[biz-engineer]

Normhead said that he wants to see something that you can't do with a Pentax camera.

Hey, for those king fishers... the primary condition to get the kind fisher is to be very patient and have a lot of time to see him, the secondary condition is to be able to get him visible in the viewfinder with a long lens... at the speed he is flying. To do this you need to be at the right location, you need to have a lot of time (no to be a full time worker leaving home before sunrise and coming back after sunrise). That's a lot of conditions to be aligned to benefit from a D5.

I am glad I did not spend into a D5, because anyway, I already don't have enough time to fully exploit my Pentax gear.

I mean, people have to stop thinking that the dozen of pro wildlife photog around Romania are making up the market for the D5.
The truth is, often those guys are more or less part time national park rangers who know the place and get sponsored by the brands to use the expensive cameras.
How many people have a D5 ? The last time I was shooting birds, among 30 people, I had the best camera gear of all, everyone else was shooting with a phone or compact camera.
It's like taking a Ferrari and saying "look at the Ferrari, your Peugeot RCZ is crap in comparison".

[monochrome]

Somehow i think this is like arguing about whether Cadillac makes a good, fast road sedan compared to Mercedes. CTS-V vs. AMG. Nurburgring trials by professional drivers with race set-up says Caddy is a great road car if the right driver has it on a good day.

Yeah, maybe, but few people with that kind of money want a Caddy; no one believes the facts right before their eyes; and who drives that fast anyway?

You guys can flog the metaphor. Nothing is a Tesla Model S and nothing is a D500.

[EDIT:] biz-engineer in before me

[Dan Rentea]

Hey, for those king fishers... the primary condition to get the kind fisher is to be very patient and have a lot of time to see him, the secondary condition is to be able to get him visible in the viewfinder with a long lens... at the speed he is flying. To do this you need to be at the right location, you need to have a lot of time (no to be a full time worker leaving home before sunrise and coming back after sunrise). That's a lot of conditions to be aligned to benefit from a D5.

I am glad I did not spend into a D5, because anyway, I already don't have enough time to fully exploit my Pentax gear.

I mean, people have to stop thinking that the dozen of pro wildlife photog around Romania are making up the market for the D5.
The truth is, often those guys are more or less part time national park rangers who know the place and get sponsored by the brands to use the expensive cameras.
How many people have a D5 ? The last time I was shooting birds, among 30 people, I had the best camera gear of all, everyone else was shooting with a phone or compact camera.
It's like taking a Ferrari and saying "look at the Ferrari, your Peugeot RCZ is crap in comparison".

Well, we speak about af-c for you and me or we speak about af-c for pro action photographers? I'm going to photograph the kingsfisher in the next months and I'm pretty sure that I'm going to have good images with this bird even if I'm going with a K5. But this was not my point when I responded to Normhead with his funny comments about the great wildlife K3 camera among 1Dx and other top action cameras. �� Because wildlife photographers who wants to print large have with them a D810 or a 5DSR for shooting birds sitting on branches. But when they want action, D810 and 5DsR are going to their backpacks and 1Dx, D5, D500, 7D Mark II comes to play.

This combo (an action camera and a high resolution camera) I saw at a lot of PRO shooters. See bellow portraits of kingfisher taken with 5Ds and action images with the same birds, but taken with a different beast.

http://www.oliverwrightphotography.com/blog/view/kingfisher-fun1

[monochrome]

@Dan Rentea <snip> 'an action camera and a high resolution camera' <snip> combo . . .

I like it!

[danielchtong]

I'm going to photograph the kingsfisher in the next months and I'm pretty sure that I'm going to have good images with this bird even if I'm going with a K5. But this was not my point when I responed to Normhead with his funny comments about the great wildlife K3 camera among 1Dx and other top action cameras.

Kingfisher is a lot smaller than seagulls or GBH (my BIF subjects). That would have been ultimate fast action images indeed. Awesome

[normhead]

Normhead said that he wants to see something that you can't do with a Pentax camera. I just showed a burst of 7 consecutive images with a Kingsfisher in flight that can't be done with any Pentax camera, that's all.

