Express Action Sports

I really enjoy doing stop motion photography but I just learned that the camera I am using isn’t meant for stop motion. I also heard that the camera is only good for a certain amount of clicks. So instead of the camera I have right now what camera should I use?

What are you saying when you say a camera is only good for a certain amount of clicks. Are you talking about shutter cycles? Are you talking about how many shots you can take before the camera buffer fills and you have to wait until those images write to the memory card?

What exactly do you mean by "stop motion"

What that could mean is freezing the action when shooting sports. That just takes a high shutter speed, 1/500th or faster

What it could also mean is something called time-lapse photography, were incremental shots are taken over a specific period of time and then later compiled and played back as a video

What do YOU mean by "stop action" and tell us more about your number of clicks on a camera.

One of my cameras has over 200,000 shutter cycles on it and it is working just fine

The camera I use when shooting time lapse is an old Nikon D200. I can set it up on a tripod, set the exposure manually and use an AC adapter to power it as long as necessary or until I fill the memory card

I am just getting into photography and I have decided to buy a Nikon d80. I will be focusing on most types of photography including sports/action, landscapes and general portraits as well as a little macro.

I am having trouble deciding on the best and most value for money lens setup.

I have been looking at the Nikon 18-200mm VR lens which would be and all round lens that I would probably use solely.

Or would it be better to buy two different lenses: the 70-300 VR and another lens for short distances eg a 18-55 or 18-135.

I am unsure which setup would be more effective and give me the most value for money.

Are the zoom lenses quick enough for sports shots?

My budget would probably lie somewhere between $500-1000 usd.

Any help would be greatly appreciated, Thanks.

As a first time user your best bet is the 18mm-200mm lens. That gets you the 35mm equivilent of a 27mm wide angle lens and a 300 mm telephoto lens and of course everything in between. The long end is ideal for sports the short end for landscapes.

Nikon has an 18-70 and the 70-300 you mention. This is also a good combination and gets you again that wide angle on the short side and a whopping 450mm zoom. The longer zoom of course is ideal for sports photographjy.

However, if you go with this combination you’re looking at carrying two lenses and changing lenses all the time as you switch subjects. Back in my film days I did that all the time and I never thought about it. But then in those days changnig lenses was not an issue.

Today it’s different. Every time you remove a lens you potentially expose your sensor to dust necessitating eventually to have the sensor cleaned. So constantly changing lenses is no longer a trivial thing to do. Instead it’s become a potential risk.

I got around this with my Nikon SLR by having a single lens that covers 90% of my needs and that happens to be the 18-200. I travel with that one and I do most of my images with it too. I don’t do sports but I do shoot wildlife so I later got a longer telephoto for that. I do a lot of macro so I have the 105mm macro as well. Those two lenses usually stay home when I’m travelling overseas so that saves me weight.

Back at home I either do wildlife or macro or general stuff. So at the start of a shoot I’ll put on the lens in a place where there’s no wind or dust like in the house or in the car and I’ll use that lens all day. This minimizes getting dust into the camera.

Anyway, since you’re on a limited budget my suggestion is the 18-200. Later as you get a little better off you can always add a 200-400 for those really distant shots but in the meantime at least you have something that covers most of what you need. In fact with that lens you can take a picture of the stadium and an individual player without ever changing lenses.

One other tip … Tamron has an 18-250 lens for a Nikon and it’s cheaper than the Nikon 18-200 version. But there’s a catch too, it doesn’t have an image stabilizor. So if you don’t mind that catch you can save yourself some money. I personally don’t like Tamron lenses, I feel Nikon ones produce better images, but I’ve known many people who insist that there is no difference. So this is an option for you too.

And to answer your other question, are zoom lenses quick enough for sports shots – yes and no. Yes they are in terms of set up and physical use. You can zoom them incredibly fast to get to your subject and the autofocus is incredibly quick too though the 70-300 could be a bit quicker in my opinion.

