Pentax Predictive Tracking Just works

Thanks, who ever gave my other post a thumbs up. Just for looking.

Another day and Hawk. Again the shots where too dark. This time I did switch to center weighted metering and raised the EV level; still… the LCD is fooling me and bright clouds peg the speed at 1/4000 for most shots I needed about 2 stops more light. This is when owning a K5 would be nice as I could extract more detail out of the shadows, much more. And about 3X the frames a second and… But the K20D does all I ask of it for now.

The Hawk was just sitting there on a branch again and I had him locked. I yelled loud and he got scared and flew from one branch to another as in the pics. Then I made another noise with a piece of metal against a poll. This scared him into flight. He went to my upper right side and flew into a tree behind me. I had to take the shots with one hand. The K20D and battery grip truly fit my hand like a glove, the DA55-300mm light. It allows for quick but smooth movements. One shot was missed. It came out soft. All others where in proper focus, just not in proper exposure. I did zoom in more but should have zoomed in even more! The bad part is I have to go back to work Mon, and it will be dark when I get home. No more chances for a week.

But if you look at the pics and think about it. Just as in my other BIF shots. How is a Pentax keeping up? Technicaly the DA55-300mm should be hunting all over the place with the background clutter, or sometimes no clutter and the Hawk appears to be out of any AF point. Yet it holds on. If you tried this in AF-S mode it would hunt. But when in AF-C mode, this makes it hold on until it can get another lock. It gets another lock even though when you see the shutter fire the OVF has a blurred pic of a Hawk. You think you don’t have any pics, serious, really, when going to the PC to download. You download and are stunned they came out good! Now with normal BIF my hit rate is like 50%. But this Hawk is bigger, the K20D seems to hold onto it better versus a smaller gull.

Here is the link from yesterday.

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/thread/3341427

The first pic below is one from yesterday. I did not want to waste time PP another one of him just sitting.

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jamesm007,
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jamesm007/
http://s195.photobucket.com/albums/z77/jamesm700/