YOu're fooling yourself here Dan. I can lock focus and shoot an 8 fps and produce very similar images. Certainly with the IQ displayed which suggest either missed focus or heavy cropping. I have many times come up with similar images, but have tossed the sequences because those aren't images I would keep. If I can't sell it, I probably won't keep it, and I couldn't sell those. As I said, the bird is moving nearly parallel to the focusl plane and well within the parameters of a single focus and burst sequence. I'm not convinced you even need any AF for that. My A-400 would do the job. It's too funny. Whenever I post a series of images showing off Pentax tracking everyone says "well the subject wasn't coming straight at the camera." What a joke it is to have you post a sequence that's the same. But that's the nature of these two faced types of arguments. When posted with reference to Pentax AF they have to be straight at the camera. But when you post your images any angle will do.

If you don't agree with my assessment, notice that in the series you posted, there is no wing flap, and no banking. The bird is pretty much gliding in a straight line. It's an image that's a piece of cake for MF forget about needing fast AF for it. I'm not interested in images that could have been taken with a K-3. I'm interested in seeing images of objects moving erratically forward and backward through the focal plane where the camera actually has to track the subject.

My K-3 has no issue taking a gliding bird moving across my frame.

[mee]

YOu're fooling yourself here Dan. I can lock focus and shoot an 8 fps and produce very similar images.

Burden of proof is on you. Let's see that burst sequence... that will go ways to confirm what you already decided before you made this thread to show what you wanted it to prove.

[Dan Rentea]

Burden of proof is on you. Let's see that burst sequence... that will go ways to confirm what you already decided before you made this thread to show what you wanted it to prove.

I don't think Normhead photographed a kingsfisher in flight. It's twice as fast than the European Bee-eater and half the size or even smaller. I would love to see from him even a burst of 5 unfocused images with a kingsfisher in flight.

As for shooting 3-5 consecutive images with a kingsfisher in flight using manual focus...good luck with that, Normhead.

[clackers]

I don't think there's a point fetishizing the expensive D5's system ... take away the hype, and DPR found 3D tracking is something uncritical and unskeptical readers might get excited reading about, but it has real problems when shooting, and you need to use a conventional mode instead.

The DPR writer talks up the feature, but in the link below look for yourself at the failure of the Nikon system to track the player's elbow in the shots - click on the buttons labelled 1,2,3 and so on under each picture.

The focus point aggressively shifts to other body parts in the player, another player, and even the uniformly dark background. It's baffling when AFAIK there's a second CPU the owner has paid for on the D5 motherboard that's in charge of this algorithm. What is its excuse for failing to keep up, and why does it choose something that looks nothing like the subject as its target?

As a gloomy Pentaxian, I expected better AF from the Canon 5D Mk III and Nikon D810 on the days I used them ... but I thought, 'Meh'. What was I supposed to be impressed by?

The D5 (it and the D500 have much the same AF system) are enormously priced specialist cameras but you can see from the sequences they just can't replace a skilled photographer.

Setting new standards: Nikon D5 Review: Digital Photography Review

[mee]

I don't think there's a point fetishizing the expensive D5's system ... take away the hype, and DPR found 3D tracking is something uncritical and unskeptical readers might get excited reading about, but it has real problems when shooting, and you need to use a conventional mode instead.

The DPR writer talks up the feature, but look for yourself at the failure of the Nikon system to track the player's elbow in the shots.

The focus point aggressively shifts to other body parts in the player, another player, and even the uniformly dark background. It's baffling when AFAIK there's a second CPU the owner has paid for on the D5 motherboard that's in charge of this algorithm.

As a gloomy Pentaxian, I expected better AF from the Canon 5D Mk III and Nikon D810 on the days I used them ... but I thought, 'Meh'. What was I supposed to be impressed by?

The D5 (it and the D500 have much the same AF system) are enormously priced specialist cameras but you can see from the sequences they just can't replace a skilled photographer.

Setting new standards: Nikon D5 Review: Digital Photography Review

But those failures are at the extremes.. (dark subject, dark background, bright secondary subject completely blocking out/in front of the dark subject, then locking on the bright subject incorrectly)

It would be interesting to see someone take a K-3 or K-1 to an association football match and try the same thing in the same scenario. Maybe it works great, maybe it falls flat on its face. I suspect something in the middle with that too.. but not quite on D500/D5 levels.

I don't think anyone is saying Nikon's system is the end all be all... just that it appears to be superior to what Pentax offers currently. And some pine to have a competitively similar AF system in K mount. (but that is another story entirely... psst.. because I suspect it isn't happening, sadly)

[clackers]

.

I don't think anyone is saying Nikon's system is the end all be all...

I would hope Ian Stuart Forsyth and Dan don't think that.

But more importantly, you can be called a typically gloomy Pentax shooter, Mee ... :P ... did *you* know how flawed the Nikon system is?

