Does anyone know how to take good action shots i.e. horses jumping etc? I have tried before, but most times the horses were blurry!

I have a digital camera, and also an SLR manual camera.

Any advice would be great!

Originally posted by designbunny
Does anyone know how to take good action shots i.e. horses jumping etc? I have tried before, but most times the horses were blurry!

I have a digital camera, and also an SLR manual camera.

Any advice would be great!

In a nutshell, it's all about shutter speed: fast speed will "freeze" movement, and the faster the shutter, the sharper the image will be. The slower the speed, the more motion blur you will get. Of course, a bit of motion blur is often desirable because it gives an impression of movement.

Use your cameras on manual settings, or on shutter priority, and set the speed at 1/500th sec or faster (totally depends on how fast the subject is moving and your position in relation to it).

also consider "panning" - moving the camera along with the subject. This blurs the background whilst keeping the subject sharp.

Digital camera is ideal for pracing this as you can view your results right away and not worry about the expense of wasting film on a practice.

Stand by the side of a road and photograph moving cars, following the movement of the car with the camera and squeezing the shutter as it passes

:) damn one thread i know something about and u guys get there sooner..

what kinda SLR do you have??

Speed is one thing but a fast lens is essential in other words something that lets a lot of light in quickly you need to look at the lowest aperure setting you can get. In all fairness you'll probably have more look with the SLR as at least you can get different lenses for it. I have both I keep my SLR's for the serious stuff bit use my digital a canon G2 for the fun stuff, the main reason for buying this was that it has an f2 lens which for a digital is pretty fast. to give you an idea of how good it is take a look at http://groups.msn.com/SheffieldRUFCunder16s all these were taken with the G2. There are a combination of static and action shots. So for the digital go for fast lens and high pixel rating because unless your sat on top of your subject you will want to enlarge, believe me.

when I am using my auto everything digicam to try and capture motion I frequently underepose the image to get a faster shutter speed, or if the objective is sufficienltly far away I will half depress the shutter to get focus and AE lock with the camera pointed slightly skyward. This makes the camera use a narrower aperture and a faster shutter speed.

With the SLR, get a right 35mm or 50mm lens and get up as close as you can, set the eposure to 1/250 and the aperture to match.

Hit the shutter release when the horse is at apogee, so it is only moving in one plane, not two.

Originally posted by designbunny
Does anyone know how to take good action shots i.e. horses jumping etc? I have tried before, but most times the horses were blurry!

I have a digital camera, and also an SLR manual camera.

Any advice would be great!

I agree with most of what has already been said.Digital or Slr does not matter the principles are the same. I personally think panning is preferable to a fast shutter speed,I once saw a photo of a racing F1 car with all motion stopped.How boring could have taken the shot in the car park!
Digital cameras very often allow the taking of more than 1 shot at a time, use it.Remember digital cameras have a shutter lag so anticipate.For horse jumping focus and lock on the top of the fence and wait for the horse to arrive.
these are aircraft pictures(sorry no horses on line)
http://www.Daveyre.Aircraft.photoshare.co.nz
Good luck
Horse pics :-
http://www.Daveyre.Sheffieldforum.photoshare.co.nz

hay

you say you have a manual slr so im not sure if the next would be possible cos i dont no much about the manual end of things.
yes i am a photographer but all my cameras have manual and automatic settings and manual and automatic focus. so if possible get your subject in as much light (dark will just take ages to focus and then your subjects gone) select a shutter speed as high as your camera goes- iv found from past experience this works best. then focus it. sometimes i find it faster to have it on automatic because it focusses faster than i do. once youve done all that look for your subject approaching. as soon as youve seen it start clicking away until its gone out of view agian. yes this will waste film but in my eyes it better to have loads of shots to choose even if a lot of them turn out bacd from then three that you cant really tell whats happening. I see it as its better to have 24/36 bad ones than 3/36 alright ones
just my opinion

Originally posted by franc1987
hay

I see it as its better to have 24/36 bad ones than 3/36 alright ones
just my opinion
Really ?What is the cost of having film developed these days?
Digital costs nothing and is reusable.Plus the 3/36 (digital) can almost certainly be improved in PS,PSP or other.No guarantees your 2/36 will be any good.
Can I direct people to this link, all about the joys of hyperfocal distance:-
http://www.dofmaster.com/dofjs.html

£2.99 in boots is it really that bad? or do what i do- develop my own