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100-300 Disappointing for Air Show

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Michael L NYC 99 said:
I found the 100-300 disappointing as well on my E-M10 this weekend as regards focus hunting. I tried to shoot hummingbirds and the lens would not focus lock in time. I also used the lens for static shots of dragonflies and the lens sometimes had trouble focusing in a field of plants and tall grasses. I had to point the camera in a different place, get focus lock, and then point the camera back to the original location to get focus lock.

Regards

Michael
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Trevor Carpenter said:
I'm surprised that you get a lot of hunting. I used to get a lot of hunting with my Oly 4/3s 70-300 but the 100-300 is a big improvement on that. It's not perfect and if the light drops or it's a low contrast sky I do sometimes struggle to focus on anything but it's not hunting as such it just won't confirm focus.

If you look at my Picasa albums at the link below you will see this year's air shows all shot with the 100-300 with some success. I'm shooting with a G6.

Before I get to cocky I should say it's a long way from perfect and I'd like better but it does well bang for buck.

Trevor
My Galleries are at
http://picasaweb.google.com/trevorfcarpenter
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with the 100-300, I found when it gets darker, to get better results, do not zoom past 150mm. At 150mm, the aperture is 4.5. Going to 300mm is 5.6.
 
MarkyM said:
MarkyM said:
You stated later that you had the focus area set on the smallest setting. I expect a lot of the problem was the camera operator letting the aircraft drift out of that area. Once that happens the camera will hunt as it has no idea where the object is. Set it on the biggest area.
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john isaacs said:
Have you tried Multiple Area Focus? I think that helps.
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Maybe he should try facial recognition:



flying_tigers_p40_sqd.gif




--
call me Arg
 
Use a big focus box and prefocus on horizon ground subjects. If you search with too small focus area you focus the sky which has no contrast at all and you loose the focus forever.
 
Use manual focus

planes tend to be far away.

Just keep it at infinity and F6.3-7.1 and your done.
 
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Here are Air Show shots from early in the year taken with the Olympus 75-300mm II & E-M1. Used C-AF with single & multiple AF points worked very well, have also shot motorsport with this combination (classic motorsport to Formula 1)









 
Not too big yet likely to have the subject within that area. That should avoid most of the hunting issues. I tend to not shoot fast moving stuff, but when you're shooting at 300mm it's so hard to keep the camera still that even with slow moving or static subjects using the smallest focus area is a bad idea.
 
I think the em-10 is probably the limiting factor! It has been mentioned many many times that Panasonic af is snappier than Oly, in particular with Pana lens.
MarkyM said:
The last time I shot an air show I had a Sony A77 with the 70-300G lens and it went fairly well.

That lens had something I sorely missed yesterday with the Panny 100-300: a focus limiter!

I have really enjoyed the 100-300 lens for slow moving animals etc. but it is simply too slow to focus for any kind of fast moving objects. I tried Single and Wide Area AF. (As we know, tracking really doesn't work yet on MFT and I confirmed that on my EM-10).

Not only is the 100-300 dog slow to focus but it spent most of the time hunting. At least if it had a focus limiter, it wouldn't have had to hunt so much and would probably have been much more useful.

Is the Oly 75-300II any better? Does it have a focus limiter?
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uRebel Rob said:
MarkyM said:
...I hope Oly and Panny can make some advances with tracking AF soon. If Sony can do it with the A6000, I'm sure they will follow suit soon....
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No hurry, which compact 600mm lens does Sony have available for aps-c, e-mount.
uRebel Rob said:
It's already here. The Oly E-M1 already has hybrid PD/CD AF, and Panny's GH4 is trying DFD instead (although it isn't working very well on the 100-300 from what's been posted here). Both cameras held their own (or beat) against the A6000 in theCameraStore's head to head tests.

Or do you mean cost wise? :-)
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Advent1sam said:
I think the em-10 is probably the limiting factor! It has been mentioned many many times that Panasonic af is snappier than Oly, in particular with Pana lens.
Click to expand...
Nah contrast detect and things that move just brings in trouble. Same issues with my panasonic GX7. that one is very very snappy even in low-light.

The DFD system of the GH4 might help but that's a big and expensive camera. You pay a lot for the video features. Which would be wasted money if your only interested in stills.

With airshows just manual focus and keep it locked at infinity. F6.3-7 at infinity will get all planes in focus sinc they are far enough away anyway.

With AF your camera will lose the plane and start hunting.
Advent1sam said:
MarkyM said:
The last time I shot an air show I had a Sony A77 with the 70-300G lens and it went fairly well.

That lens had something I sorely missed yesterday with the Panny 100-300: a focus limiter!

