Water skiing pics, need help?

realitycheck3907

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Hey guys I am going to go take pictures of waterskiing, slalom, barefooting, trick skiing, all that stuff. I will be doing panning shots with the slalom, the barefooting is just mostly behind the boat so not really any panning there. I will be using a 70-300mm sigma lens. I dont know what focal length i'll be using just yet, I do know the skier will be from 40 to 75 feet away from the boat.
My question is what shutter speed do you think I should be using?
 
^^^ at least.

If you want to capture the action, particularly with longer focal lengths, you want to pretty much go as fast of a shutter as you can. I have found on occasion that even 1/400 with a 200mm focal length can be challenging when you're following movement.

A good rule of thumb is always be faster than 1/x where x is your focal length, but to consider this basically a minimum.
 
Higher ISOs and I would go 1/500 or better to freeze action. Id shoot at ISO 800 and up. Depending on what camera you have.
 
It depends. If you want to freeze everything than I would suggest 1/500 or higher, however there may be some interesting effects achieved using much slower speeds, say 1/30-1/60. For your panning I'd suggest start somewhere in the 1/200 area; I'm not terribly knowledgable about water-skiing, so I'm having difficulty estimating the speeds.
 
Higher ISOs and I would go 1/500 or better to freeze action. Id shoot at ISO 800 and up. Depending on what camera you have.

Why would you suggest higher ISOs? He should be outside, so presumably low ISO and maybe even polarizing filters would be the order of the day, no?
 
We will be outside on a lake so the full on sun in probably the middle of the day will be the conditions more than likely.

Tired iron talking speeds generally the boat is at 32-36 m.p.h., the skier in slalom skiing cuts back and forth across the wakes generally the skier, which is my subject, doubles the boats speeds, so about 60 to 70 mph. And I know you guys pan horizontally with cars that are travelling alot faster than this.
Oh and I have a Nikon D80.
 
Please be sure to post your pics...looking forward to seeing the outcome of this!
 
Sure thing. It'll probably be a few weeks before I can go, I have to work every other saturday so it kind of kills the weekend.
So i'm thinking keep the ISO's low. And i'll try a little of all, some panning, some slower shutter speeds, and some freezing shots also. Then see which I like best afterwards.
 
Took some pics of waterskiing and wakeboarding aswell. Just make sure your shutter speed is as high as possible. Not only the guy on the the water is moving but the boat is bouncing arround aswell. And thats the most difficult part i think. Try to get a good shot while you are bouncing around in the boat. Good luck with it!
 
Why would you suggest higher ISOs? He should be outside, so presumably low ISO and maybe even polarizing filters would be the order of the day, no?
Why? Higher ISOs make for higher shutter speeds to freeze action. Depending on what camera he is using then an 800ISO will yeild some very high shutter speeds making alot of the extra motion from the boat less negligible. Shooting from the shore then it isnt a problem. Id still stay at 400 personally.
 
Took some pics of waterskiing and wakeboarding aswell. Just make sure your shutter speed is as high as possible. Not only the guy on the the water is moving but the boat is bouncing arround aswell. And thats the most difficult part i think. Try to get a good shot while you are bouncing around in the boat. Good luck with it!

You know I thought about that also, and I figured it would add another problem to deal with during this shoot. Oh well it will be fun to try. I've got to practice my panning, i've never done it before.
 

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