Camera Help Please???

[Slenver]

Last question, honestly

Do the DLSR cameras have a digital zoom ?

Maybe so you can see what the pic will be like when cropped ? Or any other use?

On the screen after they've been taken, yes. In the same way that you'd zoom in on a computer monitor. Which is the same thing anyway.

Edit: too slow

It's one of the great things about the fancy mirrorless ones of course, you CAN see what the pic will come out like before you take it.

Cheating

[Mr. Dazzle]

All digital is cheating in that regard

[Yorick]

You need to consider how you're going to process your digital images too.

I'd just planned to copy them to phone to share to folk. Maybe a couple printed. Nowt special

[Mr. Dazzle]

Most/all SLR will save the pics "unprocessed"...think of it like buying an album but being given all the drum, singing, guitar tracks etc separately to mix yourself.

Most of them can also do straight JPEGs too TBF.

[Yorick]

Most/all SLR will save the pics "unprocessed"...think of it like buying an album but being given all the drum, singing, guitar tracks etc separately to mix yourself.

Most of them can also do straight JPEGs too TBF.

Oh bollox. Better start again

[Slenver]

Most/all SLR will save the pics "unprocessed"...think of it like buying an album but being given all the drum, singing, guitar tracks etc separately to mix yourself.

Most of them can also do straight JPEGs too TBF.

I'm not sure there are any that don't do JPEG output. And definitely any model in this price range will, as well as a load of processing presets.

Personally I wouldn't dream of doing anything other than RAW and spending ages tweaking in Lightroom, but the best starter/learner approach would definitely to just process in-camera and export JPEG.

[ChrisW]

Most/all SLR will save the pics "unprocessed"...think of it like buying an album but being given all the drum, singing, guitar tracks etc separately to mix yourself.

Most of them can also do straight JPEGs too TBF.

Oh bollox. Better start again

That Canon from Argos that you posted will take photos that you can just copy to your phone without any other bother.

[Ant]

It's good that we've exposed a few options here.

[Yambo]

You've got a lot to consider Yorick. My two pennyworth will give you a bit more.

A 200 mm prime lens is going to be more expensive than a zoom lens.

The bigger the lens, the heavier it will be and the heavier the lens the more likely you'll get some movement when taking photos. Magnifying images magnifies the error. You may want to consider a tripod or a monopod as holding a camera for long periods can be tiring and the more tired, the more shake.

I have 4 lenses, a Canon 18 - 135 mm, a Canon "nifty 50" (the cheap f2.8 one), a Sigma 100 - 400 and a Samyang 135mm f2 prime lens.

The Samyang is an excellent lens but is manual focus. The Sigma is a great lens - it can give good, sharp images on full zoom but it doesn't have a foot to attach it to a tripod. Keeping it steady can be a right pain and the photos can suffer. I bought it because I was going to Africa and animals are often a long way off. I took what I think is the best photo I've ever taken with it but I was lucky in that I could steady the lens against something. I've got some decent moon shots with it too.

The 18 - 135 is the everyday choice and I bought it at the same time as the camera body rather than getting the camera and kit lens which can be good but . . . Camera is a Canon EOS 800D.

It's a minefield tbh so I'd do a load more research. There are some great tutorials, comparison tests etc on YT.

Good luck

[Horse]

Going back to the two examples I used [much] earlier.

'Pin sharp, spokes 'frozen' = very high shutter speed (low exposure time). This requires good ambient light.

Bike in focus, blurred background, 'dynamic'. Requires longer exposure, with the camera 'panning' to follow exactly the bike's movement.

But let's add a third. You want the bike 'frozen' and both background and foreground blurred. Here, with good ambient light, you can use a wider aperture and shorter exposure to limit the depth of field.

All good but I'd add/clarify maybe that the usual way of getting blurred foreground/background of a sharp moving object is more about panning. Tracking the bike accurately with a medium shutterspeed to keep bike sharp but get movement blur on everything else.

I was thinking of something like the rear-on shot Y posted earlier, but looking back they both already have blurred backgrounds. Perhaps imagine, in the second image, another bike ahead, but out of focus.

20230706_204300.jpg (204.92 KiB) Viewed 637 times

[Tricky]

It's good that we've exposed a few options here.

Maybe- I'm not sure what he should focus on but let's see what develops eh ....

[Mr. Dazzle]

I was thinking of something like the rear-on shot Y posted earlier, but looking back they both already have blurred backgrounds. Perhaps imagine, in the second image, another bike ahead, but out of focus.

Zoomed in a lot, lower depth of field. So the back (and fore) grounds are out of focus. That's not good/bad photography, that's just physics!

Same reason its hard for me to get photos of bees. You can sit 8ft away and zoom right in, but then only a few millimeters of depth are properly in focus.

[Yambo]

I was thinking of something like the rear-on shot Y posted earlier, but looking back they both already have blurred backgrounds. Perhaps imagine, in the second image, another bike ahead, but out of focus.

Zoomed in a lot, lower depth of field. So the back (and fore) grounds are out of focus. That's not good/bad photography, that's just physics!

