Camera Labs

Hello again,

The first photo is when we were in a car moving at 100kmph in the late evening at around 6:00pm, I used my Canon400D 18-55mm kit lens to show the speed. However the pic is not sharp as the lens dint have the IS.



This second pic taken when I saw a big flock of pigeons being fed by a person, again non of the pigeons were in sharp focus, how should I achieve this?



Please suggest.

_________________
Phani Kumar

60mm Refractor,
150mm Newtanion Reflector,
18-55 mm Kit Lens, 55-250mm, M42 MC Helios 77M-4 50mm F1.8
Canon 400D.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/phani_astronomy/

I assume in the shot #1 you wanted the front of the car to be in focus while the road to be out of focus with motion blur. Am I right?
If I am, there are better ways to do that.

1- Stop the car.
2- Put it on Neutral.
3- Put the camera on AV mode and Timer 2s. 0.5" is good to start with.
4- Put the camera on the console and shoot.
5- Ask a friend to pull the car with his hands a few meters.

You'll be amazed with the results

_________________
Canon 40D and lots of lenses.
my Flickr

Short answer for both is faster shutter. Assuming you'll run out of aperture quickly, that may mean setting high ISO.

IS might help get the car sharper, but the moving road wouldn't be. Faster shutter has same effect. So if you were to repeat this, basically as you're not moving (much) relative to the car, that should reduce motion blur quicker than the road, which should remain a blur for much longer while you're driving. Consider DoF too.

On pigeons, it depends on how sharp you want to try getting them, around 1/1000s should freeze them fairly well although the wings may still blur somewhat unless you go faster still. I can't look at the exif in the image but either you had a bad case of shakes or that was a quite long exposure!

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Canon DSLRs: 7D, 5D2, 1D, 600D, 450D full spectrum, 300D IR mod
Lenses: EF 35/2, 50/1.8, 85/1.8, 135/2+SF, 28-80 V, 70-300L, 100-400L, TS-E 24/3.5L, MP-E 65, EF-S 15-85 IS
3rd party: Zeiss 2/50 makro, Samyang 8mm fisheye, Sigma 150 macro, 120-300 f/2.8 OS, Celestron 1325/13
Tinies: Sony HX9V.

hi there,

Alex_Venom: Yes I wanted the car to be in focus. I understand what exactly you are saying.. since we keep the shutter open for 2s, and even though the car is moving very very slowly, it will give that speed effect right?

However, as popo pointed out IS might have also helped me in this case.

Popo: Ok, higher ISO and but dint really understand why Faster shutter, because if I use faster shutter, then the road might seem stable and might not give a sense of motion to it! or am I understood it wrongly.. can you explain

Again, the road was taking a turn and there is a curve and if wanted car to be in focus then how best could I have done the composing part?

Yes, I will try the pigeons again with faster shutter and see what happens.

_________________
Phani Kumar

60mm Refractor,
150mm Newtanion Reflector,
18-55 mm Kit Lens, 55-250mm, M42 MC Helios 77M-4 50mm F1.8
Canon 400D.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/phani_astronomy/

On the car pic, I'm making a bit of an assumption here which might or might not work. The idea is use a fast enough shutter so you can photograph the car without motion blur. The hope is the speed of the car will still allow the rest of the world to move and blur.

_________________
Canon DSLRs: 7D, 5D2, 1D, 600D, 450D full spectrum, 300D IR mod
Lenses: EF 35/2, 50/1.8, 85/1.8, 135/2+SF, 28-80 V, 70-300L, 100-400L, TS-E 24/3.5L, MP-E 65, EF-S 15-85 IS
3rd party: Zeiss 2/50 makro, Samyang 8mm fisheye, Sigma 150 macro, 120-300 f/2.8 OS, Celestron 1325/13
Tinies: Sony HX9V.

ooo, ok I got it now, that sounds simple enough. I'll try it this time around.

_________________
Phani Kumar

60mm Refractor,
150mm Newtanion Reflector,
18-55 mm Kit Lens, 55-250mm, M42 MC Helios 77M-4 50mm F1.8
Canon 400D.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/phani_astronomy/

Sorry to tell you, but IS wouldn't do anything for those pictures!

Think of it like this, the whole time the shutter is open it's recording data -- if the camera isn't PERFECTLY still it'll be recording data as it's slightly moving, which means you'll get the same effect as you did above.

For example, the 2nd shot you took the picture as or before the started flying and the camera continued to record data as they were moving which blurred them... But it doesn't end there. The background isn't still either, so your hands must have jerked a little too. Generally you need to make the shutter speed quicker to get better results, unless you're being aristic with slow shutter speeds. If you are trying slow shutter speeds, you need to keep the camera perfectly still which is tripods were invented.

Good luck!

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50D (2) | BG-E2N (2) | 580EX II (3) | RS-80N3 | 70-200L | 24-105L | EF-S 10-22 | Pocket Wizard Plus II (4)



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