I wish I could say I took these with a N-90 or D-100, but I didnt. The camera deserves a lot of the credit. As far as panning and hand held, yes to both. What I do is put my forearm across a fence or something, and rest the lens in the crook of the back of my forearm and hand. It keeps me from grabbing the lens, and gives me a fairly steady pivot point. Yes to auto focus as well. The D2H has 11 auto focus sensors in the frame, and they use some kind of predictive focus, that I havent quite figured out yet. The look on the two guys faces beside me shooting Big Glass was priceless when I let go at 8 frames per second. As far as seeing the Cheetahs up and around, this is a first in 10 years for me. I happened to walk in from shooting Cherry Blossoms at around 9:00 am, and they were setting up to exercise the cats. They have a rag on a motor driven wire that runs around the enclosure at 25+ mph. I still had a hard time catching this girl given all that.

Thanks for the welcome back!!