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D60 indoor Sports....

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Using the * focus button in addition to AI Servo is usually the best for action. For sports, AI Servo is almost always best, and the * focus really makes life easier. The only time you would use one shot AF is for if you want to prefocus, or if you're taking some quick headshots of players on the bench of something else where a focus lock is important.

I use the * button for focus no matter what focus mode I'm shooting in for any subject I shoot. Once you get used to it, you'll find that using the shutter button for focus is awkward.

I can almost gurantee you that switch the focus to the * button will help you with your keeper ratio. I was able to get about a 50/50 keeper ratio with my D30, but that was about the best I could do. With the 1D it's certainly a lot better, but then again I would expect that from a 5k camera.

Take Care,
Ben Horne

http://www.benhorne.com
Wally Jarratt said:
Wally Jarratt62951 said:
2) Focus assigned to * button

It's super easy. Keep holding down the * button to track the
subject, and press the shutter button to take a photo when you want
to.
Click to expand...
Thanks so much Ben for taking the time to explain it so clearly. My
only remaining question is do you have the camera in AIServo Mode
or Single Shot (I have been less than satisfied with the AI Servo,
but maybe this will work better)

Wally
--
Wally Jarratt
http://www.searcysports.com
Click to expand...
 
I posted this yesterday under a different heading...

This subject has been asked and answered several times, you can do a search on d60 and sports. That said, to summarize what you will see, is that people will tell you to get a 1D to shoot sports, however for those of us that cannot afford the 1D,(like me) the D60 will work. I shoot professional boxing, indoors, no flash and fast moving punches and love the D60. I use AI Servo, center point focus. (sometimes I will manual focus, but it's rare) In the last couple of months I have begun to get published in the major boxing mags, and am now getting quite a few inquiries on my work. Here are a few samples.











Ed
--
Muls
http://www.boxing-pics.com

Canon D-60
Sigma 28-70 EX
Olympus C-4040
 
Actually, another nice thing about using the * button to focus with AI servo is that you effectively have one shot AF instantly available without switching over. You focus for the headshot by holding down the , then lock just by letting go of it.

Nill
Ben Horne said:
Using the * focus button in addition to AI Servo is usually the
best for action. For sports, AI Servo is almost always best, and
the * focus really makes life easier. The only time you would use
one shot AF is for if you want to prefocus, or if you're taking
some quick headshots of players on the bench of something else
where a focus lock is important.
Click to expand...
 
be VERY carefull about using AI on a stationary object. It will miss focus 1/2 the time. I switch to one shot, or mostly just "crank the ring".
Nill Toulme said:
Nill
Ben Horne said:
Using the * focus button in addition to AI Servo is usually the
best for action. For sports, AI Servo is almost always best, and
the * focus really makes life easier. The only time you would use
one shot AF is for if you want to prefocus, or if you're taking
some quick headshots of players on the bench of something else
where a focus lock is important.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
Dan,

I shot this photo at ISO800, 1/500th with the same 200/1.8 lens with my 1D:



This is cropped about 20% and I printed it on my S9000 at 13x19 and its beautiful!

That arena had some of the best lighting I've seen so far - normally, I shoot at 1600ISO, wide open at 1.8 and am lucky to get faster than 1/320th shutter! Compound that with most indoor light flux (as seen in your volleyball pix) and some will be underexposed when you get into the action stopping shutter speeds.

I used a D30 for a few months while waiting for my 1D - I found that the AF was not necessarily slow - its that the AI means Autotmatically (goto) Infinity when the contrasting part of your subject leaves the center AF box! If you can keep a good contrast point within that box - it will do fine. Problem is that the subjects being shot in sports - tend not to sit still - and the D30/60 has no intelligence to "assume last track" - instead, it goes hunting!

The 1D was designed for that sort of thing - 45pt closely clustered so your subject can't leave the AF boxes - and 5 settings of AI to change the rate at which it will look for a new subject.

So, can the D60 do indoor sports - sure, you have to learn to adjust to its limitations and/or only expect a 9/42 ratio. That ratio is ALLOT better than I experienced when I used the D30 - I shot a meet and got about 10% of 3000 good shots - and really only about 1% were tack sharp! Contrary to the last meet I shot with the 1D - where most were good - and at least 70% of 7000 were tack sharp!

Good luck...
Brian.
ActionPhoto said:
I am having some problems with the D60 shooting Indoor Volleyball
and Swimming. I have the camera set to 800iso, AWB, AV, Canon 200L
1.8 (it's a friends) and AI Servo. I can shoot between 1/500 and
1/750 with this lens but, I am missing a lot of shots because of
the slow focussing. Some of the pictures are just out of focus all
together. Am I doing something wrong??

