some recent experience with AF and a question. I have been for the first time in my life to an animal park very close to home... this is a fantastic place I had never seen before and I definitely have to go back because I couldn't see a third of it... I am a bit ashamed because I have visited lots of zoos and animal parks all over the world and I never took the time to go there... Back to the subject: D200. Among other things... there was a birds show (very classical, I have seen those in Vancouver, Singapore, ... very similar) and I tried to catch some flight shots. My experience is the following: - sometimes the D200 has problems to follow at all and ends up focusing on the background - all pics unusable - the closest subject mode doesn't really seem to work for birds flying very fast in your direction. - group dynamic with continuous AF, and lock on target before the flight started gave me excellent sequences (see hereunder for an example) - one series was totally wrong - AF completely lost and all pictures overexposed exactly the same way (example below) - anybody an idea of what happened ? I have been using the D200+70-200VR @2.8-3.5 Aperture priority for the following pictures (C-H mode 5 pics/sec) #1 target locked before take off #2 next one #3 next one - higher resolution to show that it's still in focus #4 next one in the sequence #5 and so on... even with an obstacle (I programmed the "medium" delay before the AF jumps) #6 the last one in the sequence I wanted to show here the example of the missed sequence (10 pics like that) and by the way, the performance of the 70-200VR fully open @200mm falls in the category "reasonable" and another one... Last thing, there were a few other shooters, many P&S camera's, a few with a D50, D70, Rebel with kit lenses and two more serious photographers... one with the D2Xs+Sigma 120-300 2.8 (very impressive) and another one with Canon 1Ds+L Glass (the longest he had was a 300mm f4). There was the local pro-shooter, selling his pictures.... he shoots up to 5000 pics a day !, has two people full time to help him to process film (yes he is still using film), and is doing this with a Nikon F90. He was impressed by the stuff I had with me... Here is his pic (scanned on my crappy scanner). I had the D200+70-200VR, the F5+80-400OS and the D70+18-200VR and a number of other lenses in my backpack (to be honest, the D70 has been used by my wife, I didn't touch it... My wife is starting to get interested and has even talked about a D40x.... who knows Thanks for watching. Guy
The D200's AF is, IMO, reasonable good but definitely not as good as the D2x or F6. Usually if I take a flying sequence 1 out of every 3 or 4 will be off focused. Sometimes the AE is, as you experienced, totally wrong. That's why if the lighting is uniform I usually use the M mode.
Hi Guy. I've had my best results with the D200 in Group Dynamic mode 2 with the center group. According to the CAM-1000 articles, this will be one of the faster modes since the camera is evaluating fewer focus points. Here is a very good article by Jason O'dell on the CAM-2000 focus engine on the D2 line. His discussion of focus modes applies to the CAM-1000 on the D200 I believe. http://www.luminescentphoto.com/articles/CAM2000/cam2000.html Nice shots by the way.
thanks for the comments and thanks for the link, very clear article. There is also a very interesting article on the Nikonians site about the AF systems.
