Help with action shots

[dennylee60]

Hello all,
I need a some help with taking action photos. A friend asked me to take some pictures of him swing dancing by the beach today and they all came out a little overexposed as shown below. I took these around 2:00 PM and the sky was bright with lots of clouds, causing the sunlight to come in and out. On top of that we were right by the water so I was getting a ton of reflections. I took this one on aperture priority mode, with a 70-300 Sigma zoo lens at F5 1/1250 sec shutter.



This one was taken F/8 at 1/200.



On one instance I tried going with a really high F-stop but the shutter speed was too slow and everything came out fuzzy. Should I go completely manual? Any suggestions on how I do better? Thanks you.

[jorgemonkey]

Good old swing dancing. Looks like they are Lindy Hopping? One thing you could do (correct me if I'm wrong someone) is use your exposure compensation at -0.3 or a little lower, that will under expose your image, which should saturate your colors more. So how do you like that Sigma lens? I've got one that I use on my Nikons and I love it very much.

[dennylee60]

Hello jorgemonkey
I like the Sigma lens so far. I took some pictures the day before and the color turned out pretty nice and the focus is relatively fast. I have not tried the macro function yet.

Thanks for the suggestion, I will try that next time I am out.

[GB1]

Denny - It's difficult to shoot at this time of the day and not get the harsh lighting and shadows, as you can see on the bottom shot where her arm is fading into the background due to the strong light. A lot of the time, those reflections *underexpose*, so this is interesting... I wonder if it's a new matrix metering algo that Nikon is using (?) Also perhaps another angle not aiming against the reflections in the water. GL

GB

[OldSchool]

Those are just tough conditions to shoot in -- especially moving targets. A slightly overcast day would be much easier to nail the exposure. If they really want good photos, maybe you could schedule a shoot in the morning or late afternoon.

Good luck.
Tim

[dennylee60]

Thanks for the reply. I wanted to shoot with the water behind me facing them but the wall did not allow that. Would a filter help? I guess I need to go back to the dance and do some experiments.