Action shots with a digital camera..

[Santilli]

Hi All

I was recently trying to take action shots at Marineworld with Olympus D-395.

Everytime I tried to shoot, mainly action shots, I ended up with ass
:evil:

Tiger gives me a great look, trying to stalk a young child through the fence, line up take shot, punch button, and, by the time the shutter works, and, the picture, I get tiger ass.

Tava comes into the ring, poses beautifully, I focus, take the shot, and, again, by the time the camera functions, I get elephant ass...

This is a consistent pattern.

I tried to get pictures of my girlfriend on a ride, ended up taking 4 gang members from Vallejo.

I guess the point of this entire discussion is
What type of digital cameras actually WORK nearly as fast as say, a Canon SLR, in taking digital action shots?

Price should be 900 dollars and under.

Thanks

Greg

 

[Pradeep]

Something like the Nikon D70 or Canon RebelXT would suit the bill. Basically instant-on, and shutter lag time is comparable to a film SLR. Bigger question is what kind of lenses you want/need.

Looks like that Olympus only has digital zoom, so the kit lens that comes with either camera whould be huge boost flexibility wise.

I have the D70, highly recommended. It also has a cheaper brother, the D50. D50 only takes SD memory, the D70 takes CompactFlash, may swing you one way or the other.

 

[Will Rickards]

Yeah for those shots with a digicam you have to have already focused and have the button half depressed and have the camera in fast motion mode to get any decent pictures. And in fast motion mode with my camera I don't get as much information in the picture. I learned this trying to take pictures of liam on those amusement rides. Fortunately those go around in circles so I could focus ahead of time.

 

[mubs]

One thing in your favor is that digicams in general have way more depth-of-field than film cameras. After some trial and error, I've shot pics of the dolphin touching the flag at SeaWorld in San Diego and similar "action" pics. The camera is an Oly C-4000 that is well known for its great lag time. As Will said, being prepared ahead of time is the key. Prefocus and keep depressed half-way till the moment is ripe. Doesn't work all the time, though. At least you now have a budding collection of ass pictures!

 

[Mercutio]

Depending on the ass in question, that could be a beautiful thing.

 

[Santilli]

Depending on the ass in question, that could be a beautiful thing.

Well, I figured you might get a chuckle out of that. :mrgrn:

However, elephants and tiger asses are things of beauty, just not what I had in mind for the pics.

I decided to download, and print the manual for the D-395. It's 160 pages long. Nice for a 'point and shoot' hmmm?

Appears part of this is not using the right mode, but, it's not easily identified how to change modes, and, the screen is so small that you need reading glasses to see the tiny letters in the sun, and, then have to take them off to take the shot. WONDERFUL. It also went through 12 Panasonic 2300NI-MH batteries in the day.

 

[MaxBurn]

Depending on the ass in question, that could be a beautiful thing.

That's what I was thinking! The problem here is?

 

[mubs]

I decided to download, and print the manual for the D-395. It's 160 pages long.

I hope you printed n-up. My Oly manual was a .pdf, and Acrobat does it easily. I printed mine 4 pages to one physical page, and printed on both sides.