At the same time zoom lenses have a smaller minimum aperture, usually around f3.5 or smaller. If you typically work in poor lighting conditions or routinely work with very high shutter speeds, this may not be fast enough for you. It may be desirable to get a dedicated single focal length telephoto in that case that’s f2.8 or faster. But if you do that first of all it will cost you twice what you paid for the camera and it will be very heavy requiring a tripod to use. Fast lenses come at a hell of a price. And of course you’re back to changing lenses a lot.

For my money I prefer my 18-200. It may not be the fastest but it’s certainly captured a lot of images for me, each of them outstanding and it saves me constantly changing lenses for general photography.

I hope this helps a little.

I’m specifically talking about the video of Ara Abrahamian jumping down the podium and throwing his bronze medal on the floor.

As distasteful as his actions were, they are most definitely videoworthy and now seems like video sites like You Tube have removed the video claiming copyright, and on another site, it says it can only be viewed in Sweden.

What is this?

Are there any video sites that are free from copyright entanglements these days?

The televsions networks pay huge amounts of money for the rights to the games. Any unauthorized use of their images is not allowed. You will here and see an anouncement about this at the end of most televised sporting events.

I have a Nikon D40 and would like to take action shots of snowboarders in the snow. Which settings should I put for the best results? Please also tell me for both sunny or cloudy because I don’t know what the conditions will be.

This is a difficult question to answer in a brief manner with a blanket solution. I am assuming that whether cloudy or sunny, you will be shooting during the day.

You MUST learn how to change the exposure and read the exposure light meter. Do lots of reading (the manual). This will help you get the best shots possible.

But for a quick answer, try this:

For moving targets try Dynamic Area Auto-Focus (AF)
Here is a link discussing AF use shooting sports: http://www.sportsshooter.com/message_display.html?tid=25922

You will likely want to use "Shutter-Priority" mode when shooting.
Use shutter speeds longer than 1/100th of a second to get some motion blur. Shutter speeds shorter than 1/250th of a second will freeze the action and make the subjects look less motion blurred.

If you pan the camera with the snowboarder and use a shutter speed longer than 1/100th of a second, you may get the snowboarder to appear crisply and the whole background to be motion blurred.

When shooting pictures of air, the lower the camera is, the higher the air will look… and ideally the camera is on the peak-side, facing down the hill (if the camera is facing up the hill to look at a jump, there will not be any visual reference for height.

For a very bright, sunny day – try ISO100 first. The lower the ISO, the less digital noise your images will have and the crisper they will be. If ISO100 makes the shutter too slow or images two dark, adjust it up to 200 or 400. When you exceed 400, the noise will drastically increase. It is unlikely that you will need to go that high in daylight conditions.

800 and 1600 should be reserved for dark or indoor shots only, when you would not otherwise get the shot… or when you want a noisy grainy shot (sometimes people like noisy black and white shots).

These ideas should work in most cases; but seriously… it is all about trial and error with exposure settings… and nobody can tell you precise settings without being there and metering the light.

If you know how to, meter your shots every step between -1 to 0 to +1 EV… and when you find the most appealing setting, use that.

If you shoot in RAW, you can adjust brightness and contrast a little bit without image degradation… when you get home and put them on your computer. This only gives you a little bit of wiggle room though, not a lot.

Good luck

but i don’t get dizzy if i play sports on my ps2.Are there any remedies?

The action packed games are quicker and have more flashing images than sports games. This may be a sign of slight epilepsy. You may want to ask a doctor because it can lead to headaches or migraines or seizures (if it a bad case). You will not be able to get the right answer from anyone on here.

How long does it take for a neurologist to examine the images of a head MRI? Not how long it takes to get around to looking at it, but once he/she’s gotten it.

My friend got a concussion, it looks like a bad one, and we’re waiting for the results. The neurologist supposed to look at them right away.

