Sony Nex5t

Going to AK in 50 days. Just bought a Sony Bex 5t. Used it for the first time on auto intelligent, have a 56 x 210mm zoom lens which I attempted to use at a graduation in an arena, didn't get the results I want. I am willing to put the time before the cruise to try to get as much up to speed as I can. I did watch several you tube videos on it, but apparently am missing something. Can anyone recommend a specific site I can go to for learning what to do to shoot long range photos with the zoom lens? thanks in advance for your help

Check out dpreview.com. Great site for info on your camera.

http://www.dpreview.com/forums/1042?utm_campaign=internal-link&utm_source=mainmenu&utm_medium=text&ref=mainmenu

Going to AK in 50 days. Just bought a Sony Bex 5t. Used it for the first time on auto intelligent, have a 56 x 210mm zoom lens which I attempted to use at a graduation in an arena, didn't get the results I want. I am willing to put the time before the cruise to try to get as much up to speed as I can. I did watch several you tube videos on it, but apparently am missing something. Can anyone recommend a specific site I can go to for learning what to do to shoot long range photos with the zoom lens? thanks in advance for your help

Never use digital zoom, only optical.

When in doubt, zoom out. Two things conspire against you when you zoom in: most consumer-grade lenses have decreasing aperture values as you zoom in, which translates into less light and therefore a need for longer shutter speeds, and longer zoomed focal lengths require shorter shutter speeds to avoid camera shake. In the DSLR world, the rule of thumb is 1/effective-focal-length, where the EFL is calculated by multiplying the lens focal length by the camera sensor's "crop factor". With an IS lens, the rule of thumb changes to perhaps 8/EFL, maybe 16/EFL on the newest lenses/IS systems.

Going to AK in 50 days. Just bought a Sony Bex 5t. Used it for the first time on auto intelligent, have a 56 x 210mm zoom lens which I attempted to use at a graduation in an arena, didn't get the results I want. I am willing to put the time before the cruise to try to get as much up to speed as I can. I did watch several you tube videos on it, but apparently am missing something. Can anyone recommend a specific site I can go to for learning what to do to shoot long range photos with the zoom lens? thanks in advance for your help

What was wrong with the photos? Blurry? Dark?

Check the EXIF data for the pictures, what aperture, ISO and shutter speed was the camera using?

I recommend the book "Understanding Exposure" which will give you a good grounding in the basics.