New, what am I doing wrong?

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Zilog

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I am no photographer but have now got my girl friends old Nikon D60 so I took it with me to the cycling over the weekend. At first it was getting mad speed blearing even in its action mode. I messed about a bit with different lenses and setting. I ended up upping the shutter speed and then upping the ISO and it looked right on the cameras LCD screen. But when I got home they looked like this.
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They look all fuzzy and just generally quite poor. Can anyone tell me what am I likely doing wrong?

Thanks :)
 
You not getting the focus right or focusing on the wrong thing.

You could try to manual focus the floor where you are going to shoot, that way when they get there its alright in focus where you want to be.

Another thing you could be doing is half holding the shutter button, and moving the camera following the bikers around and when you finally press it the photo is out of focus because you focused on something not in the picture.

A rule that a lot togs use it use a shutter speed faster than your focal lens length. Say your shooting at 200mm shooting 1/200+. Boost your ISO or use a low F number to get the higher shutter speed.
 
Thanks for the replies. I tried many things but I think those photos were all taken with a Nikon 55-200 lens with the camera on “M” (think that's manual) the shutter speed at 1/200 and the ISO at 1600 or possibly Hi+ (sorry really am new to this). I also tried the camera with a few other lenses and setting but went a bit mad and took around 1000 photo so will have to work my way trough them.

Thanks for the help Andy. Half way through the night I realised you could half push it to focus. Most of the time I was ended up getting it focus in things I was not intended such as the fence round the track. I will give the manual focus on a set point a go next time and see if I can get any shots from that.

Thanks again for the help.
 
Using very high ISO such as 1600 will reduce the quality and account for the noise in the final image. The "H" setting will be even worse. When manufacturers don't number a setting, but just call it "high" or simialr it usually means that at that setting the camera is producing very noisy images and they consider it doesn't meet their qualtiy standard. Having said that, if it's low light then you don't really have a choice, and a noisy picture is better than none at all.

Inddors in somewhere like a velodrome you are going to have to use the largest apeture (smallest f number) you can and a hihg ISO to be a ble to get a shutter speed fast enough to stop the cyclists being blurred.
 
TBH, apart from #1, they dont look so far out of focus, maybe not bang on, but the worst of the fuzziness looks like 'noise' caused by high ISO settings, especially if you went into the high setting above 1600. You can't really avoid this unless you want to invest a lot of money in a higher spec camera that has better noise handling abilities. There are free noise reduction programs available such as Noiseware and Noise Ninja, which will remove some of that fuzzy look, although they should be applied with care as too much and you just lose clarity - better a noisy picture than no picture at all is often the feeling.

As for focus, I would agree with Andy, if you can't continually focus [not available on D60? or is it lens dependent? ] then manually focusing on a particular spot on the track and pressing the shutter as the riders reach it is probably your best option. Takes a bit of practice but fairly quick to master. :thumbs:
 
Thank you for all your replies it really does help being able to talk to people who know wha there doing. I think I understand what I am doing wrong now that I am trying to work with to little light. I have a 35mm f1.8 that I could try next time. I think it will be ok if I can stand right by the track side. Could any one recommend a good starting point for the ISO and shutter settings with this lens?

I also read a review of the D60 that said it sacrificed light sensitivity to get 10.2 megapixel resolution. It was something about the higher the resolution the smaller the size part of the sensor each pixel gets and so gets less light in a given time. Does this mean if I save it in a lower resolution it would be better for what I am doing? I just assumed the higher the resolution the better but would I be better off saving in a lower resolution?

Thanks
 
Telling people certain settings is hard without being there but at a guess I would put it in shutter priority. Put the shutter speed around 1/125 and if the aperture f number is flashing it means your going to underexpose the shot. So crank up the ISO till its stops flashing. Don't go above 800 ISO if you don't have to. If the f number is still flashing then go down a shutter speed to 1/100. If its still flashing then boost the ISO higher. Don't zoom more than 100mm otherwise you will get camera shake at 1/100. If your track side you wont be zooming that much anyway, maybe a monopod will help?
 
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