Photographing from a moving platform

[julestx]

I cannot for the life of me find a brief exchange I had with another forum member about taking photos while moving. I like to take photos from on the boat, but the boat is not roomy or stable enough to get a tripod set up. My photos always came out unrecognizably blurred and dark or light. I was given a few tips (such as pre-aiming in the direction of the subject), and I am excited to say I finally got a more clear photo! But wow, it is still not crystal clear, and there is a whole mess of other problems with the photo to deal with. Action shots definitely throw a whole other dimension into photography. How to improve?

[julestx]

Oops, don't know why my pic didn't attach!

[readingr]

I am not the person but do a lot of photography from on board; What a dilemma - my solution for shooting from a boat (4.5ton sailing boat) would be a very fast lens with high ISO so that you can get a fast shutter speed.

If your using a good quality SLR then you need to put the camera into continuous focus mode as well.

Another technique is to keep your knees bent to act as shock absorbers to for the swell of the see.

I generally shoot with speed in excess of 1/200th when on the boat, unless its very calm when the speed can drop to 1/60th. These are for my sailing boat - if its a light power boat then you need even higher speeds.

I hope that helps.

Regards
Roger R.

[julestx]

Thank you Roger. I'm not sure if any of my lenses are considered fast lenses...hmmm, I will have to look that up. I will go see how to put my camera into continuous focus mode. Thank you! (I also used to enjoy sailing!)

[Frog]

That's one of the reasons I'm not much of an action photographer.

In this shot, not only are your subjects bouncing but you are too in the boat. You got a 1/200 th which is pretty fast but obviously not fast enough.
A fast lens is one with apertures of f/2.8 or more.

You shot at f/11...don't know what mode you were in but you could have had a much faster speed with a wider aperture. Remember smaller numbers equal wider apertrues.
The only difference would have been a shallower depth of field but I don't think that makes a difference in this situation.

[julestx]

I was using the big, heavy, zoomy lense. Telephoto I guess. I probably just set it on the little action figure symbol. I have a shorter lense (but longer than the one the camera came with) but since I received this new lense (the longer one) I've been so excited and haven't removed it yet. I figured the shorter one would not be able to get close enough to the people on the tube for the photo to be of much interest. I realllly need to learn how to talk the talk in photography. I have got to force myself to learn about these numbers and letters everyone refers to on the camera settings, and I do apologize for frustrating any readers by being so naive. I'm working on that! I noticed yesterday that the longer lense goes up to '300' whatever that means...

[Frog]

If you google photography terms/terminology, you will get many sites that cover the gamut and it can be very long but not hard to find the particular one you are searching for.
Here is one Photography Definitions: Glossary of Photographic Terms

Your 300x lens means it zooms to 300mm on a full frame camera but since you are not using a full frame Nikon you multiply that number by 1.5 so it would be a 450mm on a full frame camera.
Now I bet you're really confused. Don't worry much about that.
What is the lens model?
As I said, I'm no action photographer but in that light, I know you could have used a much wider aperture and got faster shutter speed...probably 1/2000.

Also, don't forget about the Nikon digitutor links. I have a hard time reading manuals and the digitutor links for the d3000 will probably be easier to navigate.

[MotorToad]

Once again your pictures defy your words. This might not be the most interesting action shot I've seen this year, but it's hardly an amateur snapshot. If you're shooting Canon or Nikon, you'd want a lens with IS (Canon) or VR (Nikon) for "Image Stabilization" or "Vibration Reduction." Sigma also has lenses with "Optical Stabilization" and Tamron sells "Vibration Compensation." They're all pretty much the same thing where an internal lens is driven by an inertial sensor of some sort to make the image travel through the lens to the sensor without moving. I think the better universal acronym would be "P.F.M." Anyway, that's your best bet for this sort of action.

