Going from still to moving??

[Karen C]

Please can someone tell me an easy tip that will allow me to change my settings from worring about dof - as in the first shot of a gull (I think!) to getting a fast shutter speed for the second pic - which as you can see I did not manage to change anything - both at f11 1/100th at 300mm !!. By the time I have thought about what to change the stupid bird has gone - there must be an easy couple of clicks? or is it just practice practise......

Karen

[Who's_E]

Re: Going from still to moving??

Karen,

The bird in the first picture is not sharp because you have camera shake, rather than a lack of DOF.


Short tip:

Use f7.1, increase the ISO by a stop. Check the DOF preview if you have one.

Maybe open the aperture to f5.6 and concentrate on the eyes/head.



Long tip:

A general rule of thumb in Fourthirds terms is that you need to have a shutter speed equal to the 1/ 2x focal length of the lens. (This is the similar to the 35mm principle but Fourthirds has a 2x crop factor so your 300mm lens is effectively 600mm.)

With a 300mm lens, you would have needed a 1/600th shutter speed for a sharp photo of the standing bird.

Using the following site will give you a guide to DOF at given apertures and distances. f11 is a small aperture and will give you quite a large depth of field but it also makes the shutter speed very slow.

http://www.dofmaster.com/dofjs.html

At 10 metres, f11 will give you a 37cm depth of field on a 300mm lens so you can afford to open the aperture a bit. f7.1 gives 23cm which would probably cover this bird and give you 1 1/3 stops more shutter speed. Crank the ISO up a stop or two and you would get to something close to 1/600th.


The second bird is moving too fast for 1/100th. You need 1/1000th or so for freezing something that fast moving, especially the wings. It is the same compromise: Opening the aperture reduces the depth of field but lets more light in; increasing the ISO lets more light in but introduces noise.


I hope this helps.

Nick

[David Morison]

Re: Going from still to moving??

Karen, can you tell us what camera/lens combo you are using? There maybe a shortcut available for moving subjects.

David

[Karen C]

Re: Going from still to moving??

Karen, can you tell us what camera/lens combo you are using? There maybe a shortcut available for moving subjects.

David

Hi David
E520 and this was with a 70 - 300 lens
Thanks

[Karen C]

Re: Going from still to moving??

Thanks Nick
So really, if I had got it right for the still shot (larger appeture opening and faster shutter speed) then the moving shot would have been better, but still not perfect.
The trouble is that I "know" all this stuff, but as soon as I have to "quick - take a shot..." I (a) cannot remember what the camera was left on and (b) forget what buttons to click - guess I still have an awful lot to learn :-), but I am enjoyiong it all. Took some photos of son playing American football yesterday, and again had 70-300mm lens on (don't want to get too physically close!!) but did crank up the iso to 400 so that I could get a faster shutter speed - very pleased with the results, so it seems that if I have time to work it out beforehand I can do it :-)

Karen
Karen

[stevednp3]

Re: Going from still to moving??

I recently started using the Myset modes on my E5 (not sure if the 520 has these) but was having the same problem as you, exp with doing weddings, going from outside bright areas to inside low light churches and then to fast moving scenes like the confetti throwing. But now I have myset modes setup for different typical scenes, I have no trouble at all

[David Morison]

Re: Going from still to moving??

Karen you can set "my mode" to use settings suitable for a moving target by pressing and holding the function (Fn) button while shooting. Details for doing this are on page 90 in the E520 manual available here:-

http://resources.olympus-europa.com/...anual%20EN.pdf

David