Water Photography

[Coo1eo]

Looking for a little feedback as this is my first water / swimming photography with my Canon 40D. This is my son @ his first swim team practice meet of this season. I shot this using my Canon 17 - 85 IS lens on Manual with the following settings: 110 mm Focal Length, 100 iso, 1/1000 shutter & 4.6 aperature. The only post processing applied was cropping & minor tweaking of the sharpness & saturation. I also have a polarizing filter on this lens. I appreciate any feedback, positive or negative.

 

[Roger]

Love the capture of the action, but I have to ask how much cropping did you do?

And I take it no flash, correct?

6.5 fps is probably enough to be able to help capture the decisive moment, but you may want a little more reach and a little faster shutter speed, but that would entail more $$$ for a lens.

 

[zackiedawg]

Not bad - the color looks good, and the water is nicely frozen in place. I assume by Roger's comment that your camera is capable of 6.5fps - so that would definitely be the thing to use...the catch of action and color are quite good, but the pose itself isn't quite perfect because you can't really see much of your son's face. With a fast burst and a series of shots over a few seconds, you should be able to sneak one good shot of part of the face. That's just about the only thing I'd probably work on - rattling off longer bursts to try to catch the moment he turns his head to take a breath and the arm is clear of the face and the splashes not blocking.

Also, I'd consider maybe going with a slightly smaller aperture, raising the ISO a bit to compensate. That way, you could get slightly wider DOF to avoid the autofocus getting thrown off by a plume of water and leaving your son out of focus. A smaller aperture would give you a few-foot-wide focus area which would be enough to keep everything in the vicinity of your son decently sharp - if you could still get 1/1000 shutters with F7-8 range and ISO400, your camera should still have almost no visible noise (especially shooting disturbed water where very minor noise wouldn't even be noticed anyway, and you'll get back the two stops or so of light loss while getting a wider DOF.

All in all, you're doing fine, especially if that's your first attempt at shooting a swimmer with your camera!

 

[Coo1eo]

Thanks guys for the feed back.

Roger - I did not have to crop much as I was standing poolside so I was able to get in pretty close. I was tracking the subject & shooting at about 3 - 4 fps. You are correct that I did not use any flash. As for $$$ for a new lens, I am looking to save up for the Canon 70-200: http://www.the-digital-picture.com/Revi ... eview.aspx

zackiedawg - Yes, my camera is the Canon 40D & it is capable of 6.5 fps. I am actually taking pictures for the whole swim team & I am taking multi-bursts as you suggest. I just didn't manage a clearer one of my son in the series that produced this one. I thought about using a smaller aperature after reviewing the photos from this particular meet. I will be trying that at his swim meet tomorrow. The photo above was shot using Manual, but tomorrow I will shoot using Aperature value & I plan to shoot with an f8; then adjust my iso accordingly.

This was my first time shooting swimming action on full manual action. The only cameras I have ever had prior to this were point & shoot. I have some other photos from that first meet that came pretty good. I will try to post these later.

 

[Roger]

The 70-200 2.8 IS is a wonderful lens; just make sure that while it's under warranty you double check that it focuses properly. My former copy backfocused horribly on my 30D; fortunately I was able to correct it on the Edsel. I don't think Canon included microadjust AF on the 40D, but I may be wrong.

Have you tried using the ISO Safety Shift?

 

[Coo1eo]

I must admit I am unfamiliar with this feature? I'll have to read up on it. What does it do?

 

[Roger]

It will allow you to start at one ISO of your own choosing and then if the camera can't get the shot with the lens & settings it will adjust the ISO. I think it will accept limits to shutter speed and aperture, but not sure because I never set those on the Edsel.

