Ivan, it would help to know what you compare to when you call the AF slow. Yes, all superzooms have slow AF compared to most dSLR, but do you have knowledge of other brands of superzoom and can you compare to those?
Niels
No. Actually I never tested any other superzoom. Here I went to the one that I trusted the IS the most... canon. Because the samples I saw from the others superzoom were all tripoded or shaken.
And I wanted to use it handheld.
But about the AF... it is slow enough to make in-flight shots a pain at 35x.
The problem here, is that at least for in-flight shots... you will have a better result taking pics at mid zoom(say a 10x) and croping it later.... instead of using the fullzoom.
It takes almost 1.5 seconds to the auto focus... at the end of the day I was locking the focus and waiting for the bird to fly at the correct range(go figure...).
Also the continual focusing system is even slower, so you need to keep hitting the shutter half-way stage (for re-focus) every time... and it is very hard to follow a flying bird while you control the zoom and need to keep hitting the half-way shutter all the time for re-focus.
(Consider here also that, against the sky, the continual focus of the camera will drop to infinity...and to bring it back to the bird you need to do that point + hitting the shutter half-way thing, what crumbles the entire stability of your shot)
Maybe I was just asking too much to expect crisp 35x at flying birds.
Don´t get me wrong, it is an excellent camera, just a bit frustrating because of the focus wheel and the LCD.
Here are some samples. As you can see the in-flight shot are not good... but when I took pics at static birds(target) on the ground it becomes quite sharp.(Everything at 35x)
. Given the camera settings and the environmental conditions you mention, your photo is pretty darn good! I don't think I'd be able to make out even the shape of an object using that high an ISO on my camera :-O. Thanks for responding. Very interesting to hear your positive experience.
