Photo tragidies - Help

[eagle22va]

I have used our Dimage 7i with great results. But two recent outings went bad.

1. Trying to capture the skaters at Champions on Ice. Poor and changing lighting, of course they were moving a lot. I did not try using Manual focus set to infinity. Think this would have worked?

2. My graduation in a civic center. Lighting was OK, but even when everyone is still the pictures were blurry or out of focus or dark, or all of the above. Why now. Pictures from 35 mm camera with ASA 400 had some similar results.

I will be upgrading the firmware to 1.1.1u today.

One last questions. Has anyone photographed fireworks? Any special settings?

Thanks

[abredon]

Originally Posted by eagle22va

1. Trying to capture the skaters at Champions on Ice. Poor and changing lighting, of course they were moving a lot. I did not try using Manual focus set to infinity. Think this would have worked?

Prefocus would probably have helped (one trick I use is to autofocus by half pressing the shutter, then press the MF/AF button to lock focus)
Also, when capturing sports in poor lighting, you might have to set the ISO to 400 or 800. The pictures will be noisier than ISO 100, but you will at least have usable pictures. To reduce the noise afterwards, you can use Neat Image (slow, but effective)

Originally Posted by eagle22va

2. My graduation in a civic center. Lighting was OK, but even when everyone is still the pictures were blurry or out of focus or dark, or all of the above. Why now. Pictures from 35 mm camera with ASA 400 had some similar results.

The shutter speed was probably too low to handhold, except at high ISO. Boosting the ISO to 800 might have allowed you to take sharp pictures.
Also make sure you are using proper handholding technique - see http://www.vividlight.com/articles/112.htm
(I learned a few things from that article, even though I already knew quite a bit about good ways to hold a camera at slow shutter speeds.)

Manual prefocusing would probably have helped avoid the out of focus shots.

Originally Posted by eagle22va

One last questions. Has anyone photographed fireworks? Any special settings?

My settings for fireworks - ISO 100, Manual mode, f/8, bulb shutter speed, manual focus to infinity, camera on tripod with remote shutter cable. Vary exposures from 1 to 8 seconds.
Try to be in place and set up before it gets dark, so you can see your equipment while setting up.
Remember that the manual focus is lost when you change batteries. I forgot this, and the last half of the pictures I took were out of focus.

The tripod and remote shutter cable is very important - it allows you to watch the fireworks while taking pictures, so you don't miss the show.

[eagle22va]

Thanks for the quick response. I'll have to try these techniques. Now I have to find and buy a remote trigger. Neat Image looks good, but which version is worth the $$.

[abredon]

Originally Posted by eagle22va

Thanks for the quick response. I'll have to try these techniques. Now I have to find and buy a remote trigger. Neat Image looks good, but which version is worth the $$.

Use the free version - You will know if and when you need a more advanced version. (In my case, I wanted 16 bit output and the Photoshop plugin, so I bought the Pro+ version)