Sports Settings

[Ann Hes]

Hello- I'm new to this digital sports photography. I have a canon xti and 70-200mm f/2.8 L IS USM lens and oh well.... I did some shooting yesterday mountain bike race. i went to try the mode for AV (and shooting around 7pm gloomy) instead of sports mode.
My AV settings is: iso-800, Wb-cloudy, Evaluative metering, AI Servo and multiple shots. Anyways.... it's weird all my photos turn out so crappy as in soooooooo bad that it made me cry. The backgound was sharp the subject i'm shooting was all super blurry what did i do wrong? please help me... isn't the settings or i need to give myself to learn. any opinion will help...thanks!

Ann

[Frog]

What was your f/stop and shutter speed?

[rovowen]

Just a subjection, You have multi-auto-focus points. Your camera may be using one of the outer points and focusing on the background and not the subject.

Newbie here
rovowen

[swmdrayfan]

Don't worry Ann....there are plenty of great sports shooters here, and if you check out the Sports forum, you'll get a lot of help. Keep shooting--don't give up.

[JSPhoto]

Ann,
Jump over to the sports forum and post a couple shots and we'll help you out

JS

[SmartWombat]

iso-800, Wb-cloudy, Evaluative metering, AI Servo and multiple shots. Anyways.... The backgound was sharp the subject i'm shooting was all super blurry

I'd like to know the Aperture and shutter speed.
If you come on over to the Sports forum and upload an image, then we can look at the embedded EXIF information and see what was going on.

My guess is that you held the camera still, and by choosing AV that allowed the camera to choose a slow shutter speed that blurred the riders.
When that happens, you move the camera with the rider and keep them right on the red lit focus point before, during, and after you take the picture.
That should get the rider and bike sharp (except for bumping up & down) and the background blurred.
Why continue panning after you take the image? It stops you giving up the pan and slowing the camera down while it's taking the picture.

[Didache]

Another thing: some cameras have continuous focus. Or, another trick (which I use for cycle racing) is to manually focus on a spot on the road/path and click when they hit it. You could always practice by taking pics of cars etc going down your road.

Mike