I want the D300

Ok, I know this isn't the place to say this...

Many of you have looked at the horse photos I did recently. Long story short, 1/3000th and f16 and I still get soft focused images and can't stop leg motion. Well, I spoke with my friend who is an equine photographer. She has the same lense (Nikon 70-200mm f2.8 VR lense) as me and a D200. Her favorite settings are f5.6 and around 1/500th shutter...and she stops leg motion...and she pans too. I watched her take photos...and honestly, I don't see her doing anything different that would enable her to stop ALL motion and I can't.

So now I am puzzled again...WHY doesn't 1/3000th of a second and f16 enable me to get sharp, crisp images when I know darned well the camera does a fine job on stationary subjects. It darned well should...even if I am panning.

I think I've come to the conclusion that while the Fuji is great for portraits and landscapes...that is it. I want a camera that can do it all.... so a D300 is in my future. I will keep the S2 but it will stay in the bag for anything that moves faster than a slow walk. Dang Fuji. Why can't I have the best of both worlds? Performance of a D200 and sensor of a Fuji? But given that I want to take action shots... it is not the best choice. Not even the new S5 which was a huge disappointment to me. Great for wedding and landscape photographers but nothing compelling for an action photographer. Sigh.. sorry for whining...

The point is not whether this is the proper place to announce your determination that another brand is the solution to your problem. It's not the camera at all -- unless yours is lying to you about the settings.

here's no physical reason that any camera would "stop motion" better than another at any given shutter speed. As long as you blame the equipment, you will impede your own growth as a photographer. Why don't you try your friend's much more reasonable setting of f/5.6 in aperture priority mode and a reasonalbe ISO for daylight conditons like ISO 200 and see if you don't get a reasonable shutterspeed for stopping motion? If not, stay with ISO 200, choose shutter priority and select a faster shutter speed. Let the camera determine an aperture and see what you get.

Think before you leap.

With kind regards,

Robert05 (AKA Fleming)
http://www.pbase.com/robert_in_sc

Maybe -- just maybe- there's something wrong with the VR mechanism in your lens -- I suppose they can fail and cause blurriness that wouldn't be there without the VR in the first place. Why don't you and your friend exchange lenses and see if that makes any difference. If not, you're just going to have to work on your technique, I'm afraid.
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With kind regards,

Robert05 (AKA Fleming)
http://www.pbase.com/robert_in_sc

no offence but maybe it's your technique.

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The Fuji series of S2, S3, and S5 are not speed cameras. I consider it a top end portrait camera. Whereas I make 99% of my income from protraits, I will keep it out of the bag.

LakeMary said:

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The Fuji series of S2, S3, and S5 are not speed cameras. I
consider it a top end portrait camera. Whereas I make 99% of my
income from protraits, I will keep it out of the bag.

Click to expand...

The problem is not speed in the sense that you are thinking of. Continually reverting back to such assertions (valid though they may be in some contexts) that the "Fuji series ... are not speed cameras" only serves to confuse the issue at hand. The OP is complaining that she can't "stop motion" with her Fuji. You are a professional photographer who probably knows a whole lot more about photography than I do, but the Fuji series is no worse at stopping action than any other camera in the world, is it? Catching a PARTICULAR moment through a machine gun approach is a different matter, don't you agree?

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With kind regards,

Robert05 (AKA Fleming)
http://www.pbase.com/robert_in_sc

I'd suggest that you put your CF in your friends camera and try to take a picture with her camera. If that looks good, then put your lens on your friend's camera and see how that works. If it looks good, then I'd put her lens on your camera and see how that looks. If that looks good, then I'd put your lens back on your camera and see how that looks. If that looks good then apparently you could figure during your testing you fixed the problem! lol. However, more likely you'll find what's giving your trouble during that test (your lens, or your camera). Make sure if it's a VR lens that you have her's on VR same as yours, or hers NOT on VR the same as yours.

