISO 800

With these two nice images, it is agreed that for this occasion it is good enough.
But tennis is a lot easier than other multiplayer spots like hockey, soccer, basket ball...The worst one are birds in flight. All these scenario involves distracting background ensuring the camera not locking on focus. In a blank tennis court background , your camera is not confused at all. Also tennis players movement is not that difficult to predict.

Good show for a consumer zoom


Daniel

[pentkon52]

I shoot equine sports, with a D2H or D1H, and rarely if ever use a burst mode. I know other equine photography companies that i compete with tell their shooters to shoot in burst, but unless you have the timing right at the first frame, all the others will not give you the jump shot you want.
I know my sport and wait for the perfect moment. It rarely fails me.

However i do find it handy in reining, for the slide stop. I tried to eye the perfect shot(the front legs have to be just so for a sale)but was always late, so i would just set the camera to 3fps and fire. Then i'd just delete, in camera the ones that are no good, while the next entrant is coming into the ring.

I think 3-4 FPS is plenty.

Dave

[ChrisJ]

Anticipating the moment I find is usually best, keeping focus with 'machine gun' type shots can be a problem particularly as most sports shots use a telephoto (with the accomanying small depth of field).

Rother_valley_0229 on Flickr - Photo Sharing!

This was one of those cable water ski events so the position of the skier didn't alter much between circuits. So I could set up a shot which was repeated, keep both eyes open and when the skier (in this case) enters your spot hit the shutter. Preset the focus and turn auto focus off and turn off 'AF by Press Halfway' in the menu, trust your setup, preset the aperture to get the DOF you want (taking into account the light level to give a fast enough shutter speed) and shot after shot is as you want. This technique also works well with showjumping events as exactly where the subject will be is predefined.

I realise that this technique can't be used on most sprots photography, but when it can you'll get a 50% success rate, there will always be shots where their eyes are closed, framing not quite right etc..

Chris

---

Last edited by ChrisJ; 05-31-2009 at 06:52 AM.

[Erasmo]

But CaNikon just have better autofocus. How much i love Pentax, if i made my money with sports photography i would buy a CaNikon.

[bimjo]

I guess all those great sports shots taken before autofocus and burst modes were just flukes, huh?

[ChrisJ]

I really miss DOF scales on lenses, long before auto focus prefocusing was the method most of us used, instant auto focus, you can't get quicker than that.

Chris

[danielchtong]

I think 3-4 FPS is plenty.

Dave

I want to agree with you. But for Pentax (and any brand), that is the theoretical max frame rate. It only happens when you shoot all manual or (fixed subject with zero change in lighting if you shoot in auto and AF).

I can achieve the full 3fps for my bif shots if I shoot all manual focus and exposure.

Try to think about the speedometer of a Corolla showing max speed of 150 MPH. That never applies in real life situation

Even for the best of Canon/Nikon, the so-called 5-10fps could mean 0 fps in low light and fast moving subject in background full of distraction. And we hear from time to time the same thing in their forum.


Daniel

[ajtour]

Try to think about the speedometer of a Corolla showing max speed of 150 MPH. That never applies in real life situation

That's a great analogy!

Looking back, I suppose burst mode could have allowed me to get the shot of Monfils without the racquet in his face. That fraction might have allowed the racket to be just higher or just lower so that we could see his eyes.

I'm heading to The Memorial Tournament on Wednesday (when cameras are permitted) and will test out burst mode. Of course, since shooting during a player's swing is so taboo, I don't know that burst will really yield anything special in that scenario. Waterskiing or the NBA? Got a point, there .

Maybe we can summarize it by saying this: burst mode in itself will not make you a great sports shooter. Knowing your subject, knowing the sport itself, knowing your camera, knowing the light . . . and then adding burst mode as a finishing touch . . . might make you great.

I guess all those great sports shots taken before autofocus and burst modes were just flukes, huh?

Yes, like this?



P.S. Does anyone know the photographer's name for this shot? I'd like to credit it properly but can't find it by Googling.

[sluggo913]

Using burst mode should only be done when capturing an important sequence not for normal sport shooting. We as photographers need to know the shots we are looking for before hand and be ready to capture them when the time comes, heck even my oldest daughter (12) took a few shots at an AHL hockey game didn't like what she had and did finally nail one of the captian of the team because she knew what she was trying to get. This was done with a K10 and a Tamron 70-200 f2.8 I was impressed. Yes the top two brands may have faster autofocus but as has been talked about here on the fourm before the accuracy of the focus is sometimes questionable, I have personally talked to a Nik*n shooter and he hated the autofocus on both his rigs.

[Rener]

out of the thousands of machine gun shots submitted for Sports Illustrated, the photo editors only choose about a dozen for that particular edition. Most of the "pros" are using Canikon gears but as one member of the editors said, "garbage in, garbage out".

cheers,

Rene

[johnmflores]

Several years ago a friend and I went to Central Park to watch runners in the New York City Marathon. I bought my recently purchased Nikon D70; he had some $200 point and shoot with terrible shutter lag.

Sometime later, we compared photos. Mine were awful, with runners either completely on the ground or landing inelegantly on their front foot. His, on the other hand, were fantastic, with runners mid-stride or in mid-air, with a great sense of forward motion and grace. What did he have that I didn't? Four years of art school with a major in photography, and a sense of timing that I did not (and still do not) have.

For him, a 5 FPS camera would be akin to giving a concert violinist a Stradivarius - it would elevate his already-good skills to an even higher level. For me, a 5FPS camera would be akin to giving a target shooter a shotgun - it wouldn't make me better, just increase my chances of lucking into a good shot.

BTW, the Safin shot is very nice. The Monfils shot, while interesting, is just a fraction of a second off.