New and need some tips :)

[Katkoota]

Hello there

I am new here. I enjoy photography as a hobby. I am here trying to learn more about it, and hopefully rely less on some auto settings in the camera.

I enjoy animal photography the most I have a couple of dogs who I love to photograph. I especially enjoy taking action shots of them because these sort of photos speak so much about their personalities.

I took the bellow two photos with my nikon D3

This is Snowy.

and this is Crystal

I also recently got the Nikon D7000 which I am loving so far.

The thing is, I don't like for the camera to do most of the work. I would LOVE LOVE LOVE to be able to get the full control over it. Why? because pictures like these always require at least 10-20 clicks to get the FULL FOCUS on my subjects (my small dogs) while running. Some will come out nicely, but not the sharpness of the subject that I would love to have (the ones that I posted above, is something that I love, but don't get very often). That said, I know that I need to use the manual mode, but I would really appreciate some tips on the best or good settings on the camera to use for such images. I take these sort of photos outdoors all the time, so I rely on natural lighting.

Any tips? Insight? Please feel free to share with me. I will really appreciate that!

Kat

 

[dxqcanada]

Based on your subject ... AF focus speed is very important.
That is something you really cannot control as it is a camera function and I doubt you would do a better job manually ... though you could manually set the focus to a point where the dog will be, then take the shot (I think your subject is moving too fast for this).

Keep the shutter speed high.