Smoky
Well-known member
I had an interesting photo experience this week and am looking for comments on this subject.
We went to the Rodeo in Cody Wyoming and took our FZ30. I was kind of excited thinking it would be the first time I had a chance to try out the sports setting. The first hour of the rodeo it worked fine. But I noticed as the sun set and it got darker and darker, even though the house lights came on, the shutter speed got slower and slower. Finally the photos were too fuzzy because the shutter speed had dropped to 1/25.
I looked at the manual and fooled around a bit with the camera and decided to experiment with shutter speed preference where I set my desired shutter speed and the camera adjusts the aperture automatically.
I ended up forcing the shutter speed to 1/40. The result was too dark of course. But I found I could brighten things up with my Elements software and the result was not too bad. See the 4 photos attached. Each one is a pair, first the original photo, then the brighter touched up photo.
I would like to use this comparison as a stepping stone to a discussion on how to handle night time sports action photography when the lighting is marginal.
How do you guys handle these situations?
Yes, I know an even more advanced camera would solve much of the problem, but that is currently not an option for me. I doubt if flash will help in an arena, but maybe I am wrong there? Any other ideas?
My next experiment will be to try 1/100 speed and maybe fool with the ISO adjustment. I did not have much time at the rodeo as these issues were new to me and I was just fooling around.
Here are the "before" and "after software" shots
We went to the Rodeo in Cody Wyoming and took our FZ30. I was kind of excited thinking it would be the first time I had a chance to try out the sports setting. The first hour of the rodeo it worked fine. But I noticed as the sun set and it got darker and darker, even though the house lights came on, the shutter speed got slower and slower. Finally the photos were too fuzzy because the shutter speed had dropped to 1/25.
I looked at the manual and fooled around a bit with the camera and decided to experiment with shutter speed preference where I set my desired shutter speed and the camera adjusts the aperture automatically.
I ended up forcing the shutter speed to 1/40. The result was too dark of course. But I found I could brighten things up with my Elements software and the result was not too bad. See the 4 photos attached. Each one is a pair, first the original photo, then the brighter touched up photo.
I would like to use this comparison as a stepping stone to a discussion on how to handle night time sports action photography when the lighting is marginal.
How do you guys handle these situations?
Yes, I know an even more advanced camera would solve much of the problem, but that is currently not an option for me. I doubt if flash will help in an arena, but maybe I am wrong there? Any other ideas?
My next experiment will be to try 1/100 speed and maybe fool with the ISO adjustment. I did not have much time at the rodeo as these issues were new to me and I was just fooling around.
Here are the "before" and "after software" shots