Silly Question number 1 ;-)

[blondie606]

Hi all,not been into photogrpahy for that long,had my nikon about 6 months & only in the last month have I moved away from the Auto setting.

Had a reasonable amount of sucees with motorbike racing pictures,shooting in Shutter priority,not grade A photo's but I'm happy & others seem to be as well.
My question is (I always get there in the end) :
tried my hand at photographing showjumpers at the weekend - what a disaster:bang:Could'nt get focus/ISo setting right at all.Really frustrating as I used to ride/compete so want to be good at it.

What I was finding was I would get the head & body in focus but the fetlocks down & rider would blur.If the rider was 100% focused the horse would be blurred. I've seen some awesome pic's on here & thats what I'm aiming for.
& before you ask the pic's are so bad there's no way on gods green earth I'm posting them:shake:
Read a few posts on here about shooting in aperture priority - can you tell me why this better than shutter? I love to blur out the backgrounds but if moving to aperture not sure what setting to be on? I have a choice of 2 lenses Tamron 70-300mm(4-5.6) or Nikkor 18-55(3.5-5.6) .

Please don''t say I need better/bigger lenses as whilst probably true it's a no go at the mo.

any body help please?

sorry it's such a long post

 

[Mike_J_Smith]

If you are getting the horses head in focus, but not the rider or the other way round then you aren,t getting enough depth of field. To increase this you need to increase the aperture number (f number) (which confusingly means the hole is smaller). This means you need to have control over aperture, which aperture priority will do.

Increasing aperture will reduce the amount of light getting (due to the smaller hole) in which will therefore increase the shutter speed. If this gets too long then you'll get movement blur, in which case you'll have to increase iso until the shutter speed reduces enough to minimize blur. At a push you could also shoot in raw, underexpose and then up the exposure in pp, but at high isos this may look a bit nasty.

Hope that makes sense.

Oh, and don't worry about posting pics, all feedback will be constructive I'm sure and it will help people help you.

 

[BandyQuill]

if you can post a piccy we can give more relevant feedback, without we could be clutching at straws...

 

[HoppyUK]

It sounds very like a depth of field thing.

Depth of field reduces as the image gets bigger, either by moving closer or using a longer lens, and with f/number. Low f/number gives shallow depth of field, and higher f/numbers more. The trade off is that the shutter speed has to change in order to maintain correct exposure, so you have to juggle the best options (inclusing ISO too).

Using the different exposure modes - A, S, P, M etc - are just different ways of doing the same thing. Depends on the subject and your personal preference. With A you are able to control the f/number directly, and the camera sets the shutter speed; with S it's the other way round; with P the camera does both and with M you have direct control of both. You choose.

Have a look here to see how depth of field changes www.dofmaster.com Click on the calculator option and punch in the various settings and see what you get, and see how it changes.

Edit: and welcome to TP

 

[blondie606]

Sorry it's taken so long to respond,had a mare trying to load pictures to the galley :
1st attempt(& it's the very best of a poor batch)

Got to this on 2nd attempt after reading threads on here :

Was having a bit of a mare with the weather,set the ISO then before the horse had landed the sun would have come out or gone in making the next shot under/over exposed
Now I know it's still not fantastic but it is a huge improvement for me so thanks for all the posts relating to this subject. (I don't do any processing on photos & am trying to avoid going down that route.)