Blurryness

[CFRacer22]

I'm using a Canon Rebel XTI, just got it, and a feature I'm trying to get used to is the sequencing. I'm a motocross racer and this feature will be really fun if I can figure it out good. My problem is that the camera only allows the sequencing in two of the 'automatic' modes, Sports and Portrait. The sports mode sounds like it would be perfect but you can't adjust settings in these modes and sometimes it chooses a really slow shutter speed and blurs everything. It seems to work fine on things far away, for example a moving car 100 feet away, but for things close up, for example a person 8 feet from me moving around really fast, it doesn't work it all, every moving part of the person is a blur.

Also the camera is supposed to do this at about 3 pics per second, sometimes it seems to do it at that rate while sometimes it seems to go much slower...

 

[CFRacer22]

btw, i'm really new to photography outside of a p&s digital camera...

 

[The_Traveler]

I don't have that camera but my guess about the burst shooting is that you can do it in any non-program mode, such as aperture preferred, shutter prederred or manual.

First find and read the manual section about setting for multiple exposures on each button press.
Second, set for shutter priority, which is what sports mode is.

Then make a bunch of test shots, adjusting ISO (equivalent of film speed) up until you get the results you need.

 

[darich]

i had a digital rebel a coupe of years back and have since had a 20D and now a 5D.

on every one of those you can use continuous shooting on various modes. I normally use Av and select as large an aperture as my lens will allow.

You need to select the continuous shooting mode rather than single shot mode. You can only select continuous shooting in the creative section as Canon calls it.

Check your instruction manual - the symbol for continuous shooting looks like a square with several others behind it.

as for getting less than the specified 3fps - that would happen on 2 occasions.
1st - when the exposure is so long that 3 images cannot be captured per second
2nd - when the buffer is full and the camera can only shoot at a rate as fast as it can write to the card - around 1fps.

your panning technique may require improving and the only way to improve it is to practice.

one more tip - i've found when panning that it's better to resist the temptation and zoom into your subject because you'll end up with a wheel cropped or a helmet sliced off the top - i've been there!!!!

 

[darich]

Second, set for shutter priority, which is what sports mode is.

I'm not sure that's entirely true.
I don't have a sports mode on my camera but I'm pretty sure that sports mode automatically turns the flash off, and selects a particular focus mode (AI or Servo)

in Av mode it's still possible to select any focus mode, use the flash and any other options.

they may have similarities but they're not really the same thing.

Having said all the above I'd agree that when shooting continuously selecting Av mode is a good way of doing it - assuming the lens doesn't have a minimum aperture of f/8 or something!!

 

[ironsidephoto]

i agree with them; i think the first thing to try would be to put it in shutter preferred or manual and mess with the iso--basically, play around with shutter speeds. probably nothing less than 1/250 or 1/500 for what you're doing.