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I know this is a bit big, but I'm posting it since posting 60+ trash photos would be far worse.
I was trying to do some birds in flight photography with my Nikon D3400 and the AF-P DX NIKKOR 70-300mm f4.5-6.3G ED kit lens at f/8. I tried every setting possible for manual and auto and could not get a single photo in focus in the 200mm+ range. The AF just seemed to search the entire time regardless of how many point of focus there were or the settings. Manual focusing was too slow since the focus ring isn't a physical connection. To top it off, when you focus one direction it is slower than focusing the other direction; one is more sensitive than the other it seems like a PC mouse that has left and right sensitivity really slow but up and down sensitivity too fast.
So, I switched lenses to an old plastic Tamron 70-210mm f/4 Adaptal-M42 mount I converted to F-mount. It took some practice, especially since the focusing for it has backwards directions from the NIKKOR 70-300mm. I cranked it to 210mm and sat there trying to snap pics of anything flying. I practiced for half an hour and was finally getting pretty good at it.
Here's the lackluster results. Settings for all were exp 1/1000 ISO400 f/8. I should have used exp 1/500, ISO800, or f/4 but I wanted to remove as much motion blur as possible and not delve into ISO noise hell. It was about 7:30pm so things were getting darker. They are all cropped, but not resized, hence the size variance. Some are in perfect focus for the lens and movement, but most are almost in perfect focus or "close."
>The tl;dr version, I'm a bit miffed at my setup. I've exhausted the entire range of possible settings combinations for the D3400 with the 70-300mm f4.5-6.3G kit lens and could get a single fucking photo in focus. I can't even zone focus with it very well since getting a bird in flight at that sweet spot of focus is pretty much extreme luck one would fly into the zone. Yet, the cheap ass vintage lens from the 1980s can work well.
