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Forum: Pentax K-S1 & K-S2
04-25-2016, 05:38 AM
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Thanks for the useful suggestions, everyone!
I've been thinking about using back-button AF generally, this might be the incentive I need to give it a shot in earnest. It surprises me that BBAF would work better than simply keeping the shutter half-depressed in AF-C, but it's worth a shot.
Catch-in focus is another one I hadn't thought of that's definitely worth trying.
In most of those shots I was between f/5.6 and f/8, which really doesn't seem like too large an aperture for a situation like this at <135mm. 1/800s was what I switched to after some early shots (mostly at 1/400s) so as to completely rule out motion blur from my testing. After all, people use the 200mm/2.8 and 300mm/f4 wide open, which have much longer focal lengths and so much shallower depth of field.
I'll also try 11-point AF. My thinking was to limit it entirely to the smaller central area or to use the center point only and keep the center point entirely on my dog's head as I was following him so that the AF wouldn't get confused and focus somewhere else on his body. But maybe with the additional flexibility of 11-point the camera can make smarter decisions after all?
I was definitely using the OVF / PDAF for all the shots in the park, but afterwards I briefly tried the Live View / Contrast AF Tracking, but it's noticeably worse than my Panasonic which itself is not particularly good at continuous focusing since it uses contrast detect AF only.
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Forum: Pentax K-S1 & K-S2
04-24-2016, 07:51 AM
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New Pentax owner here (well, not so new, I have a Spotmatic II and some Super Takumars)! I just recently got a K-S2 and 18-135WR as a weather-sealed kit to complement my Micro Four Thirds kit. The weather resistance and fully articulated screen were the main advantages, but I was also hoping that it would improve on the Continuous Autofocus performance of my mirrorless camera.
I went out to test the AF-C with my dog at the park, and I was really disappointed with the hit-rate. Probably less than 10% of the shots had the focus nailed properly. Now granted, despite how mundane it is, I realize that having a dog running quickly and erratically towards the camera is probably one of the single most difficult conditions to test a camera's autofocus, but I found that often his tail or hindquarters will be in sharp focus rather than his face, so I know it's not insufficient shutter speed. It's like the camera locked focus on the right plane and then took the photo a split second afterwards rather than continuously adjusting it.
Mostly was shooting with these settings:
Tv @ 1/800s
AF-C
Continous High burst rate
Auto-5 or Spot AF point
I guarantee that my technique could be improved, and I know many people have been able to get good results with this AF system on the K5 II. I guess my main question is whether I simply have much too high an expectation about the continuous autofocus performance of any <$1000 camera, or if there are settings and techniques that I should be using instead to get better results?
Would AF-A be better than AF-C?
Would SEL-Expanded be better than Auto-5 or Spot AF point modes?
Can the AF motor in the 18-135 keep up properly with this kind of shooting?
I don't think the lens is backfocusing, since it seems to work fine and deliver sharp results in static conditions, but I am out of my element when it comes to AF micro-adjustment, having come from a background of manual focus film and then a variety of digital cameras without mirrors, so I might be missing something!
I do this kind of shooting rarely, so it's not a top priority and I am sure I will enjoy the camera plenty for its originally intended applications on camping trips, winter, and rainy days, but I just want to make sure I'm not missing anything totally obvious and getting an unfair impression of the camera.
Thanks in advance, any tips, tricks, and recommendations are greatly appreciated!
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
04-15-2016, 07:57 AM
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For wildlife shooting in particular, I think you clearly made the right choice.
The K-1 looks to be a spectacular camera, but besides its pricing, I think its real forte will be producing the highest-quality landscape, architecture, and studio photos this side of a 100MP Hasselblad with its 36MP pixel-shift mode. Considering the pixel-shift modes on the K-3 II and Olympus E-M5 II produce better image quality than a 36MP FF D810 (assuming no subject movement, of course!), I am really looking forward to seeing how amazing the samples from the K-1 are going to look.
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
04-15-2016, 07:54 AM
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For what it's worth, those lenses are both short-flange mirrorless designs covering APS-C only. You can't get them for Canon or Nikon DSLRs, either. Samyang is putting a lot of effort into mirrorless designs because Sony's APS-C E-mount cameras are extremely popular, but Sony's lens line up is really genuinely bad. They don't have a single APS-C lens that could be called great, and a lot that can be called mediocre.
As for me, I have a few Pentax M42 lenses that my dad passed down to me with a (broken) Spotmatic II. I use the 50/1.4 in particular quite a bit on my Panasonic Micro Four Thirds cameras, and really enjoy it.
I'm looking to buy into Pentax primarily as an affordable but powerful weather-sealed set-up. So its reputation for that is powerful, anyway. The only viable competitor for it right now in this space is Olympus with the E-M5. If the K-S2 had a touchscreen to go with its articulation and/or the 35/2.4 was WR I'd already have put my money down, but the market is in such turmoil right now with all kinds of options, and nothing has all the features I want.
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
04-14-2016, 03:05 PM
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My personal thinking is that given that Fuji doesn't have any IBIS implementation to speak of, and the increased success and popularity of IBIS in their competitors (primarily Olympus, Sony, and Panasonic, but Fuji and Pentax butt heads in terms of market niche fairly directly, as well), he needed to give technical-sounding reasons for why IBIS would be a bad idea for Fuji. At least plausible sounding explanations, anyway.
I think the relationship between the lens mount size and the flange distance is also important. The E-mount is small, but has no hope of telecentricity with many lenses due to the short flange distance and large sensor unless they jump through optical hoops to arrive there. With DSLRs and larger flange mounts obligated by the mirror box, they're forced to design lenses more telecentrically anyway, since many FLs will be shorter than the flange distance and require retrofocal designs. So I don't think the same size lens mount has as big an impact on Pentax lens designs as on Sony (or Fuji).
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