The Joy Of Running 1

The Joy Of Running 1
Originally uploaded by Mark1970Vintage

Getting quality shots of moving subjects is relatively simple using a DSLR. Here are some tips.

Shoot in RAW, it means you can fine tune the white balance later, as well as have more leeway in finding details in shadow areas and avoiding clipped highlights.

It was a bright sunny day so I was able to shoot @ ISO 100 and still have a high enough shutter speed. If it's a bit dull or less light consider increasing the ISO to raise the shutter speed.

Set the camera to AI servo mode, this tracks moving subjects and keeps them in focus so long as you keep your finger half pressed ont he shutter buttton.

Set your camera to high speed burst mode and rattle off shots of the moving subject.

Don't start shooting too soon though, remember you are shooting in RAW and the buffer may fill up before you get to the real action you want to record.

Take a look in your manual to refresh your memory on how many shots your camera can take per second in high speed burst mode and how many shots in RAW will fill the buffer, causing the shot rate to drop.

Import the shots into your viewer (I use Lightroom) select the keepers and flag those short of the mark for deletion. You can then convert the RAW file as you wish, playing around with teh sliders or using a preset. I opted to use an x=equals preset called warm storm. This has given a great separation of the subject fromt he background and really accents the bright sunny day that we had on the beach.

With Spring rapidly springing all around there are a wealth of Photographic Opportunities. This little flower is a Grape Hyacinth from my garden, they're really cheery little flowers. I picked it, put it in a small glass, repositioned it to a shady spot out of the direct sun and made sure I had a nice uniform background. The background was a holly bush in the direct sun and the light glinting off the leaves has given the circular "bokeh" effect. To acheive a similar effect use a lens with a "long" focal length (say>50mm). Shoot in aperture priority mode with a wide aperture f/5.6 - f/2.8 or even f/1.8 if you have a lens that'll open that wide. Finally ensure that the camera - subject distance is << than subject to background distance. Having a background that has very bright specular highlights will give the best bokeh. The light in the shaded area was still sufficient to hand hold the shot without resorting to a tripod but if your shutter speed starts to drop below 1/focal lenth then think about using a tripod or resting your camera on a solid surface to avoid shake.



In terms of post processing. This was done entirely in Lightroom 2 as part of the raw conversion. I boosted the colours slightly with Vibrance and an increase in the blacks. Clarity was increased and then some further sharpening. I played with the tone curve to increase the highlights and lights and decrease the shadows and darks to give a further contrast boost. Exported to my flickr stream using Jeffry Friedl's excellent lightroom plug in (Jeffrey Friedl's Blog » Jeffrey’s Lightroom Goodies (Plugins and Tools)) and also using the LR2 Mogrify plug in from Timothy Armes to provide the borders and signature direct from ligthroom on export. Photographer's toolbox - Best Plugins and Web Engines for Adobe Lightroom