capturing movement at night

[rtphokie]

I took a bunch of photos at the NC State Fair with my G3 trying to get an interesting motion shot. I was trying to replicate some photos I've seen where the motion in the foreground is frozen and the background is blured.

I tried various apertureand exposure settings
This is the closest I came:

http://image.pbase.com/u34/rtphokie/medium/22550396.IMG_3377.jpg%20

f/2, 1/8 sec, ISO 50

Any suggestions?


more fair photos if anyone cares (http://www.pbase.com/rtphokie/nc_state_fair)

[paul162brown]

I don't think this exactly what you are looking for but.....one technique that I tried recently (to achieve a similar effect) was to use "panning" to freeze the main subject but blurring the rest. My daughter was on a swing type fairground ride like the one in your picture and once I got the exposure, zoom and other settings right, I timed the shots so that as she came around, I panned the camera with her also firing the flash. This froze her and had loads of movement blur on the surroundings. I think on this occasion the camera was set in auto mode to see what results I would get with auto settings and I only had 2 goes on this due to time restraints and running out of memory but was really pleased with the results. I would love to show you the result but am only just getting used to the digital camera stuff let alone attempting to work out how to post pictures on the internet! I know previous threads in this forum will show me the way when I finally find the time!

Paul