Remember, VR doesn't work well when you're shooting motion, like horses running. You might find you simply need to take the VR off when you're shooting anything other than stationary objects.

Good luck!

Paul

pattir7 said:

Ok, I know this isn't the place to say this...

Many of you have looked at the horse photos I did recently. Long
story short, 1/3000th and f16 and I still get soft focused images and
can't stop leg motion. Well, I spoke with my friend who is an equine
photographer. She has the same lense (Nikon 70-200mm f2.8 VR lense)
as me and a D200. Her favorite settings are f5.6 and around 1/500th
shutter...and she stops leg motion...and she pans too. I watched her
take photos...and honestly, I don't see her doing anything different
that would enable her to stop ALL motion and I can't.

So now I am puzzled again...WHY doesn't 1/3000th of a second and f16
enable me to get sharp, crisp images when I know darned well the
camera does a fine job on stationary subjects. It darned well
should...even if I am panning.

I think I've come to the conclusion that while the Fuji is great for
portraits and landscapes...that is it. I want a camera that can do
it all.... so a D300 is in my future. I will keep the S2 but it will
stay in the bag for anything that moves faster than a slow walk.
Dang Fuji. Why can't I have the best of both worlds? Performance of
a D200 and sensor of a Fuji? But given that I want to take action
shots... it is not the best choice. Not even the new S5 which was a
huge disappointment to me. Great for wedding and landscape
photographers but nothing compelling for an action photographer.
Sigh.. sorry for whining...

Click to expand...

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http://www.okpablo.com

The difference between you and your friend is the aperture. Lay off the f16 with an APS-C sized sensor.

http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/diffraction-photography.htm

Hmmm... I haven't told the whole story. I have tried reasonable aperatures... i.e. f5.6 and 1/500th of a second shutter. I have tried other lenses. I have tried not panning. I have tried not firing consecutively (but honestly, the best photos I've ever gotten were not predictable and were the result of consecutive shooting). Nothing... and I do mean nothing I have tried has given me clear, motionless action photos with the S2.

I would love to know if it is my technique... would love to have any of you who have taken action shots with an S2 TRY to take one with my camera and see if you fair any better. Better yet, I would love to exchange cameras with my friend for a day and see what we get...but alas, we don't live near each other and it's not possible. In short, I would love to know what the problem is.

Perhaps I should try a simple experiment. Forget horses for the moment. Stand on the side of a road, set up the camera stationary on a tripod and try to just stop car motion. I bet I can't. What possibly could I be doing so wrong? I have another friend....bought a D40... has never owned a DSLR in her life... doesn't know the difference between shutter speed and aperature....has the lense that came with the camera... and SHE can take a moving horse photo and low and behold... it is in focus and motionless.

I mean really? How hard should it be to just aim and shoot to stop motion? I'm not even talking about capturing moments and great photos. I can't stop moton - period no matter what I do. I aim the center focus at the horse's face and background...to get maximum contrast... the camera shouldn't even fire if it doesn't think it has focus, right? In AF-S mode. So what the??

And really... at 1/3000th and f16, why on earth would the legs not be tack sharp when the body of the horse is? That's a LOT of forgiveness on focus... and a lot of shutter speed. I am completely perplexed over what is wrong...but I have struggled with this for over an year now...tried absolutely everything I can think of and nothing, nothing has given me the images I want of anything that is moving faster than a slow walk...

I suppose if you have tried all that, then maybe there IS something wrong with your camera -- your particular camera -- and not the S2 or S5 in general.

All DSLRs are capable of high shutter speeds, needed to stop motion. As someone has pointed out, fps is a different thing altogether -- so don't be too quick to throw away a decent (but maybe miscalibrated) camera.

It might be worthwhile to send in your S2 for servicing -- there might have been something wrong with the shutter mechanism after all these years...

Hope this helps.

I agree. If you are not stopping the motion of horses' legs at 1/3000 s. when the rest of the horse is clear and sharp, there is something wrong somewhere. I think I would test it on passing cars and such just to see how it behaves, but it may be that your shutter is malfunctioning and just not able to open and close at high rates of speed any more. I've never heard of one failing in that way, but then again, I haven't heard of lots of things that happen all the time!

