Express Action Sports

I mainly want to take pictures of my kids but also want it to use for sports (myself and theirs when they get older). I am worried about the blur that occurs on sports pictures sometimes. I play tennis and get a lot of that on any camera. Does anyone have this and have good experience with sports pictures. Also, had a question about the quality and stability of the zoom. Thanks in advance.

My daughter has the Canon S2, and has very good results with it. Outdoor or flash pics with lots of light are excellent. Low light pics with no flash tend to have some noise. I get similiar results with my Sony H1. These "ultra zoom" cameras give you great flexibility without having to carry around a lot of separate lenses for a d-SLR camera.

The camera does a good job with sports pics as long as there is good lighting. The 12x zoom lets you get close to the players, and the autofocus can track moving objects.

However, there is no predefined high shutter speed Sports Scene mode. You have to learn to use the Shutter Speed Priority mode. Then you just set a shutter speed that is fast enough to capture the action (usually 1/200 second or faster), then the camera will set aperture wide enough to get a good exposure.

There have been no problems with the zoom, and the image stabilization really helps avoid camera shake when using the long telephoto.

Other similar cameras are the Canon S3, Sony H1/H2/H5, Panasonic FZ7/FZ30/FZ50.

Good Luck

I am a real novice. Only used a point and shoot before, so please don’t get too technical on me. I’m trying to shoot indoor volleyball. I bought the camera to eliminate the shutter lag, but now what?

You should find yourself using the 55-200mm lens more often than the 18-55mm. The 18-55 is useful for wide shots of the game and the crowd but will do little to bring in any action.

Since the lenses you have aren’t very fast (open the aperture as wide as possible) and the games are indoor you’ll either need to use a flash or a higher ISO (ISO 800+ should be adequate). Keep the shutter speed as fast as possible to minimize blur. The pop-up flash is nice but will not help you at a distance. I’d suggest buying a Speedlight or a cheap slave at the very least.

If you have no idea what I’ve just said, just use the sports scene mode and the camera should automate everything for you to the best of its ability.

I have a Pansonic Lumix DMC TZ4 digital camera.

On it, there are multiple scene modes. The two main ones I found for "motion" or "action" was the sports scene mode and the burst shooting mode. The sports scene mode seems to reduce blur from picture/object movement greatly (without any noticeable image quality reductions), while the burst shooting mode takes many many pictures very very fast, however, at slightly less image quality, and it’s pretty sensitive to movement as far as I’ve experienced

Now, what I’m wondering is which one to use to capture an action scene. Websites (like cnet.com) say that burst shooting is good to capture action scenes, but wouldn’t most of the pictures from burst mode come out blurred because of the action’s movements? And while you get the scene frame by frame, a lot of them [theoretically] would be blurred, and so it’s better to use the sports mode and get a couple clean pictures?

Comments? Objections? Anything that will help or …whatever. Thank you in advance!

Blurry shots are caused by one of two things. Camera shake or you moving and the subject moving. The best way to avoid this is to use a fast enough shutter speed. Generally for sports you will need to have a shutter speed of 1/250th of a second or faster. Image stabilization will help compensate for your movement but will do nothing about subject movement.
Now to your specific question. The sports mode on your camera basically is an automatic setting where the camera tries to get the fastest shutter speed it can. If the lighting is relatively bright the shutter speed will be fast enough to freeze action.

The burst mode on your camera should allow you to adjust the shutter speed and aperture. If it does just make sure you have a fast shutter speed and you will be succesful with it as well. If the shutter speed is below 1/250th you will get some blurry shots.

When I say Action Sports I mean bmx, skateboarding and stuff like that.

ny or california