Focusing advice, please

If anyone can give me a bit of advice please, I'd be very gratefull

At the weekend we went to an agility show with our dog, and I not only took pics of him, but some of our friends dogs as well. The lens I use is a Nikon 55-200mm, and I set it on the sport setting and continuous picture taking setting, when I had the lens on 105mm the pics were very good (for me), but when I put it up to 200mm the pics were blurred, or at very best not sharp enough to do anything with, was it something I was doing wrong, or should I have also changed the other settings as well, or is the lens on the way out, it was set on autofocus and I gave it time to focus, I didn't just keep clicking and focus in closer, any ideas, please

Thanks guys

When you shot at 200mm what was your shutter speed??

To prevent blur when shooting at a higher focal range, the general rule is to have a shutter speed = or + than you focal length to prevent blur

So in this case, if your shooting at 200mm, your shutter needs to be 250 or higher

HTH

Thanks K! Some of my shots were coming out blurry too.. so will try your tip!

Thanks KK

I take it the shutter speed is the ISO, this was set on auto, I don't think I can set it to 250, but would 400 do, would this also be ok with the lower focal lengths as well, as Jack will do a course in about 23 seconds and I don't think I could change the setting that quickly

ISO is not the shutter speed it is the amount of light allowed onto the sensor. Shutter speed is as it says the speed at which the shutter works at.

ISO is the same as film speed, the higher the ISO sensitivity the less light needed to make an exposure, allowing higher shutter speed or smaller apertures. The higher the ISO setting the more noise "grain" in the picture. On some cameras there are noise reduction settings for ISO's above 400, such as the Nikon D200.

You also have to take into account the lens f settings, a lens with an f2.8 is going to be loads faster than the normal consumer lens of f3.5-f5.6.

f2.8 lenses cost considerable more as they are designed to take fast action shots whereas the others are mainly for portrait / landscape photos.

Don't forget the greater the distance, in your case the lens at 200mm , camera shake ( holding the camera steady ) becomes more difficult.

So what you should aim for for that agility type of photo is the highest shutter speed , using the right aperture with the lowest ISO setting your camera will allow.

If you use shutter priority setting the aperture will automatically set itself to that shutter speed but the ISO is something that is independent and usually set around 100-400 for most pictures.

If you use aperture priority then the shutter speed will follow that setting, ISO again needs to be set.

With manual settings as it says it enables you to adjust the camera settings - shutter speed-ISo-aperture to what you desire.

Gulp lot in it isn't there.

Best way is to practice different setting on the same subject in different light conditions.

If you download " http://www.opanda.com/en/download/index.html" exif files, when right click with mouse over picture a record of your settings will come up after you click exif on the drop down list.

Bazza

Just to give some idea of what your picture says using opanda. See it records the camera settings, this is just part of the list.

Bazza

that as you can see the camera used was a Nikon D40 - date/time taken 10-5/2008 at10.51.59 sec.s . Also Aperture was at f4.8- shutter speed 1/1250"- ISO 200- focal length 105mm and it was edited using Picasa3.

How about that for a bit of magic? so you can see the settings you used for that photo. If you clicked on advance mode you would get more info.

If you do that on either of the above pics of mine I have left the exif settings on for you to have a look at

Bazza

Thanks Bazza, the only thing it doesn't tell you is what I had for breakfast that morning

Thats ok I didn't understand it either. Basically the further away a subject is the harder to keep the camera still which is when tripods come into use.

For moving subjects there are 2 options = 1 set the focus up on where the subject is going to pass , this will make the subject blurred but good background or 2= pan with the moving subject which makes the background blurred but the subject (hopefully ) in focus.

In this respect the further away the better as trying do that closeup without expensive camera equipment is neigh on impossible.

You don't say how far away the photo was taken from but if i may suggest trying to take the picture a little further away , then rely on editing to expand the picture without pixalation.
Bazza