The *Official Photography Thread*

Well I tried some more panning shots this weekend but I think I used to slow of a shutter speed for my ability lol. Oh well this was the best one of about 20 attempts, still not really happy about it.

 

^^^its not bad...a little soft. What shutter you use?

 

1/125

That was a tricky spot because the riders were jumping so I had to follow them up and to the side.

 

The biggest problem is the bush. It does look but it's not from the shutter speed (although you could probably go up in speed still). It's hard to tell where the focus spot is (if you have the canon software installed, it will show it to you--I looked and it's not (with the version I have) in the exif data of this frame.

I'm going to go with technique and suggest the following. First, you were shooting at a focal length of 55mm which means that you staying within the 1/focal length guideline (or 1/55s) for shutter speed. Using 1/focal length means you'll generally be OK with regard to shake, etc. when hand-holding the camera.

Make sure the camera is in Sport or AI focus mode--this allows the camera to maintain focus on moving subjects. I think the Rebel term is "sport". I also like to use center point focus--move the focus to the center point only. Why center? Because I know that as long as that point is on the subject, that's my focus. If you let it decide, all bets are off. Next, set the camera in Tv mode and set the shutter speed to 1/500th. Shoot a few frames, set the shutter to 1/250 and shoot a few more frames. Repeat this until the frames look soft or are blurry. That helps with setting your upper and lower shutter speed limits (upper being static spokes/background and lower being out of focus subject).

When you're panning, it is important to pick the rider up with a 1/2 press on the shutter, follow the bike, press the shutter and keep following until the shutter closes. More often than not, stopping the panning motion where you want to capture the subject will make for blurry subjects.

Back to the bush. the reason I'm suggesting the bush is that often times, auto focus picks up things in the foreground because they're between the camera and subject. This will through the focus off too so you need to be aware of them.

What event were you shooting? Desert racing is fun stuff to watch.

 

Wow thanks for the advice.

I was in AV mode and I stopped it down to f/14 and dropped the ISO to 100 to get the long shutter. I did have it set to the center focus point only and on AI servo.

I agree the bush was a problem, but there was really no way around it without getting dangerously close to the riders.

Here's another taken in an easier spot:


And yeah it was a harescramble and I was actually racing until this happened


So I made the best of the rest and practiced with the camera a bit.

 

The YZ shot looks sharper than the KX250 (BTW, a friend just bought a 2011 with 12h on it for $3500).

Keep Throwing Money I have to say, that does not look cheap to fix. Did it happen off a jump?

 

meh did what I could with these, not real happy with the outcome, those things are gas powered, they do easily +60 mph, plus they are quickly jumping up and down and change course quickly depending how they hit the water, so they are a pain in the ass to get a close up picture due to how unpredictable they are. I used a Tokina F/2.8 80-200, I like the lens but its metal and weight about 5lbs, but I'm in a budget and its cheaper than the equivalent sigma or tamron.

 

a little bit faster shutter speed on those.

how fast were they going? you were shooting at 1/2500 and theyre still blurry?

 

yup, but thats about as fast I could get it, I could have gone up on the ISO but it would have come out noisy (pics are cropped) and lower F would have been a pain in the ass to get in focus. my shaky hands don't help either.

 

how do you like that pentax k-x?

 

Its good if you are in a budget/beginner since pentax uses the same "K" mount since a long long time ago and the shake reduction is in the body, you can use old manual lenses that you can find cheap on ebay, I even use lenses from the 1970s. They have some good quality old lenses specially primes M series. For example I use a 50mm F/1.7 that cost me about $50, the equivalent of a modern one with AF is for sure above $500, but the camera does have its quirks, AF speed is lame, it uses AA although is not that big of an issue I can get over 700 pictures. ISO control has had some good ratings. Although it has the HDR feature I rarely use it, plus if you want HDRs you can get better results by doing it yourself. Overall I think for the price range of this camera, it has the best bang for the buck. Once I get more experience I will see if they come out with something better than the K-5 otherwise I would probably change brands.

 

yeah i hear its better than its competitors in the price range.

if/when you upgrade will you stick with pentax? or will you venture out?

because i wouldnt mind playing with an A900 from sony one day.

its basically a D3s for a fraction of the cost.. And sony has some awesome skin tones. AND they use minolta, and zeiss lenses. wich are both pretty good.

 

I would love a YZ but I do absolutely LOVE the KTM motor. the suspension definitely needs work though.

It actually happened in a small section of whoops at the base of a huge hill, I was halfway up the hill when all the sudden the shaft pulled out of the body and wedged in there leaving me with no suspension travel and a stink bug stance.
It is most likely because of the moron that I had revalve the suspension because I know of one other bike that did the same thing that he had just worked on.

Sorry for the thread jack everyone

 

since this is a photography thread, here's the hill:

 

Woops! I love my 530EXC.

Nice picture of the hill

 

You have shutter speeds from 500 through 3200 which should be enough to get sharp images. I think this might just be focus related.

 

thought this had some cool dynamic range...

Encinitas, CA by TheyPhotographic.com, on Flickr

 

It's nice. I like the way it goes from light to dark.

 

i did a lot of burning on the clouds...But no-one needs to know that

 

few from tonight.