Photographing people running

Sask2005

Yesterday I took 640 photos of a mountain marathon even in wellington. new zealand. It was the first serious use of my E300. Some photos I used the "sports" program and for others I used the Scenes - sports" program.

I got mixed results. Most because the auto focus didn't focus on the subject's face or the person was moving so fast. I tried multiple images hoping one would turn out good.

If you look at www.brucepool.com/mountain you will see a range of the pics I took.

I would appreciate comments on these and suggestions on how to take better photos fo moving targets.

Thanks
Bruce

gus

Bruce...is there a way to see the EXIF data that i can find ?

Anyone that can offer help will def need to see it.
Gus

W.W. Webster

Sask2005 wrote:

Yesterday I took 640 photos of a mountain marathon even in wellington. new zealand. It was the first serious use of my E300. Some photos I used the "sports" program and for others I used the Scenes - sports" program.

I got mixed results. Most because the auto focus didn't focus on the subject's face or the person was moving so fast. I tried multiple images hoping one would turn out good.

If you look at www.brucepool.com/mountain you will see a range of the pics I took.

I would appreciate comments on these and suggestions on how to take better photos fo moving targets.

Thanks
Bruce

Bruce - you too? It's a small world.

I've posted some of my efforts at the same event here .

digismile

Without EXIF information, I would still suspect a lag in focus speed. I have taken pictures at a lot of the races I have attended and I have found that for the average runner, you can get good results with shutter speeds at 1/500 and faster. Depending on the distance and whether they are coming directly towards you, across your line of vision, etc. even slower speeds are possible. This picture is at 1/350 of a second and the boy was running hard to the finish



Even this picture isn't perfectly tack sharp. So my suggestion is to use your camera in shutter priority at a fast shutter speed.

I think the second problem is that your camera focus doesn't track a moving object (ie. predictive focus). Even the best dSLRs don't always track perfectly, and there have been many threads here on dgrin discussing sports photography.

I took pictures a few years ago at the Canadian Death Race using my regular film camera at the time (EOS 10s) and my first digital, aCanon G2 (the photo above was with a 20D). My G2 definitely couldn't find the focus fast enough, so to get sharp photos, I would prefocus on a spot or target near the distance I wanted to capture (a few seconds ahead), and I would push the shutter a 1/2 second or more ahead of the runner passing my focus point. So I was trying to overcome 2 issues: a slow focusing camera, and a shutter lag.

I expect that if you use a fast enough shutter speed and prefocus the camera, you will get excellent results.

Brad

P.S. looked like a great race! Saw a couple of skinned knees, etc.