Aside from that, you can bump the ISO to maybe 400 or 800 -ish, your aperture to as open as the lens can manage with any quality, and try to get your shutter speed to 1/1000 or quicker. Claims for IS are that they let you shoot longer than the "1/focal length" by 3 or 4 stops, but that's handheld. IMesHO even with stabilization your best bet with both ends of the photons on a moving platform is tiny shutter speeds. The nice thing about shooting stuff like this is that the corners of the image are very rarely of any importance so your lens distortion problems are usually shrugged off and you can use wide open apertures.

[julestx]

If you google photography terms/terminology, you will get many sites that cover the gamut and it can be very long but not hard to find the particular one you are searching for.
Here is one Photography Definitions: Glossary of Photographic Terms

Your 300x lens means it zooms to 300mm on a full frame camera but since you are not using a full frame Nikon you multiply that number by 1.5 so it would be a 450mm on a full frame camera.
Now I bet you're really confused. Don't worry much about that.
What is the lens model?
As I said, I'm no action photographer but in that light, I know you could have used a much wider aperture and got faster shutter speed...probably 1/2000.

Also, don't forget about the Nikon digitutor links. I have a hard time reading manuals and the digitutor links for the d3000 will probably be easier to navigate.

I bet you have no idea just how inspiring you are. I have been such a sloppy photographer. I get excited when I get a new piece of equipment and the box goes somewhere and the equipment goes on my camera. This goes on and on. You just gave me the motivation to go around the house and gather everything related to photography, and put it in one place. I even have 3 camera bags (all gifts, one is old and has an old Nikon in it that is not digital, from my Dad - not at all wanting to use that anymore). So I can then look at the boxes and info and know exactly what I have. This will be my afternoon project. I'm interested in the Nikon digitutor - sounds great! I will return and tell you what exactly I have to work with !!!!!

[EOSThree]

Once again your pictures defy your words. This might not be the most interesting action shot I've seen this year, but it's hardly an amateur snapshot. If you're shooting Canon or Nikon, you'd want a lens with IS (Canon) or VR (Nikon) for "Image Stabilization" or "Vibration Reduction." Sigma also has lenses with "Optical Stabilization" and Tamron sells "Vibration Compensation." They're all pretty much the same thing where an internal lens is driven by an inertial sensor of some sort to make the image travel through the lens to the sensor without moving. I think the better universal acronym would be "P.F.M." Anyway, that's your best bet for this sort of action.

Aside from that, you can bump the ISO to maybe 400 or 800 -ish, your aperture to as open as the lens can manage with any quality, and try to get your shutter speed to 1/1000 or quicker. Claims for IS are that they let you shoot longer than the "1/focal length" by 3 or 4 stops, but that's handheld. IMesHO even with stabilization your best bet with both ends of the photons on a moving platform is tiny shutter speeds. The nice thing about shooting stuff like this is that the corners of the image are very rarely of any importance so your lens distortion problems are usually shrugged off and you can use wide open apertures.

A VR or IS lens will help with the photographers movement, but will do nothing to stop a moving subject. A high shutter speed is the key here, enough to stop your movement and the subjects movement.

Choose an aperture that will give you enough depth of field to capture your subject in sharp focus front to back, then change your ISO to get the shutter speed desired, less ISO means less noise, so choose the lowest ISO that will get you a shutter speed at your chosen aperture to stop the motion.

The subjects aren't tack sharp here, but the tube looks to be pretty sharp, in other words it's front focused a little, a smaller aperture would have provided more DOF and had more of the subject in focus.

If what I am saying sounds like I'm speaking another language, then look into getting Bryan Peterson's book, Understanding Exposure, it's a photo 101 for all of the basics and will give you the knowledge to fully understand everything that is happening with your camera.