As for Swimming, I am using my 70-200L 2.8 with the Canon 550EX
Flash. I got about 9 good pics out of 42!!! I also used AI Servo
for Swimming.

I have posted a few pictures at
http://www.pbase.com/actionphoto/dan These images are untouched.

Any help is appreciated.

Dan
Click to expand...
 
ActionPhoto said:
I am having some problems with the D60 shooting Indoor Volleyball
Click to expand...
ActionPhoto said:
http://www.pbase.com/actionphoto/dan These images are untouched.

Any help is appreciated.

Dan
Click to expand...
Dan:

Often the most important part of shooting sports is shooting from the right position. For volleyball, try shooting from the baseline and have the lens prefocused on the net in the middle of the court. Now, you lens won't have too far to focus no matter what side of the court the ball goes to. If you shoot from the side, your lens may have to go from focusing from the far side to the near side of the net, plus the lens could focus on the net on the near side when you are trying to shoot action of the far side of the court.

You get a better picture too, with the players facing the camera instead of getting the side with the arm blocking their face.

Good sports photos is mainly about knowing the sport and getting yourself in position to get the good photo.

Tom
 
Nill Toulme said:
Hmmm... I can't say I've ever had this happen to me. When you say
"miss focus," do you mean by a subtle or gross amount?
Nill Toulme said:
be VERY carefull about using AI on a stationary object. It will
miss focus 1/2 the time. I switch to one shot, or mostly just
"crank the ring".
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
I would quess subtle...

At least with my EOS-3 the focussing is more nervous in servo mode.
If I let go the -button at wrong time it may cause slightly out of
focus images. Just need to be careful...

The main advantage in my book for using AF on the -button is
the ease of focus locking. Thus I can use the best functioning
centerAF point and still in most cases avoid the "subject-in-the-
middle" framing. You could do this with SingleAF mode as well
but the problem is that if the camera doesn't think the focus
is locked it won't fire the shutter (I believe). Also switching to
manual focusing is fast and easy (with FTM USM lenses), no need
to fight with the AF motor at any point.

Vesa
 
Thanks for the advise Tom, I have a lot of things to try. I will post my results after the shoot.
Tom Marvin said:
ActionPhoto said:
I am having some problems with the D60 shooting Indoor Volleyball
Click to expand...
Tom Marvin said:
http://www.pbase.com/actionphoto/dan These images are untouched.

Any help is appreciated.

Dan
Click to expand...
Dan:

Often the most important part of shooting sports is shooting from
the right position. For volleyball, try shooting from the baseline
and have the lens prefocused on the net in the middle of the court.
Now, you lens won't have too far to focus no matter what side of
the court the ball goes to. If you shoot from the side, your lens
may have to go from focusing from the far side to the near side of
the net, plus the lens could focus on the net on the near side when
you are trying to shoot action of the far side of the court.

You get a better picture too, with the players facing the camera
instead of getting the side with the arm blocking their face.

Good sports photos is mainly about knowing the sport and getting
yourself in position to get the good photo.

Tom
Click to expand...
 
Great picture Brian!!!!

It sounds like I have some learning and testing to do with my D60. I just love my camera!!!!

Dan
Hammy said:
I shot this photo at ISO800, 1/500th with the same 200/1.8 lens
with my 1D:



This is cropped about 20% and I printed it on my S9000 at 13x19 and
its beautiful!

That arena had some of the best lighting I've seen so far -
normally, I shoot at 1600ISO, wide open at 1.8 and am lucky to get
faster than 1/320th shutter! Compound that with most indoor light
flux (as seen in your volleyball pix) and some will be underexposed
when you get into the action stopping shutter speeds.

I used a D30 for a few months while waiting for my 1D - I found
that the AF was not necessarily slow - its that the AI means
Autotmatically (goto) Infinity when the contrasting part of your
subject leaves the center AF box! If you can keep a good contrast
point within that box - it will do fine. Problem is that the
subjects being shot in sports - tend not to sit still - and the
D30/60 has no intelligence to "assume last track" - instead, it
goes hunting!

The 1D was designed for that sort of thing - 45pt closely clustered
so your subject can't leave the AF boxes - and 5 settings of AI to
change the rate at which it will look for a new subject.

So, can the D60 do indoor sports - sure, you have to learn to
adjust to its limitations and/or only expect a 9/42 ratio. That
ratio is ALLOT better than I experienced when I used the D30 - I
shot a meet and got about 10% of 3000 good shots - and really only
about 1% were tack sharp! Contrary to the last meet I shot with
the 1D - where most were good - and at least 70% of 7000 were tack
sharp!

