Hi, so things are improving? The pigeon is nice and sharp at these sizes and good to hear the principle of keeping the shutter release pressed during and after the lens hunts, seems to be working for you (in AF-C of course).
Of the following 3 it's hard to tell how sharp the birds are because of over exposure. One of the drawbacks of this lens is that purple fringing rears it ugly head when highlights are blown, so I tended to err on the side of underexposure and then in editing try and get the best balance for exposure. The Pentax's, especially the K-50/30 sensor is very very forgiving of underexposure. However one caveat is that I shoot raw and can recover the shadows etc easily in editing. If you shoot jpegs only I'm not sure how well this will work. Maybe others could chip in?
The 2nd image has focused on the background you can see the ripples are sharper behind the gull.
I agree with the other comment that chain looks in focus better than the birds, but it may be movement of the birds or the overexposure. Did you use single point af, or expansion points around a single point? With this much subject matter to focus on I don't think the auto select of all 11 points would pick out the birds, so you'd probably have to tell the AF exactly what point you wanted to use.

Hi, I've set up a new album in picasa and flckr called 'Tamron 70-300 in flight', that should have only ones from this lens in it, making it easy to view.

Also I've just remembered that I tend to use centre af point only (it's second nature so I tend not to think about it). All my above comments about af racking to infinity and keeping the af pressed would be based around this and I'm not sure how it would work if you chose all points or expanded AF. I tried those when I got the K30 (and again on the K3) and decided single point af selection worked better for things in flight.

Hi, I counted 14 in the flickr birds album and another 14 in the picasa birds albums all in flight with that lens. However quite a few are with even older cameras (with poorer af than my K-r and K30), the Pentax K100D and the Samsung GX10 (a pentax K10D clone). I know they are jumbled within the rest but I thought rather than post them here in the thread it would be better to point you too them. Sorry if they've been difficult to find. Also as I mention some are with the K30 as I don't have the K50 but believe it to be an almost identical camera.

Good Luck when the K-50 returns. I'll look out for your postings.

I've used and still have the K-30, Tamron 70-300 LD DI and Pentax 55-300 HD WR and very much enjoy BIF's or even dragonflies in flight. The tamron works ok, but even my old Canon 30D and 55-250 canon lens outperforms it's abilities to track moving objects. The tamron is reasonably sharp at 300 F8, so I stick to that, shutter speeds around 1/1000 to 1/2000 dependent on subject. Continuous AF and motor drive, turn SR off, back button focusing. The trick I learned is don't press the af button until the bird is over the af points and if it hunts and disappears off to infinity (which it will) just let it but keep the af button pressed, do not release, then get the bird back in the af points and it will refocus on it and stay with it, it is then unlikely to hunt again, until you release the af button and start again. I don't think pentax are good with subjects coming at it, even my K3 struggles with my Pentax FA*300 F4.5, I just accept that it will be a bit behind the subject for most shots but some will hit. I switched to the 55-300 but ended up getting better results with manual focus than af because this lens is slow to af on the K30/50. However not having to deal with bits of Purple fringing all the time with BIF's swung it for me. Now I use none, they just sit in the cupboard waiting to be sold. I've moved to M4/3's for my smaller travel kit, which is what I used the K30 and Tamron for.
Have a look at my flickr site or picasaweb link in the dragonfly and birds albums for some examples of the K30 and Tamron.


This one is with my older Kr.

Great capture. I always amazed by people who can take such photos of these beauties considering I can't even find them!

A wonderful set of a real beauty of a fox.

It looks like you've been adopted into the brownsea squirrel clan. What a wonderful place, straight out of Walt Disney. I've thought about going to but never quite got round to it.... If this doesn't inspire me nothing will!

Hi, I know you mentioned you wanted a new camera, but fyi my K100D developed problems with nimh AA's and got very temperamental even with the sanyo eneloops. My solution was to use Lithium AA non rechargeable batteries. They solved the issue and lasted for ages.

I can only get close to the ID of two and I don't know enough about exotic species to be certain
1. looks like it could be a Tiger Longwing (Heliconius hecale)
2. might be The Clipper (Parthenos sylvia)

It would have to be my FA*300 F4.5.
It's light and small for a telephoto.
Sharp from wide open.
Fast af especially with the newer pentax bodies.
Never noticed any CA or flare.
Owned and used it regularly for over 20 years since new, So reliability must be at the top even if it fails tomorrow (but I hope that doesn't happen :blush

Drawbacks, lacking dedicated tripod mount (I use a Canon 70-200 F4 version), and would like a closer min focus or auto focus extension tubes (c'mon pentax, I've got the 1.4x conv, now I just want the tubes and would be very happy).

It's the reason I still shoot Pentax, I haven't found such a lens in any other system.