Bill Hollinger
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Hi Thang,
Some of the best photography I can remember seeing is on this site, but I disagree with your premise that correctly focused pictures of flying birds, means my comparative difficulty with maintaining focus on fast, erratic, dark dogs is a problem caused by me, and not the cameras. (“Your experience of unable to get high % sharp images from the 1dII has nothing to do with the camera.”).
I can post tens of thousands of pictures of in focus dogs - there are a number here, mostly taken with the 1D2,
http://homepage.mac.com/billh96007/Trial-Web/PhotoAlbum262.html
and I do use the 70-200f2.8IS and 300f2.8IS lenses, which are fast focusing Canon lenses. My experience with dogs - not birds - which I tried to explain as clearly as possible, is that with the Canons (1D2 and 1Ds2), to have any change of success, you have to use a single AF point (and I do expand it), which is very difficult to keep positioned on the face of a fast moving dog. In your mind, picture a dog’s face constantly changing position, erratically and at high speed on your viewfinder screen. The Nikon allowed me to use its 21 and 51 point setting, and this gave me a much higher success (in focus) rate than the Canons, plus it is far easier to do, and allows me to concentrate on the action, not on the video game-like business of placing a red dot on a moving object. This appears to be difference in the way Nikon and Canon AF systems function. This is a typical example from an older Nikon (F5), which also worked this way,
http://homepage.mac.com/billh96007/.Pictures/Bouvier%20activities/Niko-snow,%2313.jpg
Birds tend to fly in a straight line, and you only have to keep the focus point on the bird, not on a black face bobbing all over the place. I do very little bird in flight photography, but for what I have photographed, having a high percentage in focus has not been an issue for me with the Canons - nor, as I stated, is motorsports or human sports. In my experience, erratic motion, motion which goes quickly form static to speed, and fast action very near and straight into the camera present the greatest challenges for an AF system. It may well be that your Canon focuses better for you on birds than your D300. If I thought differently, I would not feel compelled to tell you the problem is you, not the camera. Here is my flying bird,
http://homepage.mac.com/billh96007/.Pictures/180-300/Osprey,5489.jpg
And this photographer used a D300 with the 200-400,
http://www.pbase.com/raymondjbarlow/image/90251903
the same setup that you are not satififed with
( https://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/594026 ). Those flying owls are heading into the camera and there is a distracting background, yet they are tack sharp. Maybe he would give you some pointers?
Good luck!
Bill
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