[help] Shooting outdoors: overcast


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I'm still only new to photography, I have an EOS 530D and on the weekend I went out to take a few photos of car and bike racing. It was all fine until it started getting dark and rained a bit. The photos then turned out too dark and quite grainy.

Photo 1

I was shooting under full automatic mode with af.

The ISO speed was 400 and 1/100 for shutterspeed with AWB as well.

But this photo came out alright

Photo 2

Was the problem that I was using all the automatic options, and if so, what should have I been using?

Edited by JeT
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well you cant do miracle in photo. because of sport even, you need to speed up your shutter. This means less light going into the sensor. Now, your choice are: higher ISO or/and getting a prime F/2.8 lens

Of course higher iso cost nothing, but in some situation, you cannot just higher the iso. That is why in sport even, photographers have their pro lens that cost often way more than the camera body itself :/

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Of course higher iso cost nothing, but in some situation, you cannot just higher the iso. That is why in sport even, photographers have their pro lens that cost often way more than the camera body itself :/

not only in sports-photography infact. ;) when i started photographing the rule of thumb was:

get a good lense and after that you buy the box to put the film in. and actually thats still something you should keep in mind. with a bad lense you wont get good photos, picture-quality wise, atleast most of the time.

anyways, pink floyd was right, i confirm that. ;)

btw, congrats for being a mod now, pink floyd. or have you been that before? dunno. just saw that.

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If you are short on light you can do one of 3 things (in your case)

slower shutter speed - may not be fitting if you have something moving you want to capture

a smaller apature # (the smaller the number the bigger the apature the less thats in focus and vise versa) - for this the part you want to pay attention to is the apature opening the bigger it is the more light it lets in.

ISO setting - the lower the number the more light you need but the better quality your photo will be

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the second one was actually shot at 1/400, which would explain why it isn't blurry like the other one. it looks like it was brighter outside too.

to echo what has already been said, buy a faster lens. faster meaning lower f number, something like f/4 or below will definitely help.

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Canon's high ISO performance is stellar, so there is no reason to not bump it up when you lack light.

Practise in shutter or aperture priority. Why did you buy a 350D if you're just going to shoot in A mode?

Also, your pictures are completely out of focus. DSLRs are very good at tracking moving objects, so make sure you look up dynamic/continuous (w/e Canon calls it) focusing in your manual.

Let's take picture 2 as an example.

You shot it at f/14. f/5.6 to f/8 would have been much more appropriate and would allow you to bump up the shutter speed. f/2.8 to f/4 would create too much bokeh. This is why you don't shoot in the program modes.

You do not need a faster lens to shoot motorsports in daylight. All you need is some practise ;)

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Thanks for the input, I don't have the money for a new lens, so it looks like I will have to practice instead :p.

Monkeh: I Had another read of the instruction manual, and now I realise why I should be using full manual mode as I understand more about the ISO speed, aperture and what they do.

It will be a couple of weeks before I go out to the track again, but I will report back and see what else I can do.

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Also, your pictures are completely out of focus. DSLRs are very good at tracking moving objects, so make sure you look up dynamic/continuous (w/e Canon calls it) focusing in your manual.

Just to help you out, on the 350 they are

One Shot - When you have a stationary subject(s)

AI Servo - When you have moving subject(s)

AI Focus - The camera will decide and act accordingly.

(Y)

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anyways, pink floyd was right, i confirm that. ;)

btw, congrats for being a mod now, pink floyd. or have you been that before? dunno. just saw that.

It's new, May 1st :)

Thank you

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