droplets on lense when shooting in water...

[surfingwithkites]

sorry flatty, not a big fan of in body stabilization. Just my opinion. In general I like Minolta just fine. Good value, good cameras, good lenses.

As for your usual personal attacks and snippy comments, I don't shoot much manual anymore. Just a bit with the fisheye or the pov. I'm a firm believer in using what works and if that means auto focus and C kites... well so be it.

In truth image stabilization is becoming less and less of and issue/benefit as iso speed quality goes higher and higher anyway. Especially for someone like tautologies who lives where the light is stellar and shooting iso100 at f8 1/500 is common.

Nikon glass is overpriced too. I shoot all three brands so I don't really have a favorite myself. I guess if I was looking to buy my first high quality SLR this year I would give the nod to Nikon but all are good.

[afflatus]

Of course I'd disagree,

as High ISO becomes more usable the desire to push the envelope also increases, and any additional help will continue to be looked at as what it is... a bonus....

and motion blur is just the sort of thing the savvy action shooter fears most...

I'd suggest he'd be better served at f11 or better yet f16 maybe ISO 400 @ 1/1250 of a second or even faster for cover-shot type results....

addendum:
only mad dogs, and Englishmen shoot in the mid-day sun...

[tautologies]

okay guys settle down now.

I already have a 1mm macro lense for my Rebel XTi, so if I upgrade body, it will probably be Canon...I also know their menu systems.

Now what are good techniques to get "epic" shots (of course I mean epic for me, not for pro photographers).

I caught a couple but the object was a little far away, and many times they were against a dark backgroud. So at least I have learned that subject needs to be as close as possible, and that the background needs to be contrasting the subject. Although shooting against the light can yeild some nice effects it is really hard to get enough light on the rider so make him or her come out of the picture so to speak.

I did get a few okay shots, but there is sooo many things to work out to make them better.

On of the things that irritated almost more than the shooting the first feww times is that in the G9 waterhousing, when using shutter priority, I can't adjust the shutter speed. If I shoot with a too high shutter speed, it'll adjust the ISO too low. I can however manually set the ISO, but then it either keeps on warning me than there is not enough light, or adjust the aperature too much. In anycase, I've settled on shutter speeds at about 250-1000 so as to get some blur and some freeze motion shots.

Now I've only been out a few times, so my experience is very very limited.

What setting are you guys using?

FO, that bird is a nice shot.

[ToastSYN]

I guess I've got enough english in me for shooting when the suns directly overhead.
Shooting birds with a camera or gun though is for old grumpy men.

[surfingwithkites]

Here's an example of shooting into the midday sun (12:42 pm hst 7/11/08) just to show you the problems you can face. Yes, the action is crap which is why I post it here. But it gives a good example of exposure at that time of day and why I do sometimes shoot on manual setting still to balance the exposures during the mad dog hours. It's taken at Flattys favorite speed of 1/250 but at iso200 and f16. I shot it slow so I could get full flash power but most cover shots would be at higher speeds as 250 won't really freeze action. Aim for a minimum of 1/500 most of the time.

Tautologies, you need better equipment.

[surfingwithkites]

For comparison, here is a shot from the same day a few minutes later. Crap action again but I need the good ones for upcoming projects. Sorry. This was shot at iso200 but at 1/800 and f9. You will see that f9 still provides enough depth of field to get the kite and 1/800 does a much better job of freezing the action.

[tautologies]

...I know I need better equipment, but I will prioritize getting new gear first tho

SWK, I like the pics. Fo: I think in general ISO 400 is too rough, and I think I'd prefer to slow down the shutter. If you have anytips on post processing for high ISO's I'd appreciate it.


I think shooting with a slower shutter speed can sometimes yield some nice results..it brings in a notion of speed into the pic...
If one practice running the camera with the subject the background blurs out a little. I know it is super easy to do in photoshop, but getting a good pic right out of the box is a little more gratifying. ...most of the times, however, the blur will be annoying.

[afflatus]

Well,

Sure, before you upgrade anything try squeezing what you can out of what you got...

You've got several things going for you...

the big one...you're in the water so you're not trying to hold steady a 600mm lens....on the beach

this opens up some interesting possibilities... and let me say, there are no rules;

however there are thing to consider and exploit.

first thing, expose to the right (of the histogram) this will maximize your dynamic range...google it.

Our eyes have a DR of about 30 stops, color film about 12, CCDs only about 8 stops.

Second consider your options...

google hyper focal chart, and rejoice !!!

with a wide lens, stopped down you just may be able to forget about focus...

So, in short, overexpose a bit, fill the frame, spot meter a shadow and see what it looks like on the histo-gismo, and shoot in RAW.

Don't fear Higher ISOs goolge Noise Ninja

and the real secret, take as many shots as you can, odds are you'll get a least one keeper...

Regards
fo

also: don't be afraid of manual mode, but consider most cameras default to ISO 100 in manual mode.

try aperture priority and bump up the EV (exposer value) one click, go for getting some detail in the shadows...

EXPERIMENT

[surfingwithkites]

Flatty lays out some good basic advice.

In the "picture is worth a thousand words dept" here's how some of this works. The original shot, into the sun, 1p.m. fill flash, f13, 1/320sec, iso 100, canon 1Ds mk 2, 17 megapix then two covers using the shot. Using a studio camera allows native cropping at 300 dpi for covers from horizontally framed images. This allows for versatility in use and better autofocus. Sometimes hyper focus manual limits what you can do if you are swimming. For easily controlled situations like shallow water standing shooting freestyle (ie. ducks in a barrel) manual focus is often the go. Every situation is different and it just comes down to choices.

[surfingwithkites]

Aaron, I meant to address your blur ideas too. I like speed blurs a lot. There are basically two kinds of motion blurs that are commonly done in kiting. The first is to use a big lens on a tripod and a slow speed and pan with the action. In this case I used a 600 with a 1.4 converter to make an 840, shot into the afternoon glare at iso 200 f45 1/30th of a second with the image stabilizer set to only "absorb" vertical motion but let horizontal run wild.

The second style that you see a lot is to shoot in low light (sunset) with a wide angle, fix your aperture and let every shot get a bit more blur as it gets dark. Works really well with some flash set to second curtain sync to freeze the motion at the end of the blur and a nice orange sunset. I would have to dig back to my freestyle shooting days to find something.

Mags don't run this artistic stuff much although I think this shot ran in Kiteworld.

If you catch me down at the park on one of the rare days I shoot kiting anymore I'd be glad to show you the rigs and shoot the shit. Island hopping for the next week. Cheers.