Nikon do not recommend you use it for sports, according to the article!

[mee]

But more importantly, you can be called a typically gloomy Pentax shooter, Mee ... :P ... did *you* know how flawed the Nikon system is?

Nikon do not recommend you use it for sports, according to the article!

Perhaps so! But do you really think we should get into name calling on this otherwise friendly forum? I don't think so..

Of course I know the Nikon AF system isn't perfect. I think we disagree on the 'how flawed' portion of your statement though.

There are a lot of systems (not just cameras) where the manufacturer conservatively rates and recommends use when, in reality, the system is capable of exceeding those values. They simply don't want complaints (and more importantly, lawsuits). As the article you posted shows, the tracking system in the D5 is quite capable of performing very well under 'normal' conditions, and admirably under duress... even though there are obvious bounds to accuracy.

Canon owners complain about their system, not knowing what they have. Nikon owners complain about their system, not knowing what they have. If they had the Pentax system, they'd complain too. There's complaints all around for each system, because (in reality) none of them are infallible. As I said before, one must look at each system as they are for what they are and determine if what is offered (not estimated or anticipated in some point in the future) makes the most sense for them. A personal choice.

That said, this thread and the OP aren't convincing for what they are attempting to convince us of.. it is the wrong type of data to conclude what is attempted to be concluded and even if it wasn't, there isn't enough information to understand how they came to those values anyways.

Then we broke off that discussion to an entirely different discussion on AF tracking. Whole new can of worms than initial lock on speed.

I don't think we'll see a definitive answer (one way or the other) on this topic unless someone figures out a way to compare cameras in the same manner with the same targets and tests. Otherwise there are too many extraneous factors that muddy the waters.

[BrianR]

The focus point aggressively shifts to other body parts in the player, another player, and even the uniformly dark background. It's baffling when AFAIK there's a second CPU the owner has paid for on the D5 motherboard that's in charge of this algorithm. What is its excuse for failing to keep up, and why does it choose something that looks nothing like the subject as its target?

How small of a target can it pick to track and can you tell what the photographer locked it onto here? (Honest question here, I don't know the answer!) Even if it does seem particularly fond of the players nether region, I'm pretty amazed that it managed to keep on the player at all when another fellow went in-between. Obviously, it's not always successful, but it looks pretty darn impressive in less demanding situations.

You can see larger versions of the Kingfisher sequence in the last link Dan posted. The AF does slip a few times and the feet look sharper than the eyes. So no, it's not perfect here either. It is astonishing to me that it managed to catch up again, and didn't just go into a spinning fit. As others have mentioned, the skill to even keep a fast flying kingfisher in the viewfinder is pretty impressive on it's own... that damn user again.

There are a couple of D5 sequence of raptors flown at a show on this page: Nikon D5 review diary - Wildlife Photographer - Richard Costin He gives the full frames as well as crops. Again, it's not perfect but pretty impressive and not something I'd be able to do with manual focus (if I was living in the Matrix, that would be a different story).

As I said, I'm generally happy with my camera's AF (and damn happy with its price). And happy that Pentax seems to be making incremental improvements with each generation (what more can you reasonable hope for without Pentax trying to become massive and bloated?). The grass is always greener on the other side, but I think ours is growing at a healthy rate and there's zero need for hyperbole or misinformation to make Pentax users feel better about themselves.

Admittedly, the overwhelming majority of my subjects are nice and slow, but I do have moderate success with tracking in AF-C mode, for example I managed to accurately track this owl coming in for a landing and pick the single shot for when the composition and wing position fit my ideal (I did not rely on a burst):

[reh321]

Part of the issue here is that people tend to cling to the "overall camera" myth, the idea that one camera can excel at all purposes. That may have been true before AD and digital, but it simply isn't true any more. In a thread at another photo forum, a guy was complaining about the Nikon D500 - he says the files it creates don't have nearly enough pixels, not understanding that the things which make the D500 special, such as burst speed and ISO performance, would be ruined if a sensor with significantly more pixels were placed in it.

Up to now, Pentax has focused primarily on landscape photography, where focus is fairly basic. With the FF line available now, I expect to see them put extra work into things needed to make the crop-sensored cameras work better with events and wildlife - but progress in things like that doesn't happen overnight.

[mee]

HThe grass is always greener on the other side, but I think ours is growing at a healthy rate and there's zero need for hyperbole or misinformation to make Pentax users feel better about themselves.

Bingo!