Since there are so many of us that are new to the world of digital photography I thought everyone could benefit from a thread for general questions. I've had many along the way, but never felt they were important enough to warrant a new thread. Please feel free to ask any questions you may have no matter how big or small as I'm sure someone on here, at one time or another, ran into the same thing. Also, if anyone has any random tips or pointers to throw out there, please post them here too.
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To start it off....
What is the reason that I can only go up to 1/250 shutter speed w/ flash on? What if I have a backlit scene and I want to use the flash as a fill flash, but will overexpose w/ that slow of a shutter speed?
When shooting action photos (ie softball game) what do you set your focus points on? I had it set to automatic (i guess thats what its called - where the camera figures out the best focal points) but missed a few good shots because it was focusing behind the intended target. -
I have the same problem. I want a center focus point for action shots and camera tends to focus where it wants to some times no matter what setting I use.Originally posted by AggieHunter View PostComment
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Sometimes the type of lens is just not fast enough to focus on the type of action you are trying to shoot. Sometimes the guy doing the pointing doesn't have the focus sensors pointed on the action he is trying to shoot. I find sometimes that if I'm using a long focal length lens and trying to shoot sports action that it sometimes auto focuses on a point behind the intended action because of my error. I have had to learn to make sure that the intended subject is in the center of my auto focus sensors or it will hit another spot. I don't know what kind of camera or lens you are using but practice making fast shots and keeping the subject in the center of the frame when you shoot the picture. I use a Canon D MK 11 with a 300 mm F2.8 for baseball shots. That's about as fast as you can get for a camera and a lens and I still get some shots that are out of focus. From what I can tell, it's my fault that they are out of focus.Comment
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You have to turn your flash (If you use Canon) to HSS or High Speed Sync mode to get the flash to sync higher than 1/250. I believe that with Canons, you can also change it in the custom function settings as well.Originally posted by AggieHunter View Post
The reason why the shutter speed tops out at 1/250 is that the flash duration is too slow compared to the shutter speed. With teh standard output, you can typically sync with anything below 1/250 - above that you get black banding in the images because the shutter speed is faster than the flash. Therefore, High Speed Sync was developed.Comment
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It will probably be helpful if you simply use the center focusing point. Again, on Canon, that's the most accurate of the points.Originally posted by AggieHunter View Post
Or, try and get parallel to the action and just manually focus. I probably manually focus 75% of all of my shots.
The problem with autofocus is that while it works pretty well, it doesn't know what you're shooting a picture of.Comment
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Thanks Russell! I hadn't thought about that with the flash.
I'll have to try the center focus point. I was flipping back through a lot of my pictures and on a fast shot I have most all of them centered up anyway. As for the manual focus... If I'm understanding this correctly you're saying that if I want a picture of the 3rd baseman then just get even w/ him, focus and wait for the ball to be hit? I've been trying to anticipate where the ball is going to go based on the batter and what they usually do and focusing on something in that general direction on AF. Part of it may be as mentioned above that my lens doesn't focus fast enough.Comment
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I use the center focus point 90% of the time. The only time I move to another point is if I am trying to frame the shot a certain way, and the subject is not in the center. For example, in this shot I wanted the batter to be in focus. If I had used the center point, the fence would have been in focus, not the players. Therefore I moved the point to the right and centered it on the batter. I could have also manually focused, but then I would not have been able to auto-focus on any action on the field, if the ball was put into play. I also could have used focus lock after focusing, and then recomposed but I'm not up to multitasking that far yet.
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This one explains why you have a maximum flash sync speed:Originally posted by AggieHunter View Post
As for the focus on action sports you really should be using manual focus for "fixed" action sports like baseball, softball etc where you know where the action will be taking place such as the batter swinging at a pitch. You know where they are going to be so you can pre-focus on the batter and concentrate on the shutter release. Autofocus is more useful on the more dynamic sports such as football, soccer, hockey.Comment
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Thanks for the pointers so far!
What is a good starting point for settings with an external flash? ISO, aperature, shutter speed.... I was trying to take pictures at a wedding this weekend and each shot seemed like it was a blind shot in the dark (no pun intended). Is there a good starting point that I can go to? Is there a way to see my metering w/ a flash?
Not sure what these settings are called for Nikon, but w/ Canon: When using AIServo or AIFocus, lets pretend the object is moving closer to me. The camera will stay focused on the object as it changes distance. If I zoom out as the object gets closer, will this mess up the camera's focusing? Same thing for an object moving away if I zoom in.Comment
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