[pentkon52]

I also agree its not the best action camera out there, thats why i have Nikons, but i have also seen some damn fine car and bike racing shots using istD's and K10D's with lenses like the 80-200 F2.8.

I have used mine, in a pinch, for action, and it can be done. Saying its not the best is fine, but its not the worst.

Dave

[TaoMaas]

I too agree that it is not "the ideal action camera". It may be a good action camera, but certainly not ideal. If it was the IDEAL camera it's all that you would see on the sidelines, it's not.

This is true for the types of action that have sidelines. But there's much more to "action" than just sports. How about hiking, kayaking, biking, motocross, etc...? The types of action where weather-sealing may be of more benefit that fps. Perhaps Pentax should shoot a tv commercial where a K10D user is seen shooting a motocross race alongside Nikon and Canon users. Then have an errant bike come close enough to the photographers to cause them to scramble for cover, dropping their cameras in the mud in the process. Then show the Pentax guy take his camera over to a water hose, rinse it off, and continue shooting while all the other photographers head back to the repair shop with their gear. In a round-about way, I'm agreeing with RH that Pentax chose the wrong aspect of the K10D to highlight in their ad.

[WMBP]

Furthermore, you'll notice that the only blur in the photo below comes from motion - not focus (which is on his eyes) and this was shot in AFC in continuous drive with obviously less than stellar light: ...

Terrific photo, Andrew!

Will

[redbirdpete]

It's not inept marketing, its a standard marketing tactic. Go on about your weakest point as if its a feature. And I bet the marketing guys have statistics to prove it works, too.

Regards

Pete

[Mike Cash]

On behalf of the few remaining dinosaurs who continue to shoot only in manual focus and who take greater satisfaction from having gotten the timing just right on a single shot rather than machine-gunning things, I would like to say that we're scratching our heads and wondering what the hell all the fuss over focus speed/tracking and frame rate is about.

[Old Timer 56]

Back in the dark ages I shot sports photos for my high school paper. I used a fixed lense rangefinder 35mm, and flash bulbs (remember them?). I was able to get some good action shots by prefocusing (you can't really follow focus with a rangefinder, at least I couldn't) where I could anticipate action - the batter's box, under the net, etc.

Football was difficult since the action could occur farther away than even a number 5 bulb would reach.

Also I learned to press the shutter a fraction of a second before the batter would swing, or the ball might meet the racquet.

With practice come results. Have a look at some of the great action shots before autofocus, umpteen shots per second.

Boy that takes me back. About 50 years ago I shot night football on my first newspaper job with 2 Contax IIA rangefinder cameras. One sported a 35mm lens; the other an 85mm, both Nikkor lenses. The coupling to the Contax rangefinder wasn't exact but close enough and the Nikkors were faster and sharper than the Zeiss lenses. Film advance was achieved by turning a knob. Bloody slow but it didn't really matter. I shot with the available stadium lights, not flash, but other than that my technique was the same as yours. Black & white film, of course, and push-processed by inspection in the paper's darkroom. Ah the good old days....

Later I graduated to the Nikon SP with its lever advance. Boy was that fast!

[JCSullivan]

Later I graduated to the Nikon SP with its lever advance. Boy was that fast!

I guess that includes the 620s and 120s.

[hinman]

On behalf of the few remaining dinosaurs who continue to shoot only in manual focus and who take greater satisfaction from having gotten the timing just right on a single shot rather than machine-gunning things, I would like to say that we're scratching our heads and wondering what the hell all the fuss over focus speed/tracking and frame rate is about.

I never thought I can shoot flying birds with manual focusing on a M42 lens, I was so wrong in looking down on an unused M42 lens that I had on my film camera -- Prakitcar 28-70 f/3.5-4.8 manual zoom in M42 mount. I took it out on last Sunday and the flying seagulls got me high on adrenaline and I forgot everything else but shooting with the M42 manual lens in all manual and stop-down metering with panning. All shots are hand-held and I am so glad that don't have a minute to change lens or doing anything logical in using something like AF.C on a K lens

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And I am very sure K10D would do a better job on this. The Auto Focus on my K100D is not something that I am proud of though it gets the job done well. I hope the next round of Pentax bodies improve on the AF speed while maintain its edge and reasonable quality on focusing accuracy.

Thanks,
Hin

[Old Timer 56]

I guess that includes the 620s and 120s.

Well, I did use a Rolleiflex years ago and that took 120 film. The crank was pretty quick. Not sure about 620 but I had lots of box cameras as a child and some of them may have taken 620. Here's a picture of me with my FIRST camera, Christmas 1940. I only vaguely remember it but even back then I had good technique. Note how straight I'm holding it.

What does this have to do with Pentax? Nothing. Just a little trip down memory lane. As for the K10D, the only action I shoot now is of my very active granddaughter. But only in single frame mode. I still prefer to pick my shots.

[Tom Lusk]

You say-

"On behalf of the few remaining dinosaurs who continue to shoot only in manual focus and who take greater satisfaction from having gotten the timing just right on a single shot rather than machine-gunning things, I would like to say that we're scratching our heads and wondering what the hell all the fuss over focus speed/tracking and frame rate is about."

Mike, I've looked at your site and the high quality of your photos is obvious. I've always enjoyed your photo postings.

