Shooting Techniques

[Medic1]

Can anyone recommend good settings/techniques to shoot high speed targets? I am mainly talking about aircraft, and military fighter jets.

I have the Canon 300D, (probably using either a 70-200 f4L or a 100-400 IS) and know that certain focusing modes have "predictive focus" is it best to track the subject or keep the frame stationary and try to capture it at a certain point in the frame as it moves past.

I have only done wildlife and landscape so far, nothing that moves at these rates of speed.

Thanks for your help.....

[jmjmotorsport]

Well, if you want the frozen kind of look, then shoot at a low Av and high shutter speed. Generally this should work out, but everything including the BG will show no motion. To me, this looks kind of funny when shooting cars/jets/whatever.. I prefer a higher Av (8 or 11) and a somewhat slower shutter speed like 1/125 or so using the panning technique. Once you master the technique you should have a nice focused subject and the BG will be showing good motion. I'm not an expert, but I have been doing some amateur shoots of Rallycross action the last year or so and the second method gives me more of the shots I'm looking for. Maybe one of the more experience sports shooters guys could enlighten you in more detail..

[kosmikboy]

Im new to photography but i also have the 300d. just to let you know that someone had a problem with tracking a subject at high speed. he was talking about motor sports. the problem was that while trying to track the subject using any of the manual settings, the autofocus has trouble catching up. apparantly the best way to get aroud it is to use the preset sports setting on the dial which gives a quicker focus. only problem with that is that you loose all manual controls.

[Medic1]

That is not good news for me. I realize that the 300D isn't exactly the pinnacle of DSLR cameras, I was hoping that it would be able to perform in this situation. I really want a 20D (or better) but due to financial constraints, I wanted to focus on getting my lens collection built up first.

.....and your right...using the preset sports function kind of takes away the beauty of owning an SLR