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Question

Importance of faster-Autofocusing in shooting basketball?

Jun 12, 2011 5:02AM PDT

My budget allows for Pentax K-x or Nikon d3100 or... (your suggestion?)

Discussion is locked

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Answer
D3100 vs. K-x
Jun 12, 2011 12:05PM PDT

AF speed between the two is not going to make a difference. But FYI, according to imaging-resource.com testing, the K-x is faster. The high ISO image quality is probably about par also.

A drawback of the K-x is that it does not display which AF points are active.

A drawback of the D3100 is that it does not have an in-body focus drive, so lenses without their own focus motor (such as Nikon's very good prime lenses such as the 50mm and 85mm) won't auto-focus.

Either way, lenses for indoor sports, i.e. wide aperture lenses, are expensive. Depending on how far away you are from the action, the lens could be (much) more expensive than the body. Moving up to the D5100 would not be any better for basketball.

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Answer
re: Importance of faster-Autofocusing in shooting basketball
Jun 12, 2011 12:06PM PDT

It's generally more about the lens than the camera body. Especially since different lenses can sometimes auto-focus at different speeds even on the same camera body. So looking at lenses first, for indoor basketball, you'd probably want a lens in the 70-200mm f2.8 range, but a quick look at:

http://www.pentaximaging.com/camera-lenses/

doesn't seem to list anything suitable. (The 60-250mm f4 might be a little dark, and the 50-135mm f2.8 might be a little short.) Although, I'm not a Pentax guy, so maybe someone else can point you to a more suitable lens. If not, I would go Nikon because they do have a 70-200mm f2.8

If someone can point you to a suitable Pentax lens, then you can compare AF performance with the Nikon combo.

HTH - Mark