What am I doing wrong?

[LowSpark]

When trying to capture action shots...

pan along with your subject, snap gently so as to not jerk the camera and follow through.....

I had trouble when I first started taking pictures of rc cars on the track and practiced this technique... the results I got with my p/s were great. Now I am learning to do it all over again with my 20d...

don't worry to much about this or that lens.... learn the techniques required to make the shots you want.

[Justin]

Hey Spark, what range of shutter speeds do you typically use for this kind of action shot, say.... somebody riding quickly by on a bicycle to that of a waterskiier flying by at 40 mph? For the cycling shots I was in the 1/40 - 1/50 range with my 20D and I think that was a tad too slow.... background blurr was definately there, but the subject was a bit blurred as well.

[MicWayWal]

Originally Posted by Roy

Camera Shake? How do I take a shot like this and keep it in focus?



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Are you kidding? Quit when you are ahead.
It IS in focus. This is a wonderful action photograph that has all the feeling that an action photo should have. Sure you can not count the hairs on the dog. But is that what you want? All technique and no feeling. Go for the feeling. It pays better and will get you more recognition and in the end more satisfaction.

[LowSpark]

Justin, with my old camera (Olympus 4040) I would set it at 1/500, iso100, and let the apreture adjust for the amount of light. It seems I got the best shots at f5. I would turn the exposuer compensation down to -3, (-7 if bright sunlight refecting off the cars due to the angle)

Having owned my 20d for a week.. I have alot to re-learn (where in the hell is the exposuer comp button?, how to control all those damn red focusing lights,....). The buffering is another critter.. now at the end of the day instead of haveing 40-50 pics to go through, I have 150 LOL. But I am starting with the same settings as above and got a some decent shots last Saturday for the first time taking the camera to the track.

I practiced with my Oly by sitting on the sidewalk outside and shot pics of the cars passing by. Zooming in on the wheels and trying different settings. My objective was to capture clear pictures but allowing the motion of the wheel to blur. I could not see the detail in my led screen, so I would go home, download and review them, and then go back and fine tune my adjustmenst some more...

a steady lead, snap and follow through is most important, regardless of your settings or you will get a blurred picture. The buggy in the following picture is going WOT (wide open throttle), doing probably 45 mph.

[LowSpark]

[LowSpark]

for reference, the buggy is 16" long, 12" wide and approx 5" tall

[Justin]

Tried to post this last night but the forum was crashing on me...

That's a great pic, did you say you were at 1/500? I'm amazed that you get that much background blur at 1/500.... how close were you to the car (ie: how fast were you panning)?

Yeah I'm still learning my 20D as well but I'm getting a handle on it. The large wheel on the back will adjust exposure compensation in the manual or semi-auto modes. You do have to have the ON button ALL the way on (the two stage on button seems stupid to me), and as far as I know you have to depress the shutter button halfway to activate the menu settings mode. It's actually very quick to do... shutter button down to halfway to bring up all of your settings and spin the wheel. Just remember that turning the camera off and on again will NOT reset it to 0 exposure compensation... a fact I found out the hard way a few times. As far as all of the flashing focus points.... I set one of my custom functions such that I can use the little hat switch to immediately set a manual focus point if I want. Once you do that, you won't have a lot of flashing points because the camera will only be using that one point. In order to set the auto focus point selection mode again, you have to remember to hit the little focus mode button above the hat switch. The 20D does have a nice feature (I'm sure other cameras do as well) where it will flash the focus points when you're focusing in manual mode to let you know what's in focus. And yes, you can't see much on that little 1.8" LCD screen can you? Grrr.... :)

And yeah, I agreed with Mic in my first post, I like the picture of the Flying Black Lab :)

[pfritzd]

nice shots Cliff ... and thanks for putting down your settings ... time to go out and practice ... Oh, and I know it is you b/c I recognize your avatar from the Grid ... scared me ;)

[LowSpark]

Patrick, guess I can't hide anymore :-)

Justin, I was about 5 ft away from that car... panning to keep up with the car going 45 mph... half the time, with the shutter lag of my old camera I would get a front wheel or wing 'only' shot LOL

I'm hoping with the new camera to take it up a notch in quality, and should increase my 'keeper' percentage significantly.

thanks for the tips, I have now read the manual, taken a few crib notes and I are ready to become a photog~dude :D

[Justin]

Yeah I'm intimately familiar with shutter lag on my old Nikon Coolpix 4300... LUCKY to get a waterskiier in frame...

Have fun!