[MarkJerling]

In my experience (admittedly amateurish and not up to the caliber of bloggers and internet reviewers) properly setting the camera and employing the simple technique of moving the camera to keep the subject covered by the AF area completely contradicts this urban myth.

I agree with you. My experience also.

[MarkJerling]

Lets face it Pentax has all ways been behind with Nikon / Canon / Minolta ( Sony) with AF ever since it came out with the SFX (SF1) & every model after it .
Like I always said IF I didnt have any camera gear & was to do it all again I wouldnt buy Pentax .
To be honest I would either go Nikon or Canon especially with the better choice of lens / flashs etc in my neck of the woods

I used to own an SFX (SF-1) and still own an SFXn (SF-1n) Both had pretty good AF for the technology of the day. In fact there was no argument, at the time, that Pentax was ahead of the competition in this regard.

[MarkJerling]

This kind of strawman argument false conclusion / Confirmation Bias- really bothers me.

Well said.

[MarkJerling]

Oh look, another Pentax AF thread ...

......Not that Pentax AF is perfect. Their technology certainly needs to keep evolving, and it would be nice indeed if Ricoh could more aggressively apply their corporate resources to make Pentax AF work a lot better.

Yup! And predictably, this one is following the pattern of every other one.

[jonlg]

I'm curious as to the reasons you've changed your point of view from February. What has changed?

"One thing that may reassure you is that the Pentax autofocus system that frequently comes in for criticism is actually superb (indeed world class) in low light. On Saturday I shot a series of promo images for a singer and unfortunately she was running late and had to change for the shoot on location so we were shooting later than planned - much later!! As a result we arrived as the sun was getting very low in the horizon and I was really really worried that the shoot was in jeopardy. We shot 209 images from very late afternoon through sunset and into complete blackness. As the sun went down and into the night we resorted to using a lantern with a tea light to light her face. After the sun went down we shot for quite a while in complete blackness using a wireless strobe and softbox. It was so dark I couldn't see her facial expressions and could barely tell where her eyeball was to lock focus. I was getting seriously worried that I would accidentally leave gear at the location because it was in the middle of the countryside with no nearby street-lighting and it was cloudy so no moon either. The last 30-40 shots were taken in conditions of total black night. The K1 missed focus on 1 out of 209 shots and that might well have been my error in not focussing on the eyeball, but the tip of the nose. I have to say I was utterly astonished. I have never shot anybody in such conditions and I never expected the camera to be able to focus on her at all and yet it was painting her with its green LED autofocus assist light and locking on - truly extraordinary. It was so bloody dark I was resorting to the K1 LED body illumination in order to be able to even see the buttons on the back of the camera!!"

Read more at: Move from Canon to K-1? - Page 3 - PentaxForums.com

Mark,

Just to clarify that the low light autofocus performance is astonishing and indeed for studio or location portraiture I find the K1 (and the K3) amazing - and impeccably accurate, they hardly ever miss whereas my K5 was quite poor. My question however relates more to tracking motion. I am by no means an expert at sports and wildlife photography but I have experienced variability with the K3 - some poor tracking at daughter's school sportsday on K1, some iffy tracking of birds in flight on K3, some excellent tracking of a running dog coming straight at the camera on the K3. I did try to change the settings for focus hold, focus priority and 9 point focus so I'm not a complete numpty either.

I think the point I am trying to make is that from watching the video it looks like the D500 can pretty much track a bird in flight over the whole frame even if you are something of a numpty, whereas Pentax currently do not offer any cameras that can do that.

I have no intention of leaving Pentax, I love what they do and am too committed to the lenses and ergonomics anyway to change brand for something that is only a side interest of mine. The root of my question is that it seems to me that Pentax have demonstrated they have immense technical and engineering capability. They have mnanaged to deliver a truly innovative full frame DSLR with all sorts of innovations - astro tracking, illumination, the rear articulating screen, pixel shift, the swinging mirror box for compactness - it's a technical tour de force not to mention getting amazing quality out of the sensor. With all this technical capability then I can't understand why they seem to struggle so much with motion tracking, predictive autofocus and autofocus in video when surely it's probably a case of headhunting a couple of Nikon or Canon engineers and writing the software accordingly.

Why would a multi billion dollar company allow its products to be weaker than the competition in one particular area for decades??? I say this as a fan of the brand by the way.

Jonlg

[ogl]

The problem of master is bad slaves

[ogl]

Amen. This is so very true!

Pure nonsense.

[GodsPetMonkey]

Performance there can depend on your AF settings. If you shoot with centre-point AF, for example, you can't rely on the other surrounding AF points to assist you with depth information needed for predictive tracking. Similarly, if your metering has been set to spot with a K-3, you can't rely on the 86k RGB metering sensor to feed colour movement information as an input into your AF tracking algorithm either. Same problems are evident in Nikon '3D tracking' or Canon's 'AI Servo AF'. Predictive motion tracking is hard, and relies on multiple camera inputs to help make it work.

This is something I recently discovered for myself. Like MrFox I had always gone with centerpoint AF, even for AF-C - my thinking being that I don't trust the auto-af-point select to know what I want, and I can paint my target with the centerpoint just fine thank you. This worked, but it took a lot of effort, and patience - hardly a pleasurable experience, and resulted in too many duds for every keeper. I just put that down to the usual Pentax AF isn't as good thing.

Out with my K-1 at a kids soccer event, I started the same, but it was way too hard trying to keep up with over-energised kids running about, so I decided to give multi point a go, deciding the let the computer make up for my lethargy. And to my surprise it was darn good. Ok, no one should throw their 1DX away quite yet, but my success rate jumped. I think the K-1s nifty LCD viewfinder helped, and it had the center point activated before I started the AF (which I have on shutter half-press for action) - so I painted my chosen target with with the center point, and away it went. It stayed on target unless it moved outside of the AF point coverage or something completely blocked it. And to my surprise it was nailing focus at about 80% of shots - a massive improvement over before.