Good luck...
Brian.
ActionPhoto said:
I am having some problems with the D60 shooting Indoor Volleyball
and Swimming. I have the camera set to 800iso, AWB, AV, Canon 200L
1.8 (it's a friends) and AI Servo. I can shoot between 1/500 and
1/750 with this lens but, I am missing a lot of shots because of
the slow focussing. Some of the pictures are just out of focus all
together. Am I doing something wrong??

As for Swimming, I am using my 70-200L 2.8 with the Canon 550EX
Flash. I got about 9 good pics out of 42!!! I also used AI Servo
for Swimming.

I have posted a few pictures at
http://www.pbase.com/actionphoto/dan These images are untouched.

Any help is appreciated.

Dan
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
Often times yes. Instead of finding focus and locking once it has focus, AI-Servo will continue to try and achieve focus while the button is pressed. This means that the focus might be going slightly in front of and behind the subject --- AI Servo is made for moving subjects. Sometimes it'll give ok results for still subjects, but there is that chance that it'll still be hunting for focus when you press the shutter.
Nill Toulme said:
Nill
Paul R Greenleaf said:
be VERY carefull about using AI on a stationary object. It will
miss focus 1/2 the time. I switch to one shot, or mostly just
"crank the ring".
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
It looks to me like you have camera shake problems with the Swimming pictures. You were shooting at 70+mm and only 1/60th of a second shutter speed. In this set up the "flash" will be very fast, but then you will bluf from the shutter being open. Thus what is most illuminated by the flash will be reasonably sharp, but then everything else a blur.

The basic rule of thumb is to have AT LEAST 1/(35mm "effective" focal length) -- many pro's would say this is a bare minimum even with good technique. Since you were "effectively" at about 120mm and the shutter speed was 1/60, you were shooting with too slow a shutter speed unless you used a tripod or monpod or had IS in the lens. Even this rule of thumb assumes you are "set up" and reasonably stable in your stance. If you are moving around and wipping the camera around to catch the actrion you might want another 2X shutter speed for safety margin without IS.

I would suggest you get your shutter speed up to about 1/160 to 1/200th and shoot wide open (I think the pictures were at F4) and let the flash fill in the rest (if you can use flash)

As for the Volleyball. With more practice you should get better. The D30/60 AF system is at best marginal but it can work (I know it can, I have seen it :-) ). A lot depends on the Gym lighting. Even using the center focus point only, I think I am doing well if I can get above 50% for shooting basketball in the poorly lit gyms my kids play in.

Karl
ActionPhoto said:
I am having some problems with the D60 shooting Indoor Volleyball
and Swimming. I have the camera set to 800iso, AWB, AV, Canon 200L
1.8 (it's a friends) and AI Servo. I can shoot between 1/500 and
1/750 with this lens but, I am missing a lot of shots because of
the slow focussing. Some of the pictures are just out of focus all
together. Am I doing something wrong??

As for Swimming, I am using my 70-200L 2.8 with the Canon 550EX
Flash. I got about 9 good pics out of 42!!! I also used AI Servo
for Swimming.

I have posted a few pictures at
http://www.pbase.com/actionphoto/dan These images are untouched.

Any help is appreciated.

Dan
Click to expand...
--
Karl
 
I have had the same problems with the D60 and the 70-200/2.8 when photographing Motocross. What I have had to do is use a smaller aperature (4.0-5.6) so that I have a larger DOF and then use a lot of prefocusing. I am learning a lot and I am sure that it will help me when I do save up enough for my 1D.

One suggestion that I can make is to shoot the subject from the side. That way they are neither coming towards you or moving away from you, so the focus should not change that much. Using this method, I would have to say that 95% of my pics are keepers.

Hope this helps....
David
ActionPhoto said:
I am having some problems with the D60 shooting Indoor Volleyball
and Swimming. I have the camera set to 800iso, AWB, AV, Canon 200L
1.8 (it's a friends) and AI Servo. I can shoot between 1/500 and
1/750 with this lens but, I am missing a lot of shots because of
the slow focussing. Some of the pictures are just out of focus all
together. Am I doing something wrong??

As for Swimming, I am using my 70-200L 2.8 with the Canon 550EX
Flash. I got about 9 good pics out of 42!!! I also used AI Servo
for Swimming.

I have posted a few pictures at
http://www.pbase.com/actionphoto/dan These images are untouched.

Any help is appreciated.

