AF.C made my camera a worthless brick?

[crf529]

Hey all was just out shooting a game at the NSW Basketball Northern Junior League Finals here in Tamworth this weekend, for a friend.

So I was shooting from the stands with my K-r and Siggy 70-200 2.8, lighting inside was fairly good and was all natural sunlight through many skylights. Shot in Tv mode set to 1/640 and Auto ISO which bounced around between 800-3000 most of the game depending on clouds rolling through, so that had the lens wide open all game. I also used Centre-weighted metering with Centre-point AF and AF.C (continuous) mode.

Now I'm not trying to run off and blame my gear, I'm not for that. But now I'm back in my room sorting through all the pics and in about half the shots, focussing is completely &#&*ED! See an OOC example below.

76210

With AF.C and Centre-point focus why the heck is it front focused so badly? I'm honestly so frustrated by this and the shots that were wasted, I really feel like smashing the bloody camera to bits.

As I said earlier this has happened to many photos I took today where the camera has focused on something well away from the centre of the frame and stayed there. But it seems inconsistent as others focused fine and was not shot under tungsten which can give the K-r FF. Is this something I've done or am enabling? I hope so lol cause this is the very first time I've become furious with photography and would really prefer it to be me than my gear.

[ricktas]

my guess is that you fired of a group of shots at once in quick succession and that you did so without letting the lens focus lock in the first place. The lens cannot just be in focus instantly, it takes it some time (admittedly not much) to focus lock, and it could be that these shots were taken as it was still seeking focus.

[crf529]

It's strange because I've noticed on some bursts, it actually began to lose focus as the frames rolled on, even though the subject remained smack bang in the middle. As well as others where it starts off OOF then gets better. And of course sets that are all OOF for good measure. Even when focus does substantially change, you can hear the FPS drop right off till it 'sorts' it all out again. Laem..

[reaction]

"subject remained smack bang in the middle" doesn't mean your AF point was on the subject. Possibly some movement confused your AF prediction.

Another thing, did you have SR in body and OS in lens?

Also, you may consider using the AF-On button for this type of shoot.

[Tannin]

It's pretty low lighting, to judge by your average ISOs. Most cameras start to struggle to focus, especially to focus quickly, when the light is poor. Could this be a factor?

Also, I'm not sure that I'd be happy using centre point focus for this task - too much chance of the point drifting off the player. But would I fancy full-auto FP selection - too much chance of getting a nice sgarp floor!

Ideally, I'd use one of the in-between modes. I'm not sure which (if any) of these you have available to you, but as examples, on the 7D I can set it to auto select from amongst a smaller subset of the available points, or (better yet) the 1D III lets me use a single point for initial aquisition with auto-expansion of that point to follow a moving subject. Your camera will probably have some similar scheme.

[JM Tran]

the KR's AF system is not designed for highly accurate sports shooting and tracking anyway, so dont think its your fault. You might get a good or decent shot here and there but dont expect it to be of a high standard - especially in basketball where there is a lot of movements. The KR will do fine in linear sports like motorsports where the direction is linear and will not change. Unfortunately sports shooting is heavily gear dependent and no matter how good you are the gear you have on hand will determine the end product most of the time.

[OzzieTraveller]

G'day Laem

I don't wanna be a bugga - but "are you sure about the focus points"?
Many's the time when I've found the damn AF points have "wandered" from those I thought I had set

My 'default' is ... http://i55.tinypic.com/108irmd.jpg
and I find it does most action stuff quite well

Regards, Phil