I have somewhat specialized in motorsports photography, where things move
extremely fast and focus is - for me - a constant challange and difficult
problem. I agree with your conclusion that choosing a point, carefully
prefocusing on that point and shooting at the right moment is a winning
strategy. With race cars, I'll use my 300mm and 1.4X-A t/c to capture them
from mid corner through exit. This allows me to prefocus at the nearest
point, usually mid corner. Then I practice adjusting focus to farther away
as I pan along with the car. It is very difficult to do correctly, and even
harder to do consistently. Motor drive is essential to do this, as you can
"lead" the sequence to get the framing accurate and follow through without
extra motion. The M.18v pistol grip works well for me; with the M.15v I
tend to rotate the whole camera the instant I press the shutter button.
Adding to the difficulty is the fact that each lens has a different amount
of focus ring rotation to change focus over the same distance. So I have to
practice and "re-learn" how far to twist the ring with every lens.
Fortunately, this is only needed for the longer teles; with focal lengths
under 135mm, its just not too big a deal.
Try that technique in manual focus mode with your camera and see if it
helps. It takes a lot of practice, and I'm still not as good at as I'd like
to be.
John P
______________________________________
there is no "never" - just long periods of "not yet".
there is no "always" - just long periods of "so far"
Matthias Wilke <Matthias.K.Wilke@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
<.......big ol' snip.......>
>There was among the
>36 slides not a single sharp picture (not because of the motion of the
>object, but the wrong focus plane). The better solution would have been to
>take a 135mm (this seemed to me the best focal length for the job), choose
>a point where the cyclists will appear and shoot at the right moment. Maybe
>the very fast AF cameras like EOS-1, 3, 5 or Nikon F-5 would have been able
>to be fast enough but I have my doubts about this after this experience. In
>the meantime I am conditioned like Pavlovs dog that when I use this camera,
>I fear disappointing results.
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