Fish runs

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Tom
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Do you think this was too slow a shutter speed at 1/1000 ?
It was o/cast today,iso was 2000 and f5

DSC_8032 by Thomas Reid, on Flickr
 
Looks a pretty decent shot to me, though it's not something I've ever done :)
 
Oh i'm def' after pointers, not the easiest thing trying to capture them.
 
The head looks a little soft to me, so maybe you need a faster shutter speed. I've tried shooting birds sitting in my garden and its shocking how fast a shutter you need as they keep moving their heads!

I don't think panning would work as they "wriggle" side to side...

Perhaps flash would freeze them?

Edit: I see martin already said that!
 
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Nice pic but it is slightly back focused. If you look at the water just beyond the fish its nice and sharp although moving at
a fair rate of knots. Nice try.
 
This is something I have tried. It is a very difficult shot to get. This example is fabulous. Panning, I dont think is an option as you dont know when and where a fish is going to leap and before you know it the fish is gone. I am envious of this shot, but maybe a faster shutter and higher ISO would help. I am only a novice at this digital photography lark.
 
Nice pic but it is slightly back focused. If you look at the water just beyond the fish its nice and sharp although moving at
a fair rate of knots. Nice try.

Thats what I though too
 
Nice pic but it is slightly back focused. If you look at the water just beyond the fish its nice and sharp although moving at
a fair rate of knots. Nice try.
I agree with this, it looks like you have freezes movement of the water but the fish is a little out of focus. on flickr it looks like you were using 11 AF points, if you were that could be the reason behind the slightly back focusing. The AF works by trying to find a high contrast point within the AF points selected to work. It looks like one of the water droplets provides more contrast than the fish hence it's locked it the water rather than the fish.
 
It was single spot focus on the water behind the fish as that's where one had just leapt.
The above was just unfortunately in front a bit.
I thought that it was still maybe too fast for the shutter speed too?
 
It was single spot focus on the water behind the fish as that's where one had just leapt.
The above was just unfortunately in front a bit.
I thought that it was still maybe too fast for the shutter speed too?
Looking at your settings on flickr you should have had around 1m depth of field, it's hard to gauge distances but it looks like the fish could have been in front of the focus point by 0.5m. It does look like as you increased shutter speed your images got better so shutter speed could need raising. Have you got a faster lens (lower aperture) so you could reduce the aperture to say f4 and increase ISO slightly to get a good fast shutter speed. It looks like it's a case of trying and trying again to capture one of the fish jumping in the right place.
 
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I'd say that the shutter speed was fine, as the water drops are frozen in space on/infront the fish itself, so it is just the actual focus point that you have missed. You may need to close down your aperture a bit, say F9, to get a larger DOF but then compensate that with a higher ISO.
 
Never mind all this advice, it is a darn good photo considering everything. First getting the fish in shot could not have been easy , wildlife I think is one of the hardest aspects of photography as often you only get one chance. Front focus or back focus or even the fish in focus to me makes it look more of an action shot than using a very fast shutter speed to freeze everything.
 
If revisiting the shot, lock focus on a nearer point and try those settings again. The water drops have frozen so speed should be good enough. Before falling back to the water the fish should have almost stopped in mid air so speed may not be critical. DOF on the other hand is more crucial as you can't predict where it's going to jump but as you've locked focus on a nearer point most of the focus should lie to the rear of it and capture clearly any fish in that area. Does that make sense. Obviously a brighter day would help too. I'd be using auto ISO too to help things along.
 
Aye, they're as bad as birds, in fact faster.
I sometimes wish i liked buildings or people that stand still, lol but that's just not me.
I'm loving every minute of my learning experience with trying to capture nature and it's slowly through doing it, getting there.
 
I've done these a few times so here's my two penneth: Use the shortest focal length you can that will still give you a decent sized image. Get as close as you can without getting water on your lens and manual focus on a spot where most of the action is.
Put your camera on a tripod and use a cable release. Don't look through the camera, just look at the water and when a fish jumps, hit the button. 1000/sec should be ok but faster is better, use f11 if you've got enough speed. Good luck and have fun.

Lee

www.wildgallery.co.uk
 
Just to have the fish in the photo is a job well done (y)
 

To answer your question…
I do not see that the speed was too slow but that the focus did not bite!
 
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