Manual Focus

A quick question for the serious sports photographers. I was at a high school basketball game tonight and was watching a couple of photographers. They were courtside with the white lenses. While watching them it appeared they were manually focusing while shooting the action. I was just wondering why they wouldn't use auto focus as this seems (at least to me) faster than manual. Maybe I'm missing something.
Randall

You sure it wasn't a zoom?

The white ones don't typically protrude out, and suck back in. My guess is that they were zooming in and out

TRACER wrote in post #15477399
A quick question for the serious sports photographers. I was at a high school basketball game tonight and was watching a couple of photographers. They were courtside with the white lenses. While watching them it appeared they were manually focusing while shooting the action. I was just wondering why they wouldn't use auto focus as this seems (at least to me) faster than manual. Maybe I'm missing something.
Randall

Most likely the "white lenses" were one version or another of the Canon 70-200mm f/2.8 lens, which can be found in use at countless basketball games. One of the rudimentary skills of sports photography is to adjust focal length and framing as the photographer tracks the action. Usually, a photographer will use one hand to guide the camera and trigger the shutter button and have the other hand on the lens barrel to work the focal length ring. Canon SLR cameras haven't needed manual focus for sports photography since the start of the EF-mount EOS era.

Thanks for the responses. This makes more sense to me.
Thanks,
Randall

Yup, I zoom and autofocus constantly.

bpalermini wrote in post #15479169
Yup, I zoom and autofocus constantly.

Me too.

I use manual focus a lot when shooting sports, especially cycling. I pic a spot on the ground, open up the f-stop and use shallow flash. When the rider passes that exact spot that I know will be in focus, I click. I do pan a little to insure to reduce the motion blur.

bpalermini wrote in post #15479169
Yup, I zoom and autofocus constantly.

Me too.

For basketball I typically have a body with the 70-200, and a body with a 24-70
With both bodies I run continuous AF (Servo) and back button focusing (my personal preference, as I have the mk4 bodies setup to use 2 different AF points with 2 different rear buttons) and am constantly running the zoom to frame the images as tight as possible.

I very rarely manual focus, typically only for Macro work, and to stay entertained while shooting cricket (although using the back buttons to focus, if I need the AF, it's only a thumb press away)