Dan
Click to expand...
--
http://www.pbase.com/perkinsd
http://www.perkins-photo.com
 
Not if you've locked focus by releasing the * button, which is what we were talking about.

Nill
Ben Horne said:
Often times yes. Instead of finding focus and locking once it has
focus, AI-Servo will continue to try and achieve focus while the
button is pressed. This means that the focus might be going
slightly in front of and behind the subject --- AI Servo is made
for moving subjects. Sometimes it'll give ok results for still
subjects, but there is that chance that it'll still be hunting for
focus when you press the shutter.
Click to expand...
 
Thanks Karl....some of my problem was probably camera shake. The swimming pool was really dark, I had to use flash.

Dan
Karl Guttag said:
The basic rule of thumb is to have AT LEAST 1/(35mm "effective"
focal length) -- many pro's would say this is a bare minimum even
with good technique. Since you were "effectively" at about 120mm
and the shutter speed was 1/60, you were shooting with too slow a
shutter speed unless you used a tripod or monpod or had IS in the
lens. Even this rule of thumb assumes you are "set up" and
reasonably stable in your stance. If you are moving around and
wipping the camera around to catch the actrion you might want
another 2X shutter speed for safety margin without IS.

I would suggest you get your shutter speed up to about 1/160 to
1/200th and shoot wide open (I think the pictures were at F4) and
let the flash fill in the rest (if you can use flash)

As for the Volleyball. With more practice you should get better.
The D30/60 AF system is at best marginal but it can work (I know it
can, I have seen it :-) ). A lot depends on the Gym lighting.
Even using the center focus point only, I think I am doing well if
I can get above 50% for shooting basketball in the poorly lit gyms
my kids play in.

Karl
ActionPhoto said:
I am having some problems with the D60 shooting Indoor Volleyball
and Swimming. I have the camera set to 800iso, AWB, AV, Canon 200L
1.8 (it's a friends) and AI Servo. I can shoot between 1/500 and
1/750 with this lens but, I am missing a lot of shots because of
the slow focussing. Some of the pictures are just out of focus all
together. Am I doing something wrong??

As for Swimming, I am using my 70-200L 2.8 with the Canon 550EX
Flash. I got about 9 good pics out of 42!!! I also used AI Servo
for Swimming.

I have posted a few pictures at
http://www.pbase.com/actionphoto/dan These images are untouched.

Any help is appreciated.

Dan
Click to expand...
--
Karl
Click to expand...
 
A lot depends on the situation, but DoF only goes up roughly proportionaly with the F-number. Thus if you go from F-2.8 to F5.6 the DoF only doubles but you have lost 2 Whole F-stops of light (and thus would either have to go with 4X the ISO, or 1/4th the shutters speed or both.

DoF does go down roughly proportional to the SQUARE of the Magnfication (combination of the Focal Length and Subject Distance) or the Field of view at the Focus point. If you are Taking a shot where say the FoV is 6 Feet High at the focus point, the DoF is only going to be about 4.5 Feet at F2.8. If you had a 1/2 body shot (say 3 feet high FoV at the focus point your DoF is only going to be about 1.1 feet. Remeber the the DoF is the TOTAL range and that approximately 1/3 of the DoF is in Front and 2/3rds behind the Focus point.

So if as often happens, you focus lock on the background, Doubling the DoF will make little difference. You have to get the focus pretty close to right. This also make the AV Servo critical as often you are taking pictures of people running toward you (to get their faces) and thus if the AI Servo does not anticipate ahead, you will be out of focus.

Karl
David Perkins said:
One suggestion that I can make is to shoot the subject from the
side. That way they are neither coming towards you or moving away
from you, so the focus should not change that much. Using this
method, I would have to say that 95% of my pics are keepers.

Hope this helps....
David
ActionPhoto said:
I am having some problems with the D60 shooting Indoor Volleyball
and Swimming. I have the camera set to 800iso, AWB, AV, Canon 200L
1.8 (it's a friends) and AI Servo. I can shoot between 1/500 and
1/750 with this lens but, I am missing a lot of shots because of
the slow focussing. Some of the pictures are just out of focus all
together. Am I doing something wrong??

As for Swimming, I am using my 70-200L 2.8 with the Canon 550EX
Flash. I got about 9 good pics out of 42!!! I also used AI Servo
for Swimming.

I have posted a few pictures at
http://www.pbase.com/actionphoto/dan These images are untouched.

Any help is appreciated.

Dan
Click to expand...
--
http://www.pbase.com/perkinsd
http://www.perkins-photo.com
Click to expand...
--
Karl
 
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