what camera

[gixxerken]

hav a finepix S9600 and use it everywhere

was at TT races for week and took many pics some good some useless

want to get better pics and need your help.

what camera within a reasonable price

what lenses to use

will trade in the finepix to get better

cheers all

ken

[SmartWombat]

Well, it depends on your budget what is reasonable.
And on what you want to shoot.
I would say any kind of digital SLR camera is going to help.

But if you are getting some good shots, and others not so good, maybe you can work to improve your percentage of good ones with what you've got?
It's a pretty good camera that Fuji, and if you use manual focus and manual exposure then you can get the camera to take photos when you press the button ... rather than waiting for it to focus, and work out the exposure, and the white balance.
What you learn on this camera will help when you go to a dSLR.

What matters a lot for sports is the lens, rather than the body of the camera.
Unless you have a need to rattle off shots like using a machine gun.
Then a body that can do that gets expensive.

If what you need is something that will focus quickly when your subjects is in the frame, and take the photo without a long shutter lag after you push the button then there is a pretty wide choice.

Ask any three people here and you'll get four opinions I reckon.
Canon, Nikon, Olympus, Pentax, Samsung, Sony, Panasonic, did I offend anyone by leaving out their favourite camera?

[gixxerken]

cheers paul

will post some of my good enough ones and c what u think

thanks

ken

[Photo-John]

Paul pretty much covered it all. Technique always helps. With good technique and a proper understanding of your camera's limitations, you can get good photos with almost any camera. However, digital SLRs are better.

How much money will you have to spend? If we know that, we can give you better direction. I know you aren't going to get much money trading in your S9600. So how much cash do you actually have? You can do pretty well with $500 now, if you look at used cameras. But lenses will cost you. I started out shooting motorcycle roadracing. My first auto focus body was a Canon EOS A2E film camera. I bought it used with the kit lens. The first lens I bought after that was specifically for shooting roadracing at Laguna Seca. I bought a used Canon EF 300 f/4L for $800. I still have that lens, 13+ years later. It has served me well.

To get you started, and take a look at used Canon EOS 10D and 20D bodies. They have a decent frame rate, good auto focus, and they're way quicker than your current camera as far as shutter-lag goes. I made a lot of money taking mountain bike photos with my 10D. And they should be dirt cheap now. I think I sold mine for $300, two years ago.

[gixxerken]

open to criticism and help - not touched up on computer yet

some of the many 100s at TT 08

[gixxerken]

cheers photo-john

this is what i can get 60% of the time

will get the bike at speed but the focus sometimes out

[Photo-John]

Is that Isle of Man? Are these cropped or were you using the digital zoom? The image quality is pretty poor. In my opinion, these are ok. But they're not tight enough and I don't get enough of a feel for the speed. If you're already cropping or using digital zoom for these, then you've got a big problem. One thing that is critical for motorsports photos is access. Your camera isn't going to help you with that. You need to get as close as safely and legally possible so you can fill the frame. These photos have a ton of empty, wasted space. And if you crop it out you're just going to degrade the image quality more.

[SmartWombat]

Well looks like at that distance and speed, you're having trouble keeping up with the panning.
Practice, practice, and more practice will make it better.

I had a camera where the screen went blank while it was taking a photo. It made panning a real guess-and-hope exercise. Eventually I made a sight for the camera with gaffer tape, when the two bits were lined up then what I was looking at would be somewhere in the frame (gaffer tape isn't accurate ) - using that improved my hit rate a lot.

If you were using the camera auto-focus then that may be a problem at those speeds, quite apart from getting the bike in the square (or if you're adventurous, the helmet) the camera is going to take time to find focus.
Then if it doesn't have some kind of smart AI tracking focus by the time it takes the picture the bike's moved and it's out of focus.
Continuous AF comes close but it also needs to predict where the bike will be when it finally takes that image.

This is one point where manual focus, or holding the autofocus can help.
Pick a spot on the road that has lots of contrast, half-press the shutter button to focus on it and wait until the bike comes by. Pan with the bike and just before it gets to your picked spot then press the button. And keep panning after you press the button so you don't snatch the camera.

I find that on all the P&S cameras I've used, none of them has good enough manual focus for me to be able to use it. Have you tried the manual focus on the S9600 ?
Even with the G9 magnification of the focus rectangle (or the Minolta A1, or Konica Minolta A2) I just couldn't get a good reliable focus manually.


You're using 1600 ISO and that's not helping the image quality. Did you pick that or was it the camera's choice? Maybe it does that in anti-blur mode.
I would have opened the lens up to widest aperture and kept the ISO as low as possible to keep the quality while getting around 1/500 or 1/640 second shutter speed.
I would have used manual exposure too.


The red and blue fringes, depends how much these are cropped form the originals, likely they can be fixed in software. But I think this is one thing where a different camera, rather than anything you do, will improve things.

[gixxerken]

cheers Paul and Photo-John

these are from IOM but not cropped or touched. Was very far away from action at bradden bridge and everytime i wanted to take a snap someone wud stand up in the way.

love your comments and the techniques described -thank you

all i want to do is get better and hav some good shots like u Masters

[SmartWombat]

The colour fringing is so bad I can't fix it in software.
I'm surprised it's so poor, has the camera been knocked or dropped ?

I agree with John's idea of a second hand camera, I would add that a warranty might be good if you don't consider it disposable. So from a good camera shop who'll stand by their products.

I bought from Canon outlet on ebay - and that gave a 1 year Canon warranty ... which I had to use on the 1DSmkII to get the shutter replaced.

Your best investment is going to be in good lenses, and the largest investment too.

[SmartWombat]

all i want to do is get better and hav some good shots like u Masters

Well, I was at the British Superbikes in 2006 without my cameras, all of them were in at Canon for a service before going off to a race somewhere - I think maybe le Mans.
So I had to use my wife's Panasonic FZ20.
These are the heavily cropped results.

The zoom was nowhere near long enough, except for the shot of James Toseland after he got a podium finish
Barely adequate at the closest point (the red flag shot) and needing huge cropping for the 4 bikes at the chicane after the pit entrance, or the exit from the corner.
You can see the colour fringing on that corner shot.

It makes a big difference being able to shoot in RAW with the G9 I have in my pocket today vs having to shoot in JPG with the older cameras. There is much more data to play with while cropping or editing the exposure and colours.

[SmartWombat]

You can see on the straight there just isn't enough zoom.
And when cropped the noise is really obvious where I had to turn up the ISO.

But for a 3 year old P&S it's not bad.