E-M1 C-AF Sports examples and settings - Pro Triathlon

Greetings all. I hope this post will help others who are trying to determine settings for C-AF and sports.

I have been trying to get the best out of the E-M1 for sports, and had a chance to test settings at the World Triathlon competition this week in Edmonton, Alberta. These shots are from the Mens pro race, which had the best triathletes in the world competing. Humbling, to say the least.

I stood at a corner where the bikes would be flying through, with a lot of fast changes.

The first 4 and then the next 5 are from a sequence shot at 4fps following the bikers as they came at me. These are named "mens elite".

The second set of 15 was shot at 6fps, just shooting into the bikes as they passed across the frame. They're named "cross-frame focus"

I think they came out reasonably well. Pictures can be seen here:

http://www.dpreview.com/galleries/7011433061/albums/edmonton-triathlon-oncoming

Settings:

• E-M1 with 12-40 lens
• Center AF - small focus point
• C-AF, with F1 as back-button to trigger AF-ON function assigned
• Face detection off
• Rec View (picture) review - off
• CAF Tracking - OFF - this may surprise some folks, but in this case, it freed up the camera to refocus constantly, which this situation required, I think. I tried a few with tracking at normal and high and that might work for a single object, but not for this situation. I'm not sure, to be honest.
• Shutter priority - I was switching between this and manual based on lighting conditions and DOF desired.  For other shots I force 400 shutter to get some wheel motion, but this was mostly to test AF, so I didn't care about shutter speed so much.
• Release Priority C - OFF
• Release lag time - Normal
• Auto-ISO or fixed - sometimes forced ISO to ensure I avoided a low ISO shifting from shade to sunny conditions when panning
• JPG SOOC

I think that's the list. I think the longest sequence I shot was 15 and didn't have any buffer issues.

Comments and discussion on alternative settings for this type of shooting are welcome!!