Here's the premise:
I turned on Continuous-focus and the 5-pt focus cross-hairs.
Had a fairly large bird (Eagle, Vulture type) flying directly towards me from about 50 yards. So, it was dead-center.

My 70-200mm/G IF-ED AF-s VR lens was on the F5. The setup had difficulties in acquiring a focus lock on the bird in the first half of its flight but when the bird got closer, the lock was engaged.

Is there a better way to acquire a lock earlier on in its flight path? Is this due to the background that was blended into the bird and making it hard for the focusing mechanism to resolve the focus earlier?
How do the pros do it?

--
Arthur Yeo
My Portfolio
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Just to add to this ... I had no problems when the flight-path is parallel to my lens: i.e. the bird is flying from left to right or vice-versa.

--
Arthur Yeo
My Portfolio
My Flickr Portfolio

Arthur, I struggle with this, unfortunately all I can find that helps is to be tracking the bird well before you want (need?) to take a picture to give the electronics more time to do their stuff, too little time (or too short an opportunity more likely), and the system simply doesn't have time to track successfully.

Once tracking though I find the F100 awesome at predictive focus for taking the shot!

Cheers

Simon

A New Zealand Nikonian

Visit my Nikonians gallery.

It is like in gunfighting, ".... don't ever let the other one pick his ground, you will find yourself with the sun in your eyes and end up dead".
This more or less "quote" is from a 1950's western movie, but very true.
Find a spot where you have the sun in your back and Dynamic Focusing will not just save the day but produce for you tack sharp fast focusing.
Not just light is important but the direction of light too.

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