Buggy, What tweeks can enhance this?

[Toothtek]

What lense would be good for this type of photography, I was using canon 55-250 is w/ xs body.




Mitch

[Donald]

Mitch

What is it about the 55-250 that you think is not good enough for the job?

[Dizzy]

Just slightly oversharpened, but I think overall that it's a very nice capture. I'll have to
mirror Donald's comment, in that the lens seems to be doing a fine job for the
task at hand.

[WJT]

The lens you have used has done a fine job with a little help from yourself, put your money back in your pocket.

[Toothtek]

I thought I could increase the shutter speed by having the 70-200 L2.8 series lense. This would give me more freeze in the action, giving finer detail.

My goal is to be able to be competive with Professionals, right now I still need alot of education.
Everyone I have gotten comments from on all my photos has helped me alot, Thank you all for the inspiration...

I will save my money...:-)

Thanks

[Donald]

I thought I could increase the shutter speed by having the 70-200 L2.8 series lense. This would give me more freeze in the action, giving finer detail.

That is certainly true. And if you want a faster lens, then starting to look at the 70-200 range is a good option. And, of course, the quality of the 70-200 L is right up there at the top-of-the-tree.

The thing you've got to check though is - Will 200mm be long enough for the sort of stuff you want to do? It looks like it, because I see that the image above was shot at 146mm.

The other debate to have with yourself is whether you use the camera settings to achieve your goal (to increase shutter speed), or whether you want a faster lens. I see that the above picture was captured at 1/800 at ISO200. If you'd gone to ISO400, you'd have been able to shoot it 1/1600. I also see you were set at f7.1. What is the widest you can get at 146mm on that 55-250? f5.6? That would have given you some more speed on the shutter as well.

I'm not suggesting that you don't want/need a faster lens. But it's always worth weighing up the alternative options before you commit to a fairly significant spend.

[rpcrowe]

I think that your capture was quite good, although a tad bit oversharpened.

I go along with the above posters in that you may not be using your present lens up to its fullest potential. Upping the ISO a bit to 400 would retain good quality but allow you to double your shutter speed. Opening the lens to it's fullest f/5.6 aperture would also allow a slightly faster shutter speed and result in a more narrow DOF.

However, the image looks just fine from my point of view. You have caught the vehicle in an opimum position, coming out of a turn! First, the vehicle is probably traveling a bit slower coming out of the turn; second, the curve of the dust cloud to the rear adds to the illusion of speed; third, whenever a subject is approaching the camera, you can freeze its motion with sigificantly slower shutter speeds than if the subject is transiting across the frame.

Whether or not you need a better lens is totally up to you and your image needs. The 55-250mm f/4-5.6 IS lens is a very good lens and excellent at its price level. The 70-200mm series lenses will provide better image quality and a wider macimum f/stop. They are shorter than the 55-250mm but, a 70-200mm L (series) lens will probably be found it the kit of evey serious sports photographer who uses Canon gear. That lens will most often be used in conjunction with a longer focal length glass such as a 300mm or a 400mm.

The optimum lens battery for a Canon based sports photographer would be the 70-200mm f/2.8L ISii and 400mm f/2.8L IS lenses on a pair of 1D (series) bodies. This is, however a very expensive and quite heavy outfit. The second body is the ticket in sports work. There are relatively few photographers at the pro level of sports photography who try to shoot with a single body.

Although this YouTube video pertains specifically to American Football, it is applicable to just about any sport...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMgZ13X_pr4

If I were established as a paid sports photographer, I would use the above equipment. However, as a non-professional who only occasonally dabbles in sports; I am quite happy shooting most sports using my 70-200mm f/4L IS and 300mm f/4L IS lenses on a pair of 1.6x bodies.

[Toothtek]

Don and Richard,

Thanks for the information, I am going to play with the settings in my camera to see the diffrence and make it a habit to understand what I see through my eyes, then transfer that to the camera settings..

Thanks very much for the homework...:-)

I will post more soon...

[rpcrowe]

Playing with the different focus modes of your camera using cars along the street or highway as targets is a way to hone your skills for the more important shooting. The nice thing about cars is that there are usually so many of them you can usually get a lot of practice in a short time...

BTW: Here is an example of shooting a fast moving subject coming out of a curve and heading for the camera...