It sounds like you are in the waiting room of the emergency room? I would guess that it would take minutes to hours to get a neurological consult. If the neurologist is standing next to the machine as the test is being taken, you’re talking minutes. Even so, often the primary consults with others and seeks additional patient data before coming forth with a conclusion and/or course of action. This ends up taking more than minutes. One the other hand, "right away" also depends upon how critical your friend is compared to others; who can wait and who cannot, who came in first versus last, etc… In part, this also depends upon the size of your hospital, who may or may not be in surgery, who may or may not have already gone home for the night, and more.

At this point, it is probably a good thing that it is taking what seems like a long time to get answers. If your friend’s MRI indicated the need for immediate, drastic, or emergency action the wait for information would be far shorter but none the better. Often a head injury, neurological work up includes far more data than that just received from the initial MRI too. Some of this data includes how the patient fairs over a period of time, not just the short time during the initial emergency room admission process.

Speaking of which….even if your friend is discharged this evening or later, it would be a good thing to keep an eye on them for a couple of weeks without hovering. Also, within the sports world, there is a medical emphasis for avoiding a second concussion within a short period of time from the first. As a friend, you can help your friend avoid activities that might lead to a second concussion within a short period of time by suggesting alternative and hanging with them while practicing alternative activities.

I’m a senior in highschool who decided to do Graphich Design
when I go to college. I got everything, from grades, porfolio, recommendations, the whole package. What jobs can I be expecting when I graduate with my future major?

Whatever you want to do =)

Every major company needs marketing. A friend I graduated with loves video games so much, that he lobbied hard until he landed a job as a web designer over at Blizzard. I worked in an agency that catered to Action Sports, so I was able to to work for companies like Hurley and Quicksilver. I have one buddy who like to take it easy, so he landed a design job with a corporate bank and he pretty much just drops text and images into templates. There is alot of variety in graphic design if you look for it. Good luck!

i take a lot of sport shots,during the day i have the camera set on the sport mode and i get fantastic photos,but when the light goes,and try taking shots at night at a sportsfield under lights,and still on sport mode,the pics are dark,but mainly they are very blurry,and not worth keeping.I have tried to take the same sought of photos on the Aperture mode,but the pics are too dark.Its all been very frustrating.Can someone help me please?

As mentioned, a P&S does not have the controls necessary to freeze action in low light, nor does it have a large enough sensor to produce nearly noiseless images at high ISO settings.

Here is what you could expect if you had the right tool for the job, mainly a dSLR with long, fast lens

http://s862.photobucket.com/albums/ab182/fotomanaz/Answers%20album/?action=view&current=i_AIA3008copy.jpg

That shot was made using a 300 mm lens with aperture of f/2.8 and a shutter speed of 1/500th second.

If you look on your camera, you will notice that none of those settings are possible on your SX20

If i go to the Dodgers Stadium at a night game with a Canon T2i body and a Sigma 50-200mm f/4.0-5.6 lens, would i be able to get good pictures under the bad stadium lights.
What would be the best settings for taking a picture of the player standing around?

What would be the best settings for a player in action?

Thanks. If you have a flickr with pictures of your sports photography, leave the link and ill check them out if you’d like.

Under stadium lights at night your going to have a lot of trouble taking action shots.

With that f-number you are really constricted to daylight action shots. It is still possible none the less, but the ISO is going to be so high your going to see a lot of noise in the images.

Best settings is setting the aperture as low as possible and then boost the ISO till you get at least 1/250 of a shutter speed but around 1/1000 would be ideal.

I recommend you stick to daytime action shots though.

If I wanted to make a free sports website with ads. Do I have to get the same license as if I were selling clothing?

In order to put copyrighted images on your website, you are going to need written consent from the team whos logo you would like to use. Just go to the official website of the sports team you are interested in and send them an email requesting the use of their logo on your website. Make sure to provide the url and where you would like to put the logo.

If you agreed to link back to the sports team’s website, you may get lucky and they will agree to let you use the image.

Just don’t use the image without requesting permission. This is considered copyright infringement and they will persue legal action.