What am I doing wrong? (cycling pic)

[AXracing]

I am no photographer but have now got my girl friends old Nikon D60 so I took it with me to the cycling over the weekend. At first it was getting mad speed blearing even in its action mode. I messed about a bit with different lenses and setting. I ended up upping the shutter speed and then upping the ISO and it looked right on the cameras LCD screen. But when I got home they looked like this.




They look all fuzzy and just generally quite poor. Can anyone tell me what am I likely doing wrong?

Thanks

[Gordi]

i would have had the fastest shutter speed possible mate. Just use shutter priority mode on the camera n it will sort the aperture for you. Also to get these shorts right you would need to use the panning technique, focus in on a spot that you will be shooting and lock the focus then pan alonf with the cyclists and snap. Heres some infor as ive probably explained it crap.

http://adcuz.co.uk/how-to-articles/h...s-motor-sport/

[Pieface]

A High ISO a lot of the times brings out grainy pictures, that's why.

[Slugshead]

Lot of the time, bad quality photos can be down to, high ISO (makes it grainy) and another factor can be down to the focusing (blurred)

I cannot see the photos becuase im in work and they are blocked, weird i know!

But from what i read it sounds like one of the above things

[jaybiss]

As others have said, a high iso will make the photos grainy.

You will also be limited by your lens aperture. A lens with an aperture of 2.8 will let in far more light than a lens with an aperture of 5.6. You need a pretty fast lens to shoot in sports halls.

Unfortunately i cant retrieve the exif data out of your images, are you able to tell us this as it will help to diagnose your problem.

[AXracing]

Thanks for the help guys. I have chatted to a few other people today and they all agreed with what you have said about I was using to high ISO. That and I am useless at focusing. Looks like I will have to practice my focusing and save up for a lens with a lower “f” number if I am planning on taking indoor action shots.

[Barry123]

Originally Posted by jaybiss

A lens with an aperture of 2.8 will let in far more light than a lens with an aperture of 5.6

four times the light... so if you have a shutter speed of 1/100 with f/5.6 you could have 1/400 at f/2.8... with sports thats the difference between getting a reasonable shot and getting a blurry mess.

Originally Posted by AXracing

Thanks for the help guys. I have chatted to a few other people today and they all agreed with what you have said about I was using to high ISO. That and I am useless at focusing. Looks like I will have to practice my focusing and save up for a lens with a lower “f” number if I am planning on taking indoor action shots.

As Jay said, it's hard to be specific about the problem you've had (can you upload the full sized versions unedited?), although it looks like a combination of:
High Iso - thus a grainy, low detail, low contrast image.
low shutter speed
poor focus
poor lens optics

Again, because I don't know the settings I can only offer some basic guidelines for sports:
Use a single point focus, rather than allowing the camera to choose where the camera focuses.
Use a continuous/tracking focus
follow the subject as you take a photo rather than holding the camera still i.e. panning.

This might be a bit too much but...With static images, most people use a rule of thumb regarding minimum
shutter speed in order to get a sharp image.

The guide is:

shutter speed = 1/(chosen focal length * 1.6)

so if you have chosen a 100mm lens, then your shutter speed is:

shutter speed = 1/(100 * 1.6) = 1/160

that 1/160 is the minimum you should be shooting at... so if you're particularly shakey, then you might want 200, 250, 320 even.

Now depending on your chosen subjects and sports, you will need shutter speeds even higher 400, 500, 640 range minimum, to capture the image.

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[AXracing]

Thanks for the help Ads. I will try and give the info you ask for but don't really know what I am talking about here so please forgive my ignorance. I am not to positive how to upload the full unedited photo. I tried uploading to photobucket but it shrunk it down in size.

http://i243.photobucket.com/albums/f...m/DSC_0713.jpg

If it helps the original size was 4,934,986 bytes and dimensions of 3872 x 2592. This photo was taken with a Nikon D60, Mode wheel set to “M”, lens was a Nikon/Nikkor 55-200 AF-S F/4-5.6, shutter speed was 1/200 I think possibly a little bit more, the ISO was 1600 I think. I do not recall at what zoom it was.

Sorry for being a bit vague but I took some 1000 photo and was trying all sorts so messed about with the settings a lot. I am slowly working my way through them all to see if any came out any better.

The biggest problem I was getting was I would get speed blurring if I slowed the shutter speed down. So I speeded it up but then the photos went really dark. To compensate I had to up the ISO right up. At times if I was trying to zoom right in the camera was telling me something along the lines of there was not enough light.

[jaybiss]

In your photobucket photo your aperture was 5.6 as your lens was zoomed in at 200mm. The larger the aperture number the less light the lens lets in so to get more light in you would either slow the shutter speed down or up the iso. Cause its a fast moving sports shot the only option you had was to up the iso other wise you would end up with a blurred mess.

I wouldnt say you are doing anything wrong, you just havent got the correct equipment for that envioronment imo.

also, what the hell is going on in your avatar? did you get the image off google or something?

[AXracing]

Thank Jay its nice to know I am not totally useless. I will have to stick with lower zoom next time or if I can get close enough to the track I have a Nikon/Nikkor 50 AF-S f1.8 that by the sounds of things will work a lot better as it should let me run a lot lower ISO.

The avatar was nicked from a bike forum some time ago. The guy in the Saxo was on his phone or something like that if I remember correctly. Some other guy posted a photo of a 106 where I motorbike had gone though the middle of it. It looked like the bike had almost cut the car totally in two. Very frightening stuff.

[Ryanp]

Didnt know you were a cycling fan, hoy had another good weekend.

Basically you were in the worst enviroment possible for someone without mega £££ invested in gear.

You need decent focal length, fast glass and very good iso capabilities so you were going to be having it hard from the start.

The 50mm might have been good for some panning though

[AXracing]

Yes I love the sport from 20” all the way up to 700c all good to for me. I was racing bikes way before I ever raced a car. Though don't race either any more. Well apart from the Mega Avalanche last year. Hoy was great. He absolutely anialated the rest of them. I cant get near the speeds he averages even for only a second though I wish I could lol

The lenses were borrowed from Laura so I may have to save up and get my self a good lens though they do look to cost a small fortune. There are cheaper ones such as the Sigma and Tamron 70-200mm F2.8 that cost about half the price of the Nikon lenses but I am guessing its like the rest of life and you get what you pay for.

[Ryanp]

Sigma 70-200s are actually pretty good if you get a good copy, they just produce more duff set ups than nikon would, so be prepaired to try a few in a shop.

I have a sigma 300 2.8
2x sigma fisheyes
have had a sigma 10-20 and the only one ive had problems with was one of the fisheyes i bought second hand.

also remeberd the sigma 300 shat itself the day I bought it second hand dead AF motor, guy who sold it helped pay though