I tested the MZ-S with its SMC Pentax-FA 24-90 f/3.5-4.5 IF&AL zoom lens. The first picture I took with that combo was an indoor shot of Giulia, a 9-year old girl. The camera was set on program mode, flash on and zoom lens at 90mm. Giulia was very happy with the picture, and I was too.

Autofocus

I was curious of testing AF capability, hence I asked my son Marco to run against me. Pictures turned out well, as expected, since my beloved MZ-5 was already capable to do that.

I needed a more demanding subject for my action pictures. Another weekend I drove to Misano speedway, for shooting superbike races. Racing bikes and sidecars are fast and small, even more difficult to shoot than formula 1. I equipped the MZ-S with my SMC Pentax-F* 300mm f/4.5 IF[ED] lens, with or without Tamron 1.4 AF converter (when will Pentax manufacture such a useful tool?). I tried both shutter and aperture priorities, with continuous AF and consecutive-frame drive. Racing bikes are hard to shoot, and I was a bit short of practice, so that I wasn’t always capable to follow them well and not all pictures show proper framing, while others were blurred due to camera shake, but it was just my fault. Once I got rid of the wrong shots, the pictures were good. I was able to freeze action or making some good panning.

Also, keeping the release button pressed while following the subject gave me some nice sequences, with almost all (sometimes all) pictures well focused. Sometimes the second picture was out of focus and the next ones (four to six) are properly focused. My explanation is as follows: at first the lens was already focused on the track far away and the first photo was focused. However, the bike was far from me and the MZ-S didn’t detect its movement (or possibly it even didn’t detect the bike, so small and maybe outside AF area), so that the second picture was out of focus. In the mean time the bike was approaching me, becoming larger, the AF system detected it and its movement and started tracking the subject, so that all next pictures are sharp. In fact, when I started shooting bikes from a lesser distance (hence their size was larger and their movement was more evident) all the resulting pictures were good. During continuous shooting I heard the AF adjusting again and again.

	click to show detail

Then, by enlarging the pictures, I saw good detail, hence I can conclude that SAFOX VII works very well, even with fast-moving subjects.

go to part IV

Text and images are Copyright © 2001-2002 by Dario Bonazza