Sport with D30

Hello everyone. I'm shooting the Chicago marathon next Sunday and wanted to get some pointers/ideas on camera settings for that (I have no experience shooting moving objects with the D30 yet). A few things that I'm curious about:

1. How well does AI Servo work? I think I recall a post from Pekka complaining about AI Servo always "lagging" somewhat.

2. I will be close enough to the action to shoot with a 28-70 f/2.8L with monopod. What's the maximum ISO setting that are likely to produce results without unacceptable noise (for prints up to 8x10)?

3. One major issue is whether to shoot in RAW mode or "sport" mode (Large Jpeg). Anyone with experience shooting "slow" sport in both modes to help me out?

Thanks!

PhP

Sorry to say ,Iwould not rely on D30 AF in any mode. Especially shooting sports. Hope the 1D is much better. I've put it through all test and have given up. Good luck. Hope it is sunny. Michael

Phil,

The following messages are copied from Fred Miranda's website. Hope that it helps. Wish you a success in shooting the event!

How do I decrease shutter lag when using the D30 in continuous drive mode?

Start by manually selecting the AF point. I recommend using the central point whenever possible. Then, change the custom function from the default 2-0 to 2-1. After, select AI servo and continuous drive mode.

Try to anticipate your shot. After a section of continuous shooting, don't release your finger from the shutter button when the buffer is full. Instead just release your finger halfway from the button. As soon as there is space for one or more shots, the buffer will open up the space necessary to continue shooting. Otherwise, if you completely release your finger, you'll have to wait until the buffer is 100% empty before you can re-shoot.

The biggest problem there is that there are only 3 af points and the center point is most sensitive (horizontal & vertical contrast detection, side points are only horiz.)

I haven't shot any sports yet, only some moving subjects, and if you want to compose to other than middle area of a frame you have a couple of choices: find a focus spot from the ground level and take the shot when subject is on that spot. That could work well on marathon where athletes don't jump like crazy. Or, shoot with AI but with smaller aperture which lets you hold the focus and even recompose if you're fast.

In either AI servo or single focus mode I like to keep the focus on * button (Cf. 2-3). In AI servo it works so that the camera does AI focus while the * is pressed and when you release it the focus stays still. When in standard mode you can just press it once and that lock the focus point. If you keep tapping is gently you can sort of emulate AI servo.

Remember that if you move the camera (shake, pan, tilt) and the subject is moving you have to have at least 1/250 or 1/350 speed to stop movement and get really sharp shots, often even more. The closer the subject the faster the shutter has to be.

ISO 400 is quite ok, ISO 800 can be great IF you expose so that you can get a bright image. I usually overexpose 3/4 stops in ISO 800 i.e. loose some minor highlights but gain low apparent noise level. See some ISO 800 shots in my gallery.

If you shoot RAW in continuous mode and keep the shutter button pressed half way you can shoot a new one as soon as there is room for it in buffer. If you raise your finger fully you'll have to wait for writing of all images in buffer. This needs a little practicing but actually is very useful.

Thanks to all who replied. I've done some trials with the various suggestions (joggers in the park) and I start to feel pretty comfortable. I found the AI Servo to work pretty well (not 100% accurate) when subject comes towards the camera and the center focus point is selected. Thanks again and I'll share some of the pictures (if I don't screw up too bad! lol).

Philippe

Thanks again for yout guys input. Here are a few observations about the D30 and sports. Nothing very new, I guess, but the good news is that you can get very decent sport shots with the D30, at least when the action is not too fast.

I shot the Chicago Marathon last Sunday October 7. The weather was perfect for runners, sunny and about 55 degrees. I found a spot along the way (mile 13) that was well exposed, but had to deal with areas of shadows and very unevent lighting conditions. I shot about half my pictures using Evaluative mode and half using Center-Weighted Average. I used Shutter Speed Priority for all pictures. My lens was a Canon 28-70 f/2.8L. I was able to shoot most pictures at 1/400 to 1/800 shutter speed with aperture of at least 4.0 (I shot a few manually at 2.8 when runners were isolated). I used RAW mode ISO 200 for all pictures.

1. The AI Servo is pretty accurate when there's sufficient light. I tried a few pictures using the CF 2 to 1, but at the end I was more comfortable with CF 0 and the results where good.

2. The shutter lag is not too much of an issue when shooting runners because there's enough time to compose the picture and deal with the lag. I'm pretty sure that for football or basketball it would be a big issue.

3. I missed a fair amount of pictures, but probably mostly because of my own mistakes (not enough time to correct exposure when subject was close in a shadow area and the background was very bright).

4. The main problem I had was that I used the middle focusing zone as the fixed area for autofocus, yet at the same time I wanted to isolate runners and have nice composition to alleviate having to crop. Fixing the middle area for autofocus severly constrained the flexibility in composition (and isolating subjects) which is a significant problem when you shoot a mass of people close together. Perhaps my biggest wish is to have the left and right focus zone work as well as the center one (or even better, have 35 autofocusing areas).

5. Overall I was pretty happy about the performance of the camera, especially after the numerous comments about it's limitation for sports events. I can see that for very fast sports, it is of very limited use, but for running, it's definitely more than okay (the top guys run like rabbits, they're pretty amazing).

I will post soon pictures of some nonprofessional runners that participated in the marathon.

Cheers!

Philippe