However, your subjects generally tend to be those which do not require fast focus speed and tracking. Portraits, architecture, and landscape photographers have the luxury of being able to frame a subject, often at their leisure, before making the shot.

Try that when you have a deer running flat out in thick brush or a duck coming by you unexpectedly at 50 mph. If you don't have fast auto focus capabilities and high FPS, your hours of waiting in a cold blind or tromping through a marsh can all be for nothing.

So, while these features may seem of no importance to you, they are vital for some shooters, and just plain handy for others.

[vinzer]

May I elaborate that the main point of my opening post is to point out an example how poor (or even stupid) Pentax's marketing really are, as usual over time.

In fact, good marketing is the essence of a successful product (which might not be truly superior, but cannot be very bad, of course).

Good marketing means smart, but not necessarily spent a lot of money to do it. But if a company has already limited budget, like Pentax, inferior marketing is just wasting their valuable money further.

For marketing, what they need to do is to "touch" the hearts of the potential buyers and to aim at the *right* persons. More importantly, the marketing guys should first know what their products are for what people, before they finally created an Ad. As such, the (successful) marketing guys should always know also quite well about their products.

I found that Canon's marketing is usually very smart. Take an example of the TV Ad for the 400D I saw in which a girl carries around a 400D to travel, it emphasizes more for the scenes for the tours, the feel of travelling, more than the camera itself and that the Ads shows that it's small and lightweight and they need not to mention in any verbal words for "it is an ideal travel camera" and "it is an ideal camera for ladies" or etc.

Similarly, for the 40D Ad, the man holding a 40D riding a land rover to shoot a running tiger and shoot the tiger like with a machine gun. Again, there is no need to use lengthy description words. The movie says it all already.

On the other hand, Sony's Ads usually show that the users who use their products are of unique taste and of a superior living styles, which are usually very effective.

In contrast, the Nikon's D40 and D40X TV Ad I have seen is very worse. It contains all along boring and lengthy verbal descriptions of the specs of the D40 and D40X and narrate(?!) the advantages of the cameras one by one, first by a man and then by a lady. Such an Ad is also useless IMHO. Unless the watcher has already known about the specs and features, no one is actually interested or be able to remember all these technical things within that tens of seconds.

I used to study in the U decades ago for marketing subjects as selective ones for interest and I can observe and do know the differences between such good or bad Ads.

For this case of the Pentax UK's "ideal action DSLR" Ad, I would say it is just a joke. It is very likely that the Pentax guy who made the Ad actually knows nothing about the K10D (of course not about the pros and cons of it) nor he knows well about what the competitors offer!

We may have tussled in some other threads before, but you're right about Pentax not playing to the strengths of the K10D. And good points about the other ads as well. It might not have been such a gross mistake to market the K10D as an action camera some years back, but in this day and age, compared to how the competition fares in continuous AF and tracking, I'd say Pentax is lagging in this aspect. The K20D might fix this, but that's a moot point since the ad plugs the K10D.

Mike, I'm always one to admire your work, but an ideal action DSLR at this point in time should not have to have a user learn to manually focus lenses. Proper MF technique can and will compensate for a not-so-ideal AF for action shots, but the reality is, we live in an age of automation and to say a DSLR is ideal for action shots is to say that not only does the camera do 3 FPS or more, but also it focuses fast and accurately, and should at least equal or surpass the competition, since the marketing buzzword being "ideal".

There are other better qualities one can extol in the K10D. Like, say, outstanding image quality (which would probably appeal more to a greater photography-loving audience).

[Arpe]

This is true for the types of action that have sidelines. But there's much more to "action" than just sports. How about hiking, kayaking, biking, motocross, etc...?

But the "ideal" action camera would be able to do them all with ease!

The types of action where weather-sealing may be of more benefit that fps. Perhaps Pentax should shoot a tv commercial where a K10D user is seen shooting a motocross race alongside Nikon and Canon users. Then have an errant bike come close enough to the photographers to cause them to scramble for cover, dropping their cameras in the mud in the process. Then show the Pentax guy take his camera over to a water hose, rinse it off, and continue shooting while all the other photographers head back to the repair shop with their gear.

That's an excellent idea. There is an ad on tele for an (I think ) Oly compact that has a dog with the camera in its mouth. The owner makes him drop it, then he hoses it off then drops it into a bucket of water! We get the point of that very easily!

[raz-0]

I try to avoid ricehigh threads, but can't help lurking sometimes.

Just want to say to hinman that I really like the first two shots of the seagulls. Nice job.

[LaRee]

Well, I did use a Rolleiflex years ago and that took 120 film. The crank was pretty quick. Not sure about 620 but I had lots of box cameras as a child and some of them may have taken 620. Here's a picture of me with my FIRST camera, Christmas 1940. I only vaguely remember it but even back then I had good technique. Note how straight I'm holding it.

What does this have to do with Pentax? Nothing. Just a little trip down memory lane. As for the K10D, the only action I shoot now is of my very active granddaughter. But only in single frame mode. I still prefer to pick my shots.

Well I enjoyed the trip down that lane. Cute photo. You did have good technique.

[Andrew Faires]

Andrew! Great dog shot.

Terrific photo, Andrew!

Will

Thanks mysterick & Will.