I hope you find the problem, but as point2 indicated, this is not the sort of slowness that is somewhat characteristic of Fuji DSLRs.

By the way, make sure you get a firm estimate for a replacement shutter before agreeing to have that kind of work done. Someone posted recently of a very high cost for such a procedure on an S2. Can't say if that's typical of the S2, but it's certainly not typical of DSLRs in general, I don't think.

Keep us posted!

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With kind regards,

Robert05 (AKA Fleming)
http://www.pbase.com/robert_in_sc

I have no idea if this will help but it is worth a try and free...

Start out on bulb and take a shot with the cap on then go to the next speed take a shot and so on until the end of speeds, and then do the same thing backwards...to bulb... This used to work on some old cameras I had that were only used at one or two speeds and the shutter would stick...
D300 looks good on paper and is a couple generations newer very tempting..

I get a lot of requests to do horse photography but usually don't pursue the leads. Is there good bucks in it?
Al

flashalan said:

I get a lot of requests to do horse photography but usually don't
pursue the leads. Is there good bucks in it?
Al

Click to expand...

" Is ther good bucks in it"?

Was this intended to be a pun? If so it made me laugh... it not...all the better!

Kerry

on the front of your camera there is a switch with 3 settings.

what is yours set to?

i bet its c
--
I'm outa luck, outa love
Gotta photograph, picture of
Passion killer, you're too much

I would try Paul W Walters's suggestion. It will eliminate what ever it is that's causing the problem. Process of elimination is what it's called.

It's sound advise and will only take one time to find out what's causing the bluring.

Dave

The problem that you are speaking I have also founded in my pictures....this is a problem of Fuji's S5...and sometimes of digital sensors...

And this is a reason for me to wait to see what the D300 will do. With D200 maybe you will stil have this problem but not so much. And there are many other reasons for me that I am going to sell the S5, but first of all I wait to see the results of the D300.

I did had problems also during photographing people, when they were dancing with 1/250 and with Sb800, when with any other camera I should do it better in 1/60. I compared pictures in reception of a collegue who was working with D2, and in same situations the D2 gave more better results than the S5.

For the moment I work with the S5 only in interior spaces photography where with mixt lighting conditions (flash and ambient light) I take very good results.

Otherwise the magenta color in people's skin is so bad with this camera, so that I only work in AdobeRGB when I use it with people.

Many photographers will returned to Nikon again, if the D300 (or the D3 for those who can afford the price), is a better camera, without the connection problems of the hot shoe and the Sb800 of the D200.

I have very limited sports and nature photo experience but I have a lot of experience shooting with the rifle. Camera is very similar. I watched a friend of mine try to take my picture with my camera for 15min with 0 successful shots. And I did all the settings for him. When I got about 50% of shots perfect in the same situations. The point is: in low light or high speed photography the way you hold and press buttons on your camera makes ALL the difference. This is not just settings. Try giving your camera to your friend and see if that works. I believe it will.

There is another possible component. I am not sure if AF is identical in S5 and D200. I suspect it is very similar but not the same. This is the only thing I can think of that may be the reason.

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Eugene

By the way, why don't you post your 'bad' image and perhaps it will be clear what went wrong. Problem due to bad focus looks different most of the time than problem due to incorrect panning or jerking the shutter button.
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Eugene

.. give your friend your camera and see what he gets out of it..

changing lenses/bodies/ someone elses camera etc, will just cause initial confusion.

if it's still not what you expected or they aren't happy either.. then start changing things.

I must say though, unless there's a fault somwhere, changing to a D300 fot 'just this' reason, will lead to disapointment.

hope you sort it

--
Quote: If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.

Have fun

You bet wrong. I am VERY aware of those settings at all times...and most of the time, unless I wanna 'experiment', it is on 'S'.