Need some help with my settings

Mekanic01

Gawd
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Jul 11, 2002
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I'm very much an amateur in photography, but I love taking pictures. One thing I like to do the most, is racing pics. Where I go, I can't get as close to the track as the better guys, and I'm having issues getting good quality shots.

I'm using a Kodak Z1012is. The daytime shots aren't so bad, but my nighttime shots suck. Where I'm shooting from is dark, but the track is lit. The cars are passing pretty fast, and while I'm pretty good at following the cars as they pass, I'm still getting some blurry shots. The distance is about 60ft, and I'm not using a flash. Also, I'm having problems getting florescent colors to show up the way they should

What I'm asking for, is just some basic settings I can start with, and which way to adjust from there.

Thanks for your help.
 
Post some examples, along with shutter speed, aperture, ISO, and focal length. Most likely you're running into trouble because your lens is slow and your sensor is small, but that's the nature of digital point and shoot cameras.
 
Does your camera have a manual mode or shutter-priority? To reduce the motion-blur you need a faster shutter speed, like at least 1/200 sec. If you want to completely remove all motion blur, you need it a lot faster (closer to 1/1200 sec); but most car photogs like to just track the cars so you have the car sharp and the background sill blurring.

With these high shutter speeds, you will probably have to turn up the ISO (sensor light-sensitivity) on your camera so these scene isn't too dark - unfortunately that will mean your shots will come out more grainy than usual.

Also, if you can control the aperture on your camera's lens, you'll want to open it up as wide as it will go.

Oh, and also, your flash won’t reach far enough to make a difference when shooting at these distances, so I’d recommend leaving it off.

If you want to post some example shots we can probably be of more assistance.


Edit - looking now for some specs on this camera that might help...

Specs Link

Looks like this camera is supposed to have some pretty good ISO-range (up to 6400 with lowered resolution). And the lens says it opens up to f/2.8, though this is a relative number based on the sensor size, so it might still be fairly small.

So... for your camera the best settings for low-light action shots will be around:
ISO: 1600 (I wouldn't go much higher, or the graininess will get out of hand)
Aperture: f/2.8 (might change as you zoom in, but see if it will stay at that)
Shutter speed: >1/200 sec.
 
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Thanks. I deleted all the crap pics already, so weather permitting, this Saturday I'll try your suggested settings and post some results.
 
Ok, so it's better than it was, but it's grainy. madFive, I used the settings you recommended, and the aperture went from f3.2 to f3.6. Not sure how much of a difference that is making. Overall, I'm happy with the shots, but I'd really like to get the grain out, so which setting should I go up or down with.

You said the graininess will get "out of hand" if I go higher than ISO 1600, but how much lower can I go, or should I just start a little at a time?

And for the record, I don't recommend this camera to anybody. If you want a good action shot, you won't get it. Just for grins, I tried to snap a shot off without using the half-trigger focus, and the shot came about a second too late.

Anyways, here's the album of shots I took tonight. The first 36, and the last 44 were taken from turns 3 and 4, where I can get closer to the track and get better light. The middle set where taken from turns 1 and 2 where I have to stand further back.

http://s152.photobucket.com/albums/s166/DosiSWG/Shawano Speedway/5-1-2010/
 
The grain happens when your camera sensor doesn't have enough light information to determine exactly what color the pixel should be, and the image appears noisy. You can use noise reduction programs to remove it, but it'll be at the expense of detail. You can drop the ISO and use a longer exposure (more light hitting the sensor over the duration of the shot), but you'll end up with the blur problem again. You've maxed out the aperture already, so there's not a lot of options with your current camera.
 
You've maxed out the aperture already, so there's not a lot of options with your current camera.

The main reasons to get an SLR (yea I know there are others but these sum most of them up):

Shooting People,
Shooting Sports,
Shooting Fast Moving Objects,
Shooting in Low Light,


Of the 4 reasons you need a better camera for 3 of them. But the good news is you dont have to spend alot to get one. A used Nikon D70 or equivalent can be had for very cheap (at least by camera standards).
 
Yeah - those shots may be about as good as you can expect to get for low-light action shots with this camera. Not too bad actually - you just need to work on your composition a little. Try zooming in more to get closer to the action etc, and try framing the shots in different ways to make them look more interesting.

Now that you have a general idea with the settings I listed, try playing around with your settings some more to see how far you can stretch it. Keep the aperture as wide as you can get it (the lowest number possible); if that's 3.6, it's not too bad.

To get all of the noise out, you probably have to drop the ISO to 100-200 or so, which is going to make the shots really dark. Try lowing the ISO number to 1200 or even 800 and see where it gets too dark for the shots to be recoverable in post-processing.

The next step is to see how slow you can get your shutter speed before the blurring makes the images un-usable. You'll probably need a tripod to make this work, but try tracking the cars as they move so that cars stay sharp and the blurring only happens to the background. 4saken has some really good examples here - check those out. Maybe he can chime in here with some more advice.

In case I didn't mention this before, you will make this a ton easier for yourself if you start out shooting races in daylight, and work up to the low-light scenes later on.
 
madFive again with some good advice.

one issue with ISO is that in the dogged avoidance of noise many people opt to underexpose at say 1600 when a properly exposed image at 3200 might have added no additional noise--and given an image of better overall quality. obviously this is a case by case judgement call--and a bit counter intuitive, but give it a shot (i forget who originally suggested that technique to me, but i was very skeptical until i tried it).
 
In case I didn't mention this before, you will make this a ton easier for yourself if you start out shooting races in daylight, and work up to the low-light scenes later on.

Well that's the problem. I pit for a guy who races, and I can't get out to take shots until he's done racing. And by then it's usually dark out, depending on the order of classes. And usually in daylight I just put it on auto-adjust, and snap away.

Here's a daylight shot
100_2700.jpg
 
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