Help with Camera Settings for "high-speed"!

Hi everyone!

I'm going on an Alaskan cruise in 2 days and have the Canon SX280 camera. I realize it's simply an embellished point and shoot camera, but I'm hoping to get some decent wildlife pictures and such. So my question is...

What automatic setting should I be using for "moving" things to try to get a decent photo? I mean whales, puffins, and even the scenery going by on the train. Unfortunately I don't have time or the opportunity to experiment with it prior to the time I'm leaving.

Thanks in advance!!!

Hi everyone!

 

I'm going on an Alaskan cruise in 2 days and have the Canon SX280 camera. I realize it's simply an embellished point and shoot camera, but I'm hoping to get some decent wildlife pictures and such. So my question is...

 

What automatic setting should I be using for "moving" things to try to get a decent photo? I mean whales, puffins, and even the scenery going by on the train. Unfortunately I don't have time or the opportunity to experiment with it prior to the time I'm leaving.

 

Thanks in advance!!!

Put it in aperture priority, set the lens opening to max and set the ISO to whatever gives you a noise free picture with your camera. This will then give you the highest shutter speed possible under the circumstances.

DON

Perhaps the "Sport" mode would be good? Briefly looking through the manual, that might be a quick go-to option to maximize the aperture/iso/shutter speed - along with multi shot bursts when the shutter is held down. The auto focus should go to constant focus as well.

If the lateral movement is significant, you may want to "pan" the camera on the subject as you do the above to better the chances of a non-blurred subject. Stand with bent knees if you can, leaning against something as well if possible - use them and your upper body as stabilizers to reduce the motion of your platform that is transmitted to your camera - stay kinda loose and move with the flow, feel for the little lulls in motion and jarring and fire away.

A fast SD memory card (class 10 with 40mb/s write speed minimum) will help get more shots quickly since the camera will be able to write the data faster to the card.

I see it has High-speed Burst HQ same as the SX50 which I used on albatross and whales in Antarctica on past 2 trips so I can recommend that for the kinds of things you will be trying to capture - and yes re Shootr's advice - get a seriously fast SD card to cope with the burst feature.

Tv mode, known as shutter priority outside of Canon-speak. Set it to the fastest possible shutter the light will allow in most cases.

Start at 1/800 or 1/1000.... If the images are looking too dark or grainy, then slow it down to 1/500... don't really go much below 1/200.

Hi everyone!

 

I'm going on an Alaskan cruise in 2 days and have the Canon SX280 camera. I realize it's simply an embellished point and shoot camera, but I'm hoping to get some decent wildlife pictures and such. So my question is...

 

What automatic setting should I be using for "moving" things to try to get a decent photo? I mean whales, puffins, and even the scenery going by on the train. Unfortunately I don't have time or the opportunity to experiment with it prior to the time I'm leaving.

 

Thanks in advance!!!

Looks like your camera has a setting called "High-speed Burst HQ". That should be a good automatic setting for the fast moving wildlife.

Otherwise, you can set it in shutter priority (Tv) and set the shutter high. Keep an eye on your meter and make sure that you get enough light.

Good luck!

Put it in aperture priority, set the lens opening to max and set the ISO to whatever gives you a noise free picture with your camera. This will then give you the highest shutter speed possible under the circumstances.

 

DON

The problem with this is that a wide aperture give a small depth of field.

Set is camera to sports or use a shutter speed of about 1000 of second and high ISO.

Thanks for the suggestions!!! I will try them and see which works best!!

Download a manual for the camera and practise like crazy - use the kids at the local playground or your own kids as "models" and make sure you can set up quickly and efficiently. Also make sure "burst" settings still take pics with a high enough resolution for decent sized prints.

More importantly - give your own eyes first dibs at any worthwhile sightings and put photography in second or even third place. Too many people waste their holidays by seeing everything through a viewfinder just so they can bore family and friends later.

Tv mode, known as shutter priority outside of Canon-speak. Set it to the fastest possible shutter the light will allow in most cases.

Start at 1/800 or 1/1000.... If the images are looking too dark or grainy, then slow it down to 1/500... don't really go much below 1/200.

This is best.

The problem with this is that a wide aperture give a small depth of field.

 

Set is camera to sports or use a shutter speed of about 1000 of second and high ISO.

Ummm...yes, that's a given that a wide aperture gives a small depth of field. However, for people who are asking how to get high speed shooting, I'm going to judge/stereotype by saying they don't have WIDE-aperture lenses, so they're going to get a not-so-small depth of field.

And by the way, setting the camera to sports mode almost universally opens the aperture wide open, so the results are THE SAME.

Setting the shutter speed to <pick a value> and raising the ISO results in EITHER:

1: the same stop-action effect in every shot, but a DIFFERENT depth of field shot-to-shot. I'd think that changing DoF could be more artistically distracting than comparable variations in shutter speed. -OR-

2: if the light gets too dim for the settings chosen, shots will end up too dark, creating even more artistic variation shot-to-shot.

I'm a fan of setting aperture wide-open, raising the ISO sufficiently to get the shutter into a reasonable range. Consistent DoF shot-to-shot, consistent exposure, varying shutter speed (but typically in the range of stop-action if you picked a reasonable ISO).