Bird tracking with D200

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

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#2 next one

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#3 next one - higher resolution to show that it's still in focus

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#4 next one in the sequence

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#5 and so on... even with an obstacle (I programmed the "medium" delay before the AF jumps)

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#6 the last one in the sequence I wanted to show here

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the example of the missed sequence (10 pics like that)

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and by the way, the performance of the 70-200VR fully open @200mm falls in the category "reasonable"  

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and another one...

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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).

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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

 

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.