Now light was really good, and I did play with settings to improve performance (changed it to focus priority always and upped the focus hold priority), so apart from dealing with small kids I had good conditions for it.

Thinking I never got performance like that out of my K-3II I took it out along the next day to see if I could recreate my success, and with basically the same settings off it went - just as good as the K-1 (the increased frame rate helping as I could fire off in quick succession). Ok, neither are considered dedicated sports cameras, but for the occaisional action outing they will certainly make a good go of it.

Now I really wish they explained this in the manual. My lesson here was sometimes you should just trust the camera and the magic software within, it is probably more capable than we give credit for, especially if you are the sort who thinks they are much better off in control. I'm not going to be shooting in green mode any time soon, but I am willing to accept there are times I need to move away from spot focus.

[FantasticMrFox]

That's a pretty specific use case with pretty specific and limiting settings to cite as proof of a general Pentax AF

It's a pretty narrow scenario that I have chosen because it makes it easier for the camera by eliminating many other factors - if I choose broader settings, like 9-point or even 27-point AF.C, it does even worse.

K-3 is December, 2013 technology.

The K3 II does not have palpably better AF than the K3, by all accounts. And it is Pentax' current APS-C flagship.

Performance there can depend on your AF settings. If you shoot with centre-point AF, for example, you can't rely on the other surrounding AF points to assist you with depth information needed for predictive tracking. Similarly, if your metering has been set to spot with a K-3, you can't rely on the 86k RGB metering sensor to feed colour movement information as an input into your AF tracking algorithm either.

That is all relevant to a subject moving around in the frame (x- and y-axis), it does not help with movement towards or away from the viewer (z-axis). And I never spot meter when tracking.

[monochrome]

Not even when the Beatles were owners


Steve

Youtu.be

Youtu.be

[normhead]

You have to wonder what is it with Pentax not explaining the software. A couple of youtube videos or whatever and everyone is in business. Better still, label the sports setting "sports" etc. Old guys like me learn slow and have bad memories, we need a little assistance here. MY way of dealing with this things has been to program them into the user modes. SO, at least I don't have to figure it out everytime. I just look for BiF or whatever in in the U1-5 spots on the dial. But Tracking, and Sports could certainly be settings on the dial. with 3 user modes left for me to set up.

As for when were Pentax's ever hip, those of us who were around when the Spotmatic came out with through the lens metering remember. Try 1967. A mere 50 years ago.

IN those days, Ryerson Politech went exclusively Pentax for their SLRs the way schools use Canon now. If you wanted to sign out the schools lenses, you had to be using Pentax. That was all they supported. I remember one of my buddies with his completely uncool Canon SLR with this funny little light meter attached to the top that was coupled to the shutter speed dial, claiming it was just as good as Pentax, even though it looked totally geeky.

[Kunzite]

The K3 II does not have palpably better AF than the K3, by all accounts.

That doesn't make the K-3 any newer.

[normhead]

We are all expecting an much improved AF in the next APS-c flagship. A new algorithm is basically being field tested right now in the KP, same as the K-30 was the forerunner for the K-3. Pentax has been very consistent in how they do these things. We are right now in the incremental increase, released in a maid range model the precedes the much larger improvement that will come with the flagship.

It's the end of the cycle for the K-3, and the natives are getting impatient, all quite predictable. People whining about the 2 year old system when the precursor to the new one is already in the stores. A lot of wasted gab if you ask me.

Folks the K-3 is not the latest incarnation of Pentax AF, the KP is. Talking about the K-3 is discussing historical facts. Move up to the present.

[BigMackCam]

If you shoot with centre-point AF, for example, you can't rely on the other surrounding AF points to assist you with depth information needed for predictive tracking.

This is a really important point. I'd bet a lot of people who are unhappy with Pentax AF.C are using centre-point AF. I made that very mistake for some considerable time, largely because I typically use centre-point in AF.S mode, and I simply assumed it would be fine for AF.C too. Whilst it can work in some situations, multiple focus points provide much better AF tracking. Once I discovered that, I was much happier

[monochrome]

You have to wonder what is it with Pentax not explaining the software. A couple of youtube videos or whatever and everyone is in business. Better still, label the sports setting "sports" etc. Old guys like me learn slow and have bad memories, we need a little assistance here. MY way of dealing with this things has been to program them into the user modes. SO, at least I don't have to figure it out everytime. I just look for BiF or whatever in in the U1-5 spots on the dial. But Tracking, and Sports could certainly be settings on the dial. with 3 user modes left for me to set up.

As for when were Pentax's ever hip, those of us who were around when the Spotmatic came out with through the lens metering remember. Try 1967. A mere 50 years ago.

IN those days, Ryerson Politech went exclusively Pentax for their SLRs the way schools use Canon now. If you wanted to sign out the schools lenses, you had to be using Pentax. That was all they supported. I remember one of my buddies with his completely uncool Canon SLR with this funny little light meter attached to the top that was coupled to the shutter speed dial, claiming it was just as good as Pentax, even though it looked totally geeky.

That explains a lot. I was ten years old when the early Spotmatic was released in 1965. Though production continued until 1973 (when I graduated), by the time I was checking them out of the Newspaper locker with one or two Super Takumars the hip kids taking Photography at my school had Canon F1's or Nikon F2's around their necks. Their own Canons and Nikon's, not borrowed from their fathers. A school-engraved Pentax was really square.

I'll concede the point though. Pentax was hip in 1967.