[Blue]

Go out and practice shooting birds or something else that's fast moving, see how you end up. I've photographed swallows with the M 200mm f/4 before with a little bit of success. A bit of practice and I can quite happily shoot motorcyclists with it now, and other moving things with a fair chunk of keepers. It's VERY difficult though. You need to learn how to move your focus with your subject. If you can shoot at smaller apertures, do it. A noisy ISO 6400 shot in focus will look better than an clean ISO 400 shot that's OOF.

On that note, using a shorter focal length and cropping down can help you deal with DoF problems too, so using the 105mm might be a better idea. What sort of size do you need out of these shots?

And don't be too fussy about perfect focus. If it looks good enough at reasonable sizes, it's fine.

If all else fails get a huge memory card and adopt the spray and pray technique.

Good luck!

Action sports and birds are two different ball games and a 100 and 200mm lens regardless of vintage and manual vs. af can be a short coming anyway. That said, one of my favorite sports lenses is a manual focus Tamron SP 180/2.5 ad2. Granted it isn't a Tak. I would have no issue using any 105mm tak from the Preset up to the SMC 105 even though. The early Taks have a different optical formula but are unique themselves. The spray and pray technique is used by many with digital and af.

Edit: Here are a few from the Tammy and K200d during a DII NCAA night game.

Shotgun snap out of the spread






P.A.T. attempt



Receiver looking at the sideline for audible . . .

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Last edited by Blue; 08-24-2012 at 06:51 AM.

[Mareket]

Action sports and birds are two different ball games

I know... I was trying to be helpful, but thankfully people with more handy advice have stepped in Learnt a bit myself too.

[slip]

Although this is not an extreme sport, it is possible to stop action without autofocus. pre focus, or anticipate what spot the action will take place, then just fire away. you will get a lot of bad ones until you get used to it.
BTW this is with an old Pentax M 135 3.5 lens



equipment is only are good as the practice you get with it


randy

[voyager13]

equipment is only are good as the practice you get with it

Absolutely.

I have the 135/3.5 M as well and that's one sharp piece of glass.
Thanks Blue and Slip for the lovely photo/s, and to the rest as well for their most helpful comments.

[Canada_Rockies]

Absolutely.

I have the 135/3.5 M as well and that's one sharp piece of glass.
Thanks Blue and Slip for the lovely photo/s, and to the rest as well for their most helpful comments.

I've had broadsheet front page full length shots of soccer and track & field using an AP and preset 135/3.5. The expected hit rate was 2/36, one roll per half. You only need one good shot of a sport with the puck/ball/bird/whatever in the picture to be good enough. With the 55-300 DA-L I'm getting a better hit rate with MF than with AF. The lens is just too slow. Practice certainly helps.

Catch-in-focus (formerly snap-in-focus) with any MF lens is a really good technique. Focus where the subject will be the size you need, and bingo, in focus shot.