mirrorless good enough for motorsports or do I need dslr

[browgk]

I have a canon eos 40d which I'm looking to replace. I have a lumix gm1 for general photography but it's not up to trackside Motorsport use. I keep being told mirrorless camera AF systems will not match a dslr for tracking fast action, with possible exception of Sony a6300. My question is, would an OMD 5 mk2, whilst not a match for a 7d mk2 or 80d, be at least as good as my 40d (which would be adequate) for Motorsport work? Most of my shots are 1/1000+ approaches or 1/160 ish pans. The OMD has many other advantages (size, lens sharing) for me, so as long as it was 40d good enough for tracking fast action, I'd be happy.

[Maestro]

I think an E-M5 should be satisfactory, especially if you use the fact that motorsports generally follow a predictable path to your advantage. But if you really need the AF to track a subject as it moves rapidly toward (or away from) you, you may want to consider an E-M1, instead. That said, I've shot motorsports with my GH2 and produced results I found satisfactory by working around this limitation and pre-focusing on a specific area of the track (and stopping down to f8-11; admittedly, this wouldn't be possible for a night race). (And keep in mind that you only need a fraction of a second to pre-focus.)

So unless you're shooting motocross jumps at night and can't position yourself to the side of the ramp...

[browgk]

Thanks. Does the Om-d 5 allow you to fix aperture and shutter speed while ISO is left to vary?

[Maestro]

Supposedly, it does, but this needs to be activated in the menu system.

http://mrfindlayphoto.blogspot.com/2014 ... o-iso.html

http://thumati.com/chronicle/2013/4/7/s ... us-omd-em5