Tips for shooting fast moving things

[russbeer]

Hi all,

As part of the wifes 30th birthday present i got her tickets to the Dancing On Ice tour at the MEN on Sunday. I'm just along for the ride so she's not on her own, and shes said she'd like some pics of torvill and dean, etc.

Now we're only about 10 rows from the ice, so zooming in won't be hard, but in the past, i've not had great shots when things are moving quite quickly.

Anyone got any tips on what settings i should use? My camera is a fuji s1000fd finepix.

Cheers
Russbeer

[ka$h]

As for aperture and shutter, there are better people about to advise, but, I would suggest a medium to high ISO and maybe a trip out at dusk to take some pics of cars moving in low light and practise your panning. I will be interested to some of the science for this one as I often have a blurry moment in low light conditions and could do with some hard and fast rules to help reduce/eliminate this.

[[wingnut]]

Ok, had a quick look at the specs of your camera and you should be able to get some good ones. For the type of shot you are looking to take you will need a fast shutter speed and shallow depth of field. Your camera is capable of shootingh at an iso of 3200 but the image quality will be reduced down to 3mp, so stick with 1600. Whack the camera into aperture priority mode and dial in the lowest number you can (F/5 I think on zoom, f/2.8 on wide), hopefully this will give fast enough shutter speed to capture the action. Oh don't forget to up the ISO speed to 1600. Don't worry if your shots are noisy at 1600 there's plenty of software to help reduce the noise when you get home.
ALways try to fill the frame with the subject and reduce background clutter, this will make for much more pleasing shots, rather than have the lady three rows behind the action in the shots picking her nose. Best advice is to track them around the ice and try to get a shot that way.Your camera does do continuous AF so tracking them will be easy.

Good luck mate and if I can offer any other help just ask.

[russbeer]

great tips wingnut cheers!

and thanks for going to the trouble of checking out my camera so the tips are n00bproof too! Starman!

[{{909}}]

just to add to wingys post, often dropping the megapixels improves high ISO/noise issues so using the camera at 3megapix may be a good option even at iso1600 or less, especially if you have no intentions of making large prints (A4ish).
Alot depends on the lighting at the place, even though the scene may look well lit to the human eye, it may be far too dark for the camera to achieve a high shutter speed and that is your priority for fast moving objects. It may be an option fo use the camera at its highest mpix and at its widest (least zoomed) which will let your camera use its widest aperture, although this may not let you get that close to the skaters, you should be able to crop the image down if the quality is good enough.

You could always goto a park at sunset time or when its pretty overcast and try tracking kids playing footy or something, although dont hide in the bushes and do it

[dpSparhawk]

Excellent tips here. I've never thought of dropping the MP's down when shooting in a higher ISO.

Will try that one myself sometime.

[russbeer]

Thanks for the tips guys. They worked well.

I've upped some of the pics now in the photos and artwork section.

[d3xt0r]

Thanks for that WIngnut and happy birthday to whoever...