Newbie

simonr66 · Apr 18, 2016

So being new to photography by which I mean moving on from a simple point and shoot camera.

I'm looking to improve my skills and get proficient in taking motorsport pics but also anything else that I think looks great, so with that in mind I was out and about over the weekend and took some photos of the spring birds, this was the best of the bunch, please let me have your comments as t what I could have done better. :1247:

fmw · Apr 18, 2016

Motorsports and wildlife generally call for long lenses and fast focus. In your shoes I would choose a digital SLR (Nikon, Canon, Sony, Pentax etc) with a normal zoom and then add a telephoto zoom as a second lens.

wfooshee · Apr 19, 2016

Little birds in the trees like that are hard. they don't sit for any amount of time at all, and to get a good shot you have to really follow them around as they flit from branch to branch. it takes patience, and a lot of "not-quite" shots. The one you have is well done, other than being the wrong end of the bird...

Nothing wrong with cropping it a bit to make the picture about the bird instead of the tree-that-has-a-bird.

You'll find that low ISO generally doesn't get you very good long-lens bird pics, because you can't get a fast enough shutter. I don't know how good your D5200 is at higher ISO, but you ought be able to shoot at ISO 400 at least. Aperture priority is not what you want with birds, either, as you might get one in the shade and find yourself with a 1/30 shutter, or even slower. you want shutter priority, fairly fast, like 1/500 or faster, and watch your meter in the viewfinder for exposure; if it shows LO, raise your ISO. If you can't raise it enough and be comfortable with the resulting noise, lowering the shutter speed is the only choice, but you risk motion blur.

In motorsports, the first thought is to use a very high shutter speed to freeze the fast action. That works, but makes for dry images. You want to learn to pan with the subject as it passes, and use a shutter around 1/125 or even slower. If you do it right, the car/bike/snowmobile/whatever is sharp but the background will show blur, implying motion to the viewer. Moving parts of the vehicle such as wheels/tracks will also blur. If you haven't done it before and will be learning as you go, expect a lot of throw-aways, but one or two really really really nice shots.

table1349 · Apr 19, 2016

Sorry have to disagree on using shutter priority mode for birds. When shooting wildlife, as in shooting sports you want one center of attraction or action if you will. That calls for a fairly shallow DOF. Set the camera to the aperture you want for the proper DOF so the bird(s) are in focus but the foreground and background is OOF. This draws your eye to the subject. To keep the shutter speed up to where you want it adjust your ISO.

wfooshee · Apr 20, 2016

Shutter speed is more important to me than depth of field, so I shoot shutter-priority. Depth of field comes pretty much automatically with the long lenses in use.

gryphonslair99 said:
To keep the shutter speed up to where you want it adjust your ISO.

To keep the shutter speed up where I want it, I shoot shutter-priority. My D7000 has a very limited useful ISO range, anyway.

zombiesniper · Apr 20, 2016

Welcome to TPF.
I run manual with auto ISO and set a max ISO that the camera can handle. I get the speed and DOF that I want and in 99% of situations the camera will expose correctly for me.