But basically if you had ISO 100, 1/1000 sec at f/5.6 with a 2.8 lens, and using Tv mode with 1/1000 sec: If it got dark suddenly, the camera would move the aperture first to let say 4 then 2.8, and if it still was too dark, it would then start bumping up the ISO until the "proper" exposure was obtained. It didn't/doesn't work in manual mode, only P, Av and Tv, but I hate using it in Av mode, because without limitations on the shutter speed, it would adjust shutter speed first. So it would go to non-handholdable speeds before adjusting the ISO....Granted, I think they got it right with the 40D and fixed that little problem.

 

[Coo1eo]

That sounds exactly like what I need to try. Last Saturday was a bright sunny day during the swim meet, but they were many clouds that kept blocking out the sun. I was constantly having to make adjustments.

Here are some of the other pics I took on the first swim meet outing. Some of these are better action shots, but I just really liked the way the other one looked. These would have looked better with a smaller aperature as mentioned by zackiedawg. I realized my error when reviewing these, but seeing as it was my first try, I wasn't really sure. I know these will get better as the season progresses.

 

[Roger]

The last two and maybe the one right before it looks front-focused. Do you happen to know where the camera was focusing? (In Zoombrowser, Imagebrower if you are using Mac OS, you can overlay the focus point on the image)

 

[Coo1eo]

I don't recall the focal point on these. On the ones I shot this past week, I selected the center focus point in Autofocus mode. These were using the multi-point focus & again I realized after that was probably not a good choice as there are so many thing going on in the picture. Does that sound correct?

 

[Roger]

Yes it does, but I'm also discussing a phenomenon where the AF computer thinks it is focusing correctly but sends the wrong data to the lens motor, so the focus isn't on target, but rather in front of or behind the intended target. Meanwhile the computer indicates that it is in focus.

But I've found that in principle multi-area AF when shooting a fast(er) moving target that may move on the frame generally holds focus better than single point, as the system can "hand-off" the focus to another sensor.

But I can't vouch for any Canon camera's AF introduced since Feb 2007. More rather I won't.
[me=Roger]doesn't want to pull out his Edsel misfocused Tiger of Doom pic[/me]

 

[Coo1eo]

After reviewing the pictures from week 1 where i used multi-point AF, it appears they are better focused the week 2 where I used single poing AF. I think I will go back to multi AF this week & just decrease the aperature to reduce noise. I will also increase my shutter speed & do some of the other things we talked about here to see what this produces.

Now you have to show the Tiger of Doom pic.

 

[Roger]

As you can tell, the camera focuses behind the tiger. And the focus point was dead on.

[This attachment has been purged. Older attachments are purged from time to time to conserve disk space. Please feel free to repost your image.]

 

[Coo1eo]

Thanks Roger. This one helps to understand your point a little better. I find it a little tougher to catch this in my swimming pics, whereas it is easier to see in the Tiger pic.

 

[Roger]

Open up your photos in Zoombrowser, and there is an option to show focus points. It'll overlay them on the photo!

 

[Coo1eo]

Thanks! I have Imagebrowser loaded on my MacBook. I found the option you are talking about. I had not used this program before.

 

[Roger]

Ahh cool! I used Mac's "print screen" feature where you can set the size to be captured to create my "screenshot" that has the image with the focus points superimposed. Much more useful than Windows "print screen" IMHO.

 

[DisneyGeek92]

command shift 4 favorite shortcut. Somehow my utilities folder got deleted I can't get to the terminal and do unix stuff nothing. So doesn't work for me anymore.

 

[Coo1eo]

Roger - Here are some recent shots using some of the points suggested. These were shot using Aperature priority (Av) with ISO 200, Aperature f8. They were shot using multi-point AF at varying focal lengths using my EF 70-300 IS USM 4-5.6 lens. The shutter speed on these was 1/1250 sec. No post processing has been done to any of these pictures. Some of these have better focus than the others. Using the AF Frame function in Imagebrowser was a good way to determine where the camera was focusing on these.

 

[Roger]

Some of them are spot on, but most look front-focused. It could be that the camera was getting the water spray instead of the person, or the lane floats as well. Or it could be a camera/lens calibration issue.