UKC

hi i was wondering what dslr would be best for capturing action shots such as skiing, mountain biking, and other fast moving shots. The cameras i have been looking at (in my price range) are the d40x how ever this has no auto focus built in is this bad?, the eos 400d and the olympus e410 i like this one as it is small and lightweight how ever no image stabiliser is this a problem?

i would appreciate some advice thanks simon

In reply to 01wills: bump

In reply to 01wills: Buy a D40x. It has autofocus.

In reply to Stakhanovite: what makes it that much better then the other two? or is it just preverence

In reply to 01wills: It's perversion. Any nikon will rock your boat.

In reply to 01wills:

All DSlrs will capture a fast moving shot as long as you set your shutter speed fast enough. I believe in most if not all cases any image stabilisition is built into the lens not the camera so if you are concerned about image stabilisation then invest in good quality lenses (hmm 70-200 f4 IS L for me for christmas ). I have tried taking a few of the Red Arrows on display and motor racing and it's basically down to technique. Set a good fast shutter speed using the Tv mode, you might want to experiment with the shutter speed if you want to get some blur in the background that sort of thing but basically I find if I pick the point I want my exposure and then track the target inbound, make sure the camera is set to burst mode and just snap away. Make sure you set the AutoFocus to Servo mode so it will continually focus.

The better DSLr you get, the faster the burst shot is going to work (EOS400D can take 10 shots @ 3fps in RAW format iirc).

Oh and iirc shooting action goes through batteries like mad

In reply to D0dge:

It's worth noting that this is only true up to a certain point - my 5D doesn't shoot as fast as my 20D, for example.

In reply to haydn:

And the 40D shoots faster that the 1D...

(6.5 for 75 jpegs @ £700) v (5 for 56 jpegs @ £6000)

In reply to Cerulean:

if you put it in burst mode and shoot six shots at 1/1000 you've captured only 6/1000 of that second and missed 994/1000 of it...

better to shoot just one shot at the right moment rather than vaguely hope that the camera will do it for you...

Ian

In reply to Ian Hill:

Er, and how does one do that? Are we really capable of shooting to an accuracy of 1/1000th of a second? I suspect, nothing like (e.g. more like the speed of a movie: about 1/24th of a second, or perhaps up to a 1/100th). A question for the scientists.

In reply to Ian Hill:

Nae disrespect Ian but can you judge and react at levels of 1/1000th of a second? I'd bet on that being physiologically impossible......

In reply to D0dge:

The newer Pentax digital slrs (K100D/K110D/K10D) have the Image stabilisation built into the camera, so any lense you use benefits.

In reply to Ian Hill:

Thanks for that Ian. I did know that, but thanks anyway. The point was that you don't necessarily get more fps for your money...

In reply to Dan_S:

I did think there was one around that had built the gyros into the camera but I couldn't remember who had made it.

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:

The current reaction time permitted in IAAF events for a false start threshold is 1/10th of a second.

In reply to Dan_S:

I think the jury is still out on that one. I realise that I heard this at a Canon seminar, but they were explaining that their IS system does actually shift lens components to compensate for unsteady holds, which makes far more sense to me than putting it in the body. Although saying that I don't know how the body shake reduction works. Some compacts just up ISO to compensate for low light - and they call it shake reduction...

Incidentally Canon reported that they'll be putting their IS system in every lens in the future.

In reply to 01wills:

I would have thought that at the shutter speeds you will be using for fast action shots, Image Stabilisation isn't going to make much difference.

I thought it only really came into it's own at slower shutter speeds.

(Ready to be corrected on that though - I am so far stabilisation free).

Cheers
Bri.

In reply to D0dge:
The new Oly E-3 has IS in the camera body. There are pros & cons to this really, some people don't like being forced to use it and prefer it as a lens option. I'm old and doddery and can't hold a camera steady for toffee so I want it in-body.

In reply to bh11:

As far as I understand it you are right, depending on how good your IS is you can go from 1 to 4 stops down and still get a good image, plus the Canon higher series IS lenses (not sure about the Nikon VRs) have two modes, one for normal shooting and one for horizontal tracking shots which only stablises on one axis

In reply to JDal:
It's also in the e-510:
http://www.wrotniak.net/photo/oly-e/e510-is.html

And some clues as to it's workings:
http://www.olympus-europa.com/consumer/dslr_16742.htm

In reply to bh11:

IS (mode 2 for canon people) does help with panning action shots.

In reply to Removed User:

I'm fairly inexperienced at fast action photography, but I imagine that taking good shots is down to anticipating rather than fast reflexes. In fact, if you don't do this, I expect you will almost always miss the "moment".

I think this was probably what Ian meant.

J

In reply to orge:
Mate from school photos the SPL every week. He can anticipate where the baw is going, but even he is not that good he'll get the exact moment when the baw hits the heid or whatever. He will back up this with the burst as he cannot react at those levels. Point is you can anticipate but you will be very lucky to be able to get it exact in a very fast moving situation, the burst narrows those odds. There is a good reason why the sports boys all use high burst rate SLR's for action.

In reply to Removed User:
Not always. Some of MTB photography is done by predicting the right time to take photos.

See Seb Rogers blog for info.

In reply to Dave B:

...and his Nikon D2X was on single shot? Aye right....

In reply to 01wills: See you tonight big boy. Hope you've grown a tasche