Slow AF?

Or Olympus (runs even faster and hides)

Just put it down to the English sense of humour not travelling well.

Or maybe it's just my sense of humour (and apparently Huw's).

Yeah I'm probably to "dry" for that kind of humour

If you want to stick with Pentax though just buy a K 8.4/2.8 Fish-Eye then you don't have to worry about focus speed of any kind, let alone focusing at all.

Don't think any other brand has such a type of focus?

Good grief. A common-sense suggestion in a Pentax AF thread. Whatever next?

G

Ok, so techniques for seagulls moving fast at close range with a K10D, then, please.

I can do aeroplanes, no problem. Even when they're coming towards me at more than 250 miles an hour, continuous AF is good enough.

But seagulls trying to catch bread out of the air at a range of 20-50 feet, and I'm really struggling.

That situation calls for well practised manual focusing and good depth of field imo- whatever brand of camera you are using. Prefocus at 30-40 feet and fine tune as required.

Well of course, there will always be AF situations that no camera can cope with.

Is my example really one of them, though?

I also have a long-tailed tit visiting my pear tree that I'm trying to capture. I've missed many shots because the time to frame and focus is just too long. I can frame, but then during the half second or so of AFing it flies away.

The issue is simple: if no camera can cope in these situations, we should all shut up about AF and just practise more. If Pentax is lagging behind the others, they should come under pressure to improve.

I don't want to switch brands - I want Pentax to be better, and the impression I get is that in their higher-end cameras at least, the others' AF is more capable in the difficult situations.

I know all the value-for-money arguments, too, and again, if I'm still simply demanding too much at the sub-£1k price point then I think it needs to be clearer - at least to me.

I might add, as I mentioned before, that I don't think it's quite enough to just say "well, MF, DOF, pre-focus then", in all the tricky situations. I can do that with a £20 second hand camera. For many hundreds of pounds, I expect the automatics to be better than me.

Pure luck .. that's all the technique I needed with this one on my K10D
Don't ask me to do it gain though.

Not bad..

I'd be interested to see the results from the D300s out of frame to the right

I am aware of at least some of those who have been involved in an exchange of PMs.

A PM is exactly that - Private. If it offends or contravenes the forum rules then please advise a Moderator accordingly so things can be looked into.

Even selectively quoting a PM is not a good idea and hardly provides a mechanism where all sides can be fairly heard.

Whilst I largely agree with your comments John, I don't necessarily agree with censoring the posts in which people have spoken out against insulting/intimidating PMs.

It is your call though.

All the facts are not in the public domain Robbie, so they are best not commented on.

We seem to have lost a few posts :

I just take it as the norm on this forum, I don't even bother commenting on such matters any longer.

John was correct to remove the posts. He has stated why.

We don't need this thread to deteriorate in into the name calling of old.

I only came back because I hoped such name calling and personality clashes were done with. Haven't we all learned from the past unpleasantness?

Please, if you have a problem with a forum member deal with it through the moderators - that's their job.