TV Mode

[Roundeldog]

Hi, As a novice I am confused about TV mode, I have some lovely Bluetits, Greenfinches, Robins in my garden 15 meteres from my camera position and I would like to capture them in flight. When I put the shutter speed to 1/1000 and take the photographs all I get is a very dark picture, opening the apeture to its maximum still gives me a dark pictures, I have also tried a telephoto lens with the same result. When edited through photoshop I can lighten the photos but get a lot of noise. Where am I going wrong? or am I expecting too much from my G3

[Ikinaa]

When using Tv mode, you enter a time, halp press the shutter button and the camera calculates the aperture to use in respect of the environmental light (and the ISO not to forget).
time and aperture are linked.
example 1/1000-f/2 ~ 1/500-f/2.8 ~1/250-f/4, etc
So if you picture is too dark, that means that the aperture isn't still big enough.
Try setting time to 1/250 and try again, or raise the ISO number (the higher the iso-number, the higher the time can be and the lower the f/ )
BTW, a nice sit for learning a lot of things about photography is www.photo.net

[submannz]

As mentioned you may be better off selecting manual mode and selecting the shutter speed and aperture as already suggested, I would start at 1/250th of a second you may find that captures your birds fine, if the image is too dark then adjust the aperture to f2 or f3 depending what zoom level you are at. If the image is still too dark you may need to wait until the light is a little stronger.

Try not to use ISO 400 if you can get away from it becuase it causes quite a lot of noise.