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Old January 29th, 2011, 08:12 AM
Katkoota Katkoota is offline
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New and need some tips :)

Hello there

I am new here. I enjoy photography as a hobby. I am here trying to learn more about it, and hopefully rely less on some auto settings in the camera.

I enjoy animal photography the most I have a couple of dogs who I love to photograph. I especially enjoy taking action shots of them because these sort of photos speak so much about their personalities.

I took the bellow two photos with my nikon D3

This is Snowy.



and this is Crystal


I also recently got the Nikon D7000 which I am loving so far.

The thing is, I don't like for the camera to do most of the work. I would LOVE LOVE LOVE to be able to get the full control over it. Why? because pictures like these always require at least 10-20 clicks to get the FULL FOCUS on my subjects (my small dogs) while running. Some will come out nicely, but not the sharpness of the subject that I would love to have (the ones that I posted above, is something that I love, but don't get very often). That said, I know that I need to use the manual mode, but I would really appreciate some tips on the best or good settings on the camera to use for such images. I take these sort of photos outdoors all the time, so I rely on natural lighting.

Any tips? Insight? Please feel free to share with me. I will really appreciate that!

Kat
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Old January 29th, 2011, 09:40 AM
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marko marko is offline
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Welcome katkoota!
D3 is an awesome camera!

For moving subjects, stay away from manual mode which in general is a GREAT mode for learning but terrible for tracking a moving subject.

Shutter priority mode is the way to go and my minimum shutter speed would be 1/250 and more likely 1/500 or 1/1000.

Hope that helps!
Marko
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Old January 30th, 2011, 12:00 AM
Katkoota Katkoota is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by marko View Post
Welcome katkoota!
D3 is an awesome camera!

For moving subjects, stay away from manual mode which in general is a GREAT mode for learning but terrible for tracking a moving subject.

Shutter priority mode is the way to go and my minimum shutter speed would be 1/250 and more likely 1/500 or 1/1000.

Hope that helps!
Marko
Thank you so much. If I am understanding this correctly, Shutter speed is the only setting to adjust.
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Old January 31st, 2011, 10:49 AM
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hazelrunpack hazelrunpack is offline
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I have a Nikon D90--not sure how different the setting might be for you, Katkoota, but there is an S setting on the dial that stands for shutter speed. If I put my camera in 'S' mode, it allows me to pre-set the shutter speed. The camera still takes care of the focus, ISO and the aperture. If the light is low, you may need to bump up the ISO a bit (which is a separate setting on my camera--I have to do that through the menu). Still, I've found that if the shutter speed is faster than 1/800, I need a really bright sunny day to get a good image, even at higher ISOs. I'm primarily using a longer zoom lens with a fairly small max aperture--if your aperture is larger you can push the envelope a little more...
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Old February 1st, 2011, 01:19 AM
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Soundy Soundy is offline
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One feature I love on my Canon 40D is the "Custom Function" settings, where you can store all your current settings (and I mean, ALL the current camera settings) for quick access - I have one pre-set for general dog-park photos, and one for action shots.

In both cases, I start with 400 ISO (dropped down to 200 ISO in the summer, when the light is better), and aperture-priority ("Av" on the Canon), then store the setting using my 50mm f/1.8, wide-open, so the camera will always default to the widest aperture with whichever lens I use, then provide the fastest shutter possible.

For the action shots, I set the metering to "partial" (exposure based mainly on about 15% of the center of the frame - especially useful with dark-colored dogs), and the focus type to "AI SERVO", which continually tracks moving objects, along with locking the center focus
point to make sure it tracks the dog and not the background as I pan across.

For the non-action setting, I use "Centerweighted Averaging" for the meter mode, and standard "AI FOCUS" with all focus points turned on as the default.

Great thing with this camera is I can then switch back and forth between the two defaults with a quick twist of the dial

Works fairly well most of the time... this is shot with my buddy's 100-400 F4-5.6L





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