Auto focus making people lazy?

One of the things I discovered at Farnborough the other week was that having the AF set to Auto works extremely well for this - the camera can choose an alternate AF point quickly enough to compensate for my inability to track accurately, so it's much better at keeping a lock than when it's forced to use only the centre spot.

For all the criticism I've read about Pentax's allegedly sub-standard AF, I was very happy with its performance over the day.

Here we go again! lets not do another session , ill bullet point it -

1. Yes you did suggest my sharpening was wrong - your words " no tiger looks like this. It has fur, not spikes." pretty much sounds like you think its wrong there! your words not mine.

2. You Still havent posted your pics so i can see them , i had a look through the forum and found a few.

3. Yes this tiger was in context with the original discussion posted as if you'd read it fully you would have seen id added this "Hi John,

Thankyou for your polite comments and questions on my image , this is a pseudo Hdr shot from one shot , yes perhaps its a little sharp i think it was the hdr process but im happy with it , the water was this colour mainly because she had amused her viewers by taking a p in it acting dignified and regal during her ablutions - ignorance is bliss eh!!!
What made it a little tricky to capture was the fact she was approx 50 yards away and i was having to shoot her through a perspex viewing window in bright sunlight - im happy with the end result , ive only had my dslr 3 months and im still getting to grips with it as well as pspp and hdr techniques.
Id still like Chrisa's work so we can review it............ "

4. I hope this clarifys things for you now and if all else fails take another look at that superb quote from Golfdiesel's post "golfdiesel wrote:
I'd like to quote a couple of lines from the interview with Benjamin Kanarek in the latest Pentax user mag. Page 11, last paragraph.

"My advice to anyone is that when it comes to photography there is no right or wrong. If you want to totally blow out your highlights then do it, there is no-one who can tell you that your picture is overexposed if that was your artistic intention. If they tell you it's wron them I'm sure their work is very pedestrian and utterly boring. You can't hurt anyone by experimenting through photography. I wouldn't give the same advice to a brain surgeon though"

I believe that Bejamin Kanarek is absolutely right with the above, you have to take the pictures that YOU like and process them in the way that YOU think is right."

5. Finally and let this be the end of this discussion i like your photo -Red Arrows Diamond Nine , its a great shot.

It is indeed. And if I might add, a perfect example of: "How to sharpen for web use"
Martin.

I'm sorry, I'm simply not going trawling through 18 months of posts just to save you the trouble of going to the forum search page, typing 'IMG' into the keywords field and 'ChrisA' into the Author field.

I expect if you do that, you'll find any number of pictures I've posted at various times and for various purposes.

Some of the pictures probably won't display, since despite our requests to the site owners, we can't edit posts to fix broken links.

And anything I posted before about April would have been edited for display on a very old, dark monitor, so many of them probably look overexposed and noisy on a modern LCD monitor.

Still, feel free to laugh and point. There's plenty to criticise, so fill your boots if you like.

Interesting, I had often wondered if that would work. I have tried it a couple of times with my K10D + FA80-320 without a lot of success, but the 80-320 isn't the fastest focusing lens in the world and has a habit of hunting. If/when I get my hands on some better long AF glass I'll give it another try.

Duroo72,

You can't be paying much attention to this forum if you have missed Chris's quite splendid shot from Farnborough.

It has received more plaudits than any other picture I have seen posted here, and I have been a member for a while. It is beautifully composed and exposed, full of drama, and the light is wonderful. It's a superb shot in every way. And it's not over-sharpened at all, let alone massively.

To save yourself embarassment, I suggest before you issue any more challenges you take a look around the forum.

G

Pots and kettles.

G

It's all arabic to me

You're very kind, George, as are the others that have complimented me on that picture.

And I am quite pleased with it, I must say.

But I wouldn't put it down to too much more than, if not beginner's, then intermediate's, luck. I'd spent five hours cursing the weather which made avoiding silhouettes difficult, and then, right at the end of the display, the cloud had thickened up while still allowing enough in the way of gaps for the sun to illuminate it just right.

The best I could do was see the shot coming, and try to frame it right. I took your advice and recropped it slightly.

When I can produce good pictures as reliably as people like Lilly, Prieni, Pschute, Simonkit, and quite a few others, maybe I'll start to feel a bit less like I fluked the occasional good ones.

if that's true, then the shot is no fluke, it was played for and got. Do you get every one you play for? probably not, but then I doubt there's a single person here who does.

It is true for this one, and it was quite exciting as the moment approached. I took a series of seven as they ran in, one shot every two seconds or so. You can see the series - they run from 15 to 21 in this gallery.

It was helped by the fact that I've watched the Red Arrows so many times over the years that I've got a pretty good idea of what they're going to do.

I took these in 2002 with an ME Super, and a Sigma 28-200 F5.6, and you can see from number seven that it's a very common 'pose' for them. Hopefully I've come on a bit since then

Although as I say, getting it right is still so rare that it feels like a fluke when it happens.

I know what you mean, I feel the same way!

And now that's out of the way shall we forget the rash comments and look forward to making this site a community where all people feel welcome


Finally bought the K200D, finances could not reach the K20D but I'm happy with the setup I have.
Now where did I put those AA's

LoL embaressed?

Perhaps it is time to move on.....this leads nowhere.

Behave guys