Official DSLR Photography Thread

Low light FTL. It was hard to focus.

I have a question. How do you guys take pictures of moving things? I went to a small petting zoo yesterday and I had one of 2 problems trying to take pictures of the animals.

1: If I was using auto focus it wouldn't focus quick enough and I'd miss the shot- switch to manual focus and I couldn't get it crisp enough for the shot.
2: What camera mode do you generally use? In manual I couldn't get it set fast enough, and in programmed auto the shots didn't look that great.

Try using a smaller aperture to increase your dof.

Aussie said:

Try using a smaller aperture to increase your dof.

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What would this help me solve? Honest question.

My problem is I'm not sure how to set up the camera quick enough and focus it fast enough before I miss the shot.

Depth of field. A smaller aperture will make the make the focal point more "broad" I guess you could say? Also, what shutter speed are you shooting at? 1/125 is what I try to stay around on 'medium speed' moving things.

On my camera there is also a focus option that the camera will "track" the object and constantly adjust to keep that object in focus. I believe it's AF-C on a Nikkon D3200

Here are the settings I used last time for motion shots:

Light source was a regular afternoon outdoors sunny and cloudy.

Used a f4.5 to 5.6 aperture, bumped the ISO to 800 and set the shutter speed to 1/100 occasionally moving back and forth from that and 1/60.

I kept the ISO at 800 because for my camera and my own opinion that is the separating difference before I start to see too much noise that will bug me. On the subject itself noise is minimal. In motion shots I don't care about noise in a blurry or moving background or foreground too because I think it mixes in well with it.

tork_sd89 said:

Low light FTL. It was hard to focus.

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I like shots that focus you on certain things, Perhaps that's why macro seems to be my stronger point.

Thanks for the advice guys.

I tried Macro again today. I've never seen my cat sleep this soundly before, so I took a few pictures of her. Last time I tried Macro I got some feedback on another forum to try increasing the DOF a little so that it didn't scream that it was taken with a Macro lense.

Sleepy Kitty by Austin Rajki, on Flickr

Nose by Austin Rajki, on Flickr

Those look really good Austin. Great work :thumbs up




An old pic from Hawaii I decided to mess with:

^^^
Aside from adjusting your aperture, ISO and shutter speed;

if you're not using manual focus on the moving objects, switch it up to a continuous autofocus mode. For nikons it will be AF-C and Idk what it would be considered for Canon users.

dopematic said:

^^^
Aside from adjusting your aperture, ISO and shutter speed;

if you're not using manual focus on the moving objects, switch it up to a continuous autofocus mode. For nikons it will be AF-C and Idk what it would be considered for Canon users.

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That's cool! I try and only use manual focus but it screws things up for me most f the time


Agh

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hk5IMmEDWH4

So I was watching this video and it got me curious about the 35mm lens you guys are always talking about, The 18-55mm sucks balls like the sigma he's using on the 1d mk 4, Makes everything blurry and just under detailed after reading it just seems that cheap lenses and zoom lenses do that but it made me curious, Since I usually find myself taking shots around 20-35mm, How is the sharpness on the 35mm?

I think for my next camera I wanna switch to canon because L lenses lol.

I have yet to trust myself with manual focus. Auto focus is typically quite fast with my canon lenses. Nobody mentioned the af points. By default I think most cameras use the multi point auto focus which can make it move around quite a bit depending on the scene. Ive resorted to using a single focus point most of the time, the center one and just recompose.

R13 said:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hk5IMmEDWH4

So I was watching this video and it got me curious about the 35mm lens you guys are always talking about, The 18-55mm sucks balls like the sigma he's using on the 1d mk 4, Makes everything blurry and just under detailed after reading it just seems that cheap lenses and zoom lenses do that but it made me curious, Since I usually find myself taking shots around 20-35mm, How is the sharpness on the 35mm?

I think for my next camera I wanna switch to canon because L lenses lol.

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It's not extremely sharp but also nothing bothersome for me. You'll eventually learn to work with it and produce pics better than you expect.

NemesisCBR said:

I have yet to trust myself with manual focus. Auto focus is typically quite fast with my canon lenses. Nobody mentioned the af points. By default I think most cameras use the multi point auto focus which can make it move around quite a bit depending on the scene. Ive resorted to using a single focus point most of the time, the center one and just recompose.

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I switch back and forth between both. Night time is always on AF though