I have really enjoyed the 100-300 lens for slow moving animals etc. but it is simply too slow to focus for any kind of fast moving objects. I tried Single and Wide Area AF. (As we know, tracking really doesn't work yet on MFT and I confirmed that on my EM-10).

Not only is the 100-300 dog slow to focus but it spent most of the time hunting. At least if it had a focus limiter, it wouldn't have had to hunt so much and would probably have been much more useful.

Is the Oly 75-300II any better? Does it have a focus limiter?
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
BarnET2 said:
Advent1sam said:
I think the em-10 is probably the limiting factor! It has been mentioned many many times that Panasonic af is snappier than Oly, in particular with Pana lens.
Click to expand...
Nah contrast detect and things that move just brings in trouble. Same issues with my panasonic GX7. that one is very very snappy even in low-light.

The DFD system of the GH4 might help but that's a big and expensive camera. You pay a lot for the video features. Which would be wasted money if your only interested in stills.

With airshows just manual focus and keep it locked at infinity. F6.3-7 at infinity will get all planes in focus sinc they are far enough away anyway.

With AF your camera will lose the plane and start hunting.
Click to expand...
Well, OK, you good go MF and just watch for the mass of peaking and snap away too. But with such big targets I am still confident the GX7 would pull af quick enough using the zones or multi-af or slightly larger af box. I need to go to one of these air shows sometime!
BarnET2 said:
BarnET2 said:
MarkyM said:
The last time I shot an air show I had a Sony A77 with the 70-300G lens and it went fairly well.

That lens had something I sorely missed yesterday with the Panny 100-300: a focus limiter!

I have really enjoyed the 100-300 lens for slow moving animals etc. but it is simply too slow to focus for any kind of fast moving objects. I tried Single and Wide Area AF. (As we know, tracking really doesn't work yet on MFT and I confirmed that on my EM-10).

Not only is the 100-300 dog slow to focus but it spent most of the time hunting. At least if it had a focus limiter, it wouldn't have had to hunt so much and would probably have been much more useful.

Is the Oly 75-300II any better? Does it have a focus limiter?
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
Advent1sam said:
BarnET2 said:
Advent1sam said:
I think the em-10 is probably the limiting factor! It has been mentioned many many times that Panasonic af is snappier than Oly, in particular with Pana lens.
Click to expand...
Nah contrast detect and things that move just brings in trouble. Same issues with my panasonic GX7. that one is very very snappy even in low-light.

The DFD system of the GH4 might help but that's a big and expensive camera. You pay a lot for the video features. Which would be wasted money if your only interested in stills.

With airshows just manual focus and keep it locked at infinity. F6.3-7 at infinity will get all planes in focus sinc they are far enough away anyway.

With AF your camera will lose the plane and start hunting.
Click to expand...
Well, OK, you good go MF and just watch for the mass of peaking and snap away too. But with such big targets I am still confident the GX7 would pull af quick enough using the zones or multi-af or slightly larger af box. I need to go to one of these air shows sometime!
Click to expand...
last time



ba58743f4091480dbf93816f957ada8b.jpg



9fa6c7b6b9c84d5f8b277b8f9f76aef2.jpg

all manual focus the AF on the G3 was all over the place.

Yeah i have to go again. It's a amazing experience.
Advent1sam said:
Advent1sam said:
Advent1sam said:
MarkyM said:
The last time I shot an air show I had a Sony A77 with the 70-300G lens and it went fairly well.

That lens had something I sorely missed yesterday with the Panny 100-300: a focus limiter!

I have really enjoyed the 100-300 lens for slow moving animals etc. but it is simply too slow to focus for any kind of fast moving objects. I tried Single and Wide Area AF. (As we know, tracking really doesn't work yet on MFT and I confirmed that on my EM-10).

Not only is the 100-300 dog slow to focus but it spent most of the time hunting. At least if it had a focus limiter, it wouldn't have had to hunt so much and would probably have been much more useful.

Is the Oly 75-300II any better? Does it have a focus limiter?
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
BarnET2 said:
all manual focus the AF on the G3 was all over the place.
Click to expand...
at what length does infinity become applicable for all distances?

Does this vary a lot between different cameras and different lenses?
 
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Wow. Thanks for sharing your link. That must have been a great event! Wonderful photos. My 91 year old Dad was stationed in England (Eighth Air Force) during the war. I will be showing him these! thanks again.
 
Thanks Don, Shoreham Air Show is always a lot of fun, although as you can imagine we are subject to rather unpredictable weather! Each year we hope for nice skies, but it never seems to happen.

I have to say the 100-300 has transformed my ability to get a good range of images at events like this, I'm very impressed with this lens. In the entire day (taking hundreds of shots) there were only two occasions when it failed to focus and this was probably down to providing insufficient contrast for it to lock onto. I would say it's a rock solid lens.
 
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