[Grandpaw]

I have just the opposite approach to this. If I was shooting this I would put the mode dial to "S", set the shutter speed for 1000 and let the camera do the rest. Start out with a low ISO and raise as needed to get the shot. I would also use single point AF to make sure that you are focused on the main subject and not just something near it, Jeff

[MotorToad]

^All true, and mostly the sort of things I was trying to say.
Another thing I forgot to mention. When I've had focus problems (especially like here where the distance is constant) I've used manual focus and "bracketed" the subject with a sweep of a few shots. I've never been able to tell if I have good focus using the camera's screen and it's a lot easier to throw bad pictures away than reenact a moment.

[Frog]

All good ways to achieve the results she wants but remember she is brand new,( you can tell by her techinical terminology...big, heavy, zoomy lense.), so I still think the easiest thing for her to try right now is wider apertrue to get faster shutter.
Don't know what lens she was using but doubt it has VR.

Jules, don't mean to be making fun of you and your big heavy zoomy lens, but it is funny and also points out to those of us who use the lingo what we are actually talking about.

[julestx]

Ok just checked. The lens is "Nikon AF-S VR Zoom-Nikkor 70-300mm f/45-5.6G IF-ED" ="zoomy" hehe

[Greg McCary]

Ok just checked. The lens is "Nikon AF-S VR Zoom-Nikkor 70-300mm f/45-5.6G IF-ED" ="zoomy" hehe

That would be considered a slow lens but Jeff has the idea. Unless you have a high end camera then continuous focus may let you down. Bump up the ISO to 1600 shoot shutter priority and keep the shutter speeds fast as you can get away with. 1/500-1/1000.

[armando_m]

All good advice, i do not think there isn't anything more challenging than action photography, and riding a boat! well...

I tried once to shoot with a long zoom lens from a moving boat and gave up, installed my wide angle instead, I just couldn't focus where I wanted

[readingr]

Just seen the photo and what your up against. When I used to water ski we used a minimum of 1/2000 sec for the photos and definitely use speed priority and continuous focus if you have it on the camera.

IS will be useless on this type of picture because you have both vertical, horizontal, diagonal, and circular movement and IS on most lenses only work well in either horizontal or vertical modes only hence the switch to turn it off or have it in horizontal/vertical mode. Speed is your best bet to get sharp photos.

Regards
Roger R.

[wfooshee]

VR is meaningless at the shutter speeds needed for this. Jeff (Grandpaw) has the right approach as far as I'm concerned. Sharpness, i.e. frozen motion, is more important than depth of field, so set a fast shutter speed of 1/1000, 1/2000, or even 1/4000 if you've got enough light. Set your ASA to avoid underexposure. Higher ASA gives more exposure, all else being equal, but some cameras' image quality suffers at very high ASA settings, so it might be a compromise.

I would suggest not trying to zoom too close, as you'll find your subject straying out of the frame too much. Give yourself more room in the frame by zooming back a bit, and then crop the picture later if you want the ultra-close view. How much you can crop depends on the megapixel range of your camera, so if you're shooting 16 megapixels you'd be able to crop closer than if you were shooting 6. Cropping a picture afterwards is the same as zooming closer while shooting, unless you crop so far you see individual pixels.

Another reason for very high shutter speed is that a long lens is MUCH more sensitive to motion. If the lens moves half a degree during the shot, that's a VERY high percentage of your view at 300mm, and not no much at 30mm. Vibration and motion that would make a 300mm view unusable might not even be detectable at 30mm. For this, the faster the better, until you run out of room with aperture and ASA.

And when we talk about a fast lens, we mean one that has a very low f-stop number. f:5.6 is not very fast. f:2.8 is pretty fast, especially in a long lens. f:1.4 is VERY fast, but you won't find that aperture except in 30 to 50mm fixed-length (non-zoom) lenses. To continue the comparison, say the light allowed you to shoot at 1/250 shutter at f:5.6. You might find that you still have too much motion blur. If you had an f:2.8 lens (i.e. spent a bunch of $$$$) you could shoot in the same light at 1/1000 of a second. That's why it's a "fast' lens; you can use a faster shutter in the same light. It lets more light in per unit of time.