Focussing with Nikon 70-200VR (1)

bsmotorsport

bsmotorsport

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Stephen
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Evening all, I've never really had any problems with this lens on my D200 but this weekend seemed to throw up an issue that I couldnt seem to work around. I was at santa pod picking off some easy panning shots. I had VR turned ON in normal, A/M and infinity to 2.5m. Camera was on continuous focus (AF-C). As the cars staged I chose a detailed part of the car and half pressed shutter to allow lens to focus. Then as the cars set off I began to pan round and it would drop focus dramatically and took an absolute age to come back in. I think I was on dynamic area focus. I had the focus area pinned to the car the full time so cant understand why it would struggle, Ive never noticed it before. Any suggestions to what I was doing wrong???
thanks
Steve :thumbs:
 
I'd turn the VR off and see if it still happened - with panning, you shouldn't use VR anyway as the whole point of VR is to produce blur-free images hand-held, by moving the camera deliberately you're giving the VR software too much work to do and it's overwhelmed...
 
Was it slightly darker than normal? (It'll be the ash in the atmosphere :))
 
The VR in the lens is supposed to detect which way your panning and disable that plane and only apply VR to the opposite plane, so as Im panning horizontal its looking for any up and down vibration. Its never struggled before which is whats concerning me. Ambient light was great.
 
OK...not really looked into it too much as I generally only use it for slo-oooooow shutter speeds in low light...like 1/60th at 200mm and 1/30th at 70mm and below that...
At anything over 1/100th, I generally switch it off...
 
Ok, cue the regular argument... but just to try and supress it a touch, lets keep anyone's comments to those that have used the 70-200 VR1 for motorsport...

Right, ready?

It sucks... it will mess up your images and cause softness and weirdness. Turn it off.

That was a partly political broadcast on behalf of the Motorsport Togs Hate VR Party
 
desantnik said:
Ok, cue the regular argument... but just to try and supress it a touch, lets keep anyone's comments to those that have used the 70-200 VR1 for motorsport...

Right, ready?

It sucks... it will mess up your images and cause softness and weirdness. Turn it off.

That was a partly political broadcast on behalf of the Motorsport Togs Hate VR Party
Click to expand...

Another vote for Motorsport Togs Hate VR Party - switch it off
 
Really? I've always felt it helped, maybe the placebo affect though, might try a full day without it then. Ive never had an issue with the pitcures it takes, always been plenty sharp enough, it was just this delayed focussing that wound me up as for the 1st time I was missing shots I wanted and was waiting for the focus to lock in,its never done that, its always been pretty much instant. Gonna have a good play at panning this weekend with VR off and on.
cheers
Steve
 
VR off for a start.
Did you have it set to only take picture if in focus ? if you did change to release and focus
21 point Dynamic focus may help.
 
Mine is normally switched off as well :)
 
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