[creampuff]

As it was daylight outdoors, I think you could have shot at ISO 400 and that would meant a much faster shutter speed instead of the 1/180 sec. If I was in your situation, I'd have used the camera's AF and used the Quick Shift to lock and fine tune focus. Much quicker than doing it completely manual.

[Marc Sabatella]

I suppose this goes without saying, but I'll say it anyhow:

If you want to get better at MF, practice it. But if you don't want to ruin otherwise great shots in the mean time, don't practice it on moose. That's what squirrels are for.

[Eaglerapids]

2) When the opportunity strikes, take a deep breath and think. Stay in the car and check the camera settings

I'm going to have to get that tattooed across my forehead or something. I've had a bunch of opportunities lately with moose but nothing this close. Every decision I did make was wrong. The only thing I checked in camera was the ISO, and I changed it from 800 down to 200. I had it at 800 from earlier in the morning with not much light and I went down to 200 to get the best quality I could, thinking there was enough light. Then, once I had her in the viewfinder, I never checked the settings again, unbelievable.

You guys have me rethinking the AF button, the thing is I prefer to manual focus 95% of the time. When I have the 300 on the 20D I'll set it up and try it. I know it'll work though because it works whenever I try. I've identified a problem with MF under these circumstances and I've been trying to work through it.... and got bit this time.

If chewing is enough to blur the shot at 1/180, this may have been my gravest mistake. It would explain a lot.
The rules change around 300mm, it seems, and I've been slow to accept them, I'm stubborn I guess, but I won't argue with them from here on out.

[Eaglerapids]

We're not even going to talk about the heron shot I blew an hour later....at 1/125 sec. Because I ignored Peter's no.2 rule.....again.
Enough of this cry baby crap, I'm going back out there!

[dadipentak]

We're not even going to talk about the heron shot I blew an hour later....at 1/125 sec. Because I ignored Peter's no.2 rule.....again.
Enough of this cry baby crap, I'm going back out there!

That's the spirit! There's plenty more moose in the sea (but a good desk is hard to find ;~) Thanks for sharing the learning experience--I'm going to print Peter's rules along with some of those fox shots he posted a while back.

[reeftool]

With all the foreground clutter, brush, branches, etc., the auto focus would have been having issues. A question, is your dioper adjusted right? It's easy to accidently move it.

[arbib]

Although I don't ever see moose in my area...the advice given for using high ISO, to achieve higher Shutter Speeds is great info..I typically start at ISO 500 when I mount my Sigma 70-300 APO and use AV at f/8 as a starting point. But a quick turn of the back E/Dial for a higher ISO if I need it. And I always take a few test images in the area I am in, so I can Adjust the EV if needed (it is typically on +.3 as a starting point).

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Last edited by arbib; 10-17-2009 at 12:27 PM.

[Ron Boggs]

Wow, that's lots of great input for you Eagle...and note it's eaglerapids, not eagleeye . Reeftool may have hit this one on the nose...your diopter needs to be dialed in for your eye. You may want to get a fresh set of eyeglasses if you are a "lens wearer." My bro in law is an optometrist (near you in Spokane) and he grinds me lenses that err to the side of helping my photo work. It's subtle, but he gets what we are trying to do.

I pretty much never use autofocus for animal work. That's mostly a personal preference. It's partly a factor of autofocus inadequacies--Pentax problems or otherwise--due to the necessity of focusing on the near side eyelashes and the lack of time to recompose...even a slew of autofocus points doesn't remedy the issue and timing problem.

To help avoid the front and back focus issues, you may want to try what I typically do--I rock the focus back and forth from front to back focus a few times so I'm more confident that I have the eyelashes each time. Yep, sometimes the animal does something cool while I'm still rocking focus back and forth and I miss it--that's the norm with animal work. You'll get maybe 10% focused correctly on moving critters, and less than that percentage where the animal places itself in a great composition for you. Why those stupid critters can't see the distracting branches and place themselves better, I don't know...point is this is a game of percentages and odds. If your style (whether auto or manual focus) returns about 10% sharp renderings, and of those only 10% are decent compositions then you can expect one shot per 100 to be up to snuff both for focus and for composition. On pure odds, you'll want to shoot lots and lots and lots of images.

On a recent elk shoot I blasted 400 and some odd images in less than 2 hours. And maybe half a dozen images are probably solid enough to submit to magazines without embarrassement. (OK, some of those shots I got 30 identical good images, but I only count that as one. Editors can't stand repetitious submissions) I'm not saying you should hold the continuous shooting shutter button down, but you should just keep shooting and shooting and shooting and shooting etc. ad infinitum.

So stop wanting each shutter press to result in something impressive. Shoot more, practice more and you'll occassionally get something great!

[dadipentak]

So stop wanting each shutter press to result in something impressive. Shoot more, practice more and you'll occasionally get something great!

Good addendum to Peter's rules (with the spelling correction of course! )

[Ron Boggs]

C's and S's are all the same right?

[dadipentak]

C's and S's are all the same right?

Cure they are!

[Eaglerapids]

Wow, that's lots of great input for you Eagle...and note it's eaglerapids, not eagleeye .

You know, sometimes a guy wishes he could change a handle he picked ten years ago, lol:-).

point is this is a game of percentages and odds. If your style (whether auto or manual focus) returns about 10% sharp renderings, and of those only 10% are decent compositions then you can expect one shot per 100 to be up to snuff both for focus and for composition. On pure odds, you'll want to shoot lots and lots and lots of images.

This makes me feel a bit better but man, missing that first pic I posted still hurts.
Thanks for all the replys guys...

Oh Reeftool, the diopter is adjusted correctly, I try to stay on top of that because it has been changed getting the camera in and out of the bag before. I just rechecked the camera, it was ok.

[Class A]

... missing that first pic I posted still hurts.

Have you tried to use Focus Magic on it?
You've got ten free evaluation runs. It can do wonders for both slight defocus and motion blur.

[Eaglerapids]

Class A, I went ahead and d/led Focus Magic. I tried both motion blur and out of focus and I liked the out of focus result better. Here's what the 100% crop looks like. Thanks for the tip.
While I was in Photoshop I did some levels, so this probably won't match the original crop exactly.



While we're at it, this is the pic from above full size.

[ramair455]

Have you intertained the idea of purchasing an after market foucs screen. I am an ole school manual focuser...and had a miserble time nailing focus in wide aperture on my fast lenses with my K20's.

If I hadnt owned Nikkor 400 2.8 (non autofocus) years ago for my F4 film camera, I would have really thought it was operater error, and didnt have proper technique. I even pulled out old negs, got the light table and loupe out and looked at those old "long lens shots" of active models in the streets. I had about 15% misfocused ratio/36 frame roll. I did some research, changed screens and started really nailing shots like i should.