Same reason its hard for me to get photos of bees. You can sit 8ft away and zoom right in, but then only a few millimeters of depth are properly in focus.

Get a macro lens! Alternately, you can get extenders or additional lenses to fit to your normal lens for macro work.

[Slenver]

I was thinking of something like the rear-on shot Y posted earlier, but looking back they both already have blurred backgrounds. Perhaps imagine, in the second image, another bike ahead, but out of focus.

Ah yes, sorry, for some reason I assumed you meant a left-right shot rather than head-on.

In which case yes, shallow DoF is good but with some caveats. For comparison, I've covered a lot of horse events in the past (dressage/eventing etc) which is loosely similar in that subject can be fast-moving and going left-right, head-on, or anything in between. They're bigger and slower, mind you, plus hairier, but the theory's the same...

Anyway, I almost always use my 70-200 2.8, which is a lovely lens and pretty sharp wide open. But... three things. Firstly, all lenses are not at their sharpest wide open and improve to a varying degree by being stopped down a stop or two. Less so with the latest crop of super-sharp mirrorless lenses, but it's still a feature. My 70-200 is pretty sharp at 2.8, but much more so at f4.

Secondly, at 2.8 and the usual distance away, there's a good chance of not getting the focus bang on. The DoF is pretty shallow and if you focus on the wrong part of the horse/bike/rider then there's every chance you'll lose a bit more sharpness. If you've got a bike speeding towards you at 100+ then even the tiniest delay in focussing time might cause an issue.

Thirdly, if anything goes wrong (accident etc), then you want to forget all about the background and concentrate on getting as much subject as possible in focus at what could be a suddenly new direction! There won't be time to change settings (unless you're far more on the ball than me) but a slightly shallow DoF will give you some wiggle room.

Wide open at 2.8 you'll get a lovely defocussed background/foreground. But stopping down to f4, or sometime f3.5, you're upping your chances of a super-sharp shot by a good amount, and decreasing the background defocussing by not enough for it to matter. So I usually do that.

If it was a matter of photographing the same rider for 60 laps then I'd definitely experiment with going wide open as you're risking nothing, but overall I find f4 on a 2.8 lens to be a good compromise.

[Mr. Dazzle]

Get a macro lens! Alternately, you can get extenders or additional lenses to fit to your normal lens for macro work.

I actually want to sit a reasonable distance from said Bees though, so they'll go about their everyday Bee business.

[Slenver]

Same reason its hard for me to get photos of bees. You can sit 8ft away and zoom right in, but then only a few millimeters of depth are properly in focus.

You definitely don't want to be 8ft away from bees for macro stuff, more like a few inches. You need to get a macro lens... and a flash. DoF is always a problem at macro levels, but with lots of light you can stop down to crazy stuff like f22 or more and get a lot more in focus. Though you do then get the black background effect, which you may or may not like.

[Horse]

In which case yes, shallow DoF is good but with some caveats. For comparison, I've covered a lot of horse events in the past (dressage/eventing etc) which is loosely similar in that subject can be fast-moving and going left-right, head-on, or anything in between. They're bigger and slower, mind you, plus hairier, but the theory's the same...

Anyway, I almost always use my 70-200 2.8, which is a lovely lens ...

I was with you up to there

I've not done any of that level of adjustments for 40+ years! Back in film days, with a Zenith.

If I use my Lumix bridge, which is rare nowadays, I typically leave it on auto and it usually selects an appropriate mode. I select 'high speed', which forces the highest possible shutter speed, if necessary - sometimes to try and introduce a narrower DoF. Flash off ideally, or force 'on' if I think it will benefit.

And that's about it. Amateur, really.

I put the effort into composition.

[Yorick]

I was thinking of something like the rear-on shot Y posted earlier, but looking back they both already have blurred backgrounds. Perhaps imagine, in the second image, another bike ahead, but out of focus.

Zoomed in a lot, lower depth of field. So the back (and fore) grounds are out of focus. That's not good/bad photography, that's just physics!

Complete and utter bollox. Same corner. 2nd rider superimposed.

If you look closely you might notice who it is

[Mr. Dazzle]

Yes I know about Rossi

Look at the kerbs, the walls, etc. The red and white next to you is in focus cause its the same distance from the camera, the stuff in front of you isn't.

The background isn't motion blurred, it's out of focus cause of the DoF. Sounds like a picky difference but it's "real" and achieved in different ways.

[Horse]

The background isn't motion blurred, it's out of focus cause of the DoF. Sounds like a picky difference but it's "real" and achieved in different ways.

And the sort of thing you & Penny need to have an idea about if you want to replicate certain existing photo types.

Dig out a selection of shots you like (not just those with you in ) and start to think about things like:
- type of location on the track
- where was the photographer (inside or outside)
- which bits are in focus / blurred
- head-on, side, 3/4, back view



PS has anyone mentioned motor drives yet? Then editing software to select the best of them. And using software to convert Raw to jpeg, cropping, adjustments, etc.?