Capturing Movement?

mrbez

mrbez

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Hi Guys,

I was sat with the cat last night trying to take some pictures when she yawned. Now I caught it, but it was very blurred. However, I have seen images of animals, cars etc that are in movement and have been captured puuurfectly! ( See what I did there!? :P )

How would I go about doing this on my 400D? I am a total noobie.

Cheers,

Craig.
 
COuld be that the autofocus didnt work well as it was fur.... notoriously difficult as there is not much contrast for it to pick up on.

What settings were you using.... and did you use flash?
 
wanna post what you did get?
 
I deleted it because it was crap, lol.

I had the camera on the auto setting, I wasn't shooting in P or AV or anything.
 
Thats what I was assuming so didnt ask about shutterspeeds etc as the flash wouldve popped up automatically.

But also the image wouldnt have taken if the focus wasnt achieved would it?

Be interesting to see if it happens in the day light too.

Try the self same thing in the daylight... and also try it again at night but with the switch on the lens set to manual focus and you manually focus it.
 
As a rule of thumb Craig, for a hand held shot of a reasonably static object you need a shutter speed of 1/125th second to avoid any camera shake and motion blur. If you're not getting that you need to change some settings to achieve it. Reduce the aperture to let more light in and / or increase the ISO to increase your sensor's sensitivity to light. Have a play and you'll see what I mean. Put the camera in AV (aperture priority) mode, focus on an object and see what the camera reads, now reduce the aperture and do the same, you'll see that the shutter speed increases. Now increase the ISO value and you'll see the shutter speed increase again. The trade off with higher ISO is that the higher you go the more grainyness you'll introduce into the shot.

HTH :)

edit: don't use that horrible green square though :nono:, you'll never learn about your camera and the principles of photography if you do ;)
 
Yep a 400D won't take unless the focus locks, it just sits there strobing away until it gets a good focal point.

You could put it on Tv tho, and try with higher shutter speeds, just sounds like the shutter was too slow.

I know that on Auto mode it will put a slow shutterspeed when there's low light, regardless of how blurry the image will be.
 
With a Static subject, i,e your cat, i.e cat sitting still and yawning, blurring would come down to slow shutter speed, try setting the apature as low as it will go number wise and use a flash if there isnt much light, or even increasing the ISO as a last resort. With moving subjects, the above is the same but to capture the "movement" you can use a technique called "panning" This is where you track the subject to a certain point and then take the shot whilst still tracking the subject, its pretty tricky but you end up with the subject in focus but the background blurred to show the movement. Im pretty crap at it, havent really practiced, i did get one shot im quite proud of though..

2020785126_113c60d7cf.jpg
 
Temporary Hijack (apologies) was that the "skatepark" on the South Bank between the Tate and the Eye?
I tried a couple of panned shots there between the Lord mayors show and the fireworks and they were absolutely appalling.......... Given the lighting conditions there that shot is as near spot on as you're going to get.....


Regarding capturing movement, you can also get some nice effects if you use TV to set a slow shutter speed and then force the flash to fire as well. This has the advantage of Freezing the main subject but (obviously depending on the background) allows the rest to blur with any movement (be it moving subjects or deliberate camera movement). got a couple of half decent shots of the kids skipping on Holiday doing this I'll post them if I can find them....
 
I love the South Bank, SUCH a good place to take photos, so many interesting people and stuff there. That whole long stretch by the river from Waterloo station all the way up to the Tate Modern is not only a nice place to walk, but theres TONS of stuff going on there.

Gonna go there with my new kit when I get back to London for the Xmas holidays :)
 
I have the 400D, and the kit lens, and my cats were my first subject too! I too found that them moving slightly would cause blurring, and yawning produced a rubbish pic. If your indoors (which I suspect you are) the light wont be good enough to allow you the high shutter speed you need to capture a moving object without blurring. I moved my subjects right next to the window, with strong natural light to help.

I recommend manual setting for starting off, it forces you to learn the settings you can adjust, and what effect they have on the picture. I started on Full Auto (hence my forum name) and I only started to understand the effects of the settings when I started to adjust them myself. On manual setting, put the shutter speed up and see how under exposed the pic is. Then adjust the Aperture and iso to bring the exposure to the right level. You may find that you cannot get the exposure you require without bringing the shutter speed back down a bit. To counter that, add more light!

Good luck, keep clicking, it will all come together shortly.

:D
 
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