For the digital ones I took just now the exposure is a few seconds at F22-F30 depending on the focal length of the lens. I had a neutral density and a polarizer on the lens in order to get that exposure time.

...a few from Bay Meadows today...



...I bet the 5 horse...












...I bet the 3 horse...




ended up on the loosing end of two photo finishes, but cashed on a 6-1 win which was cool.

fun day.

Great action shots, nice color saturation and sharpness.

Where were you located and what kind of lens did you use to get such nice shots?

Thanks both of you.

We were in the "Clubhouse" section and I was shooting right on the rail just tot he left of the winners circle.

I used the 70-200L 2.8 with a Canon 2x II extender, which puts you at f/5.6. For a few shots when the sun was brightest, I used a circular polarizer also.

Really fun day.

Cross-posting a few of my shots from a photo scavenger hunt I participated in over the weekend:

Wildlife


Antique Kitchen Tool


Alien


Solitude

This is a water lily hand held macro I took and I like the results.



Taken at the local zoo through glass,LDO



Taken at night hand held macro

Here's the macro I like the most so far. This is also hand held.

Great thread...

Photography is amazing and I'd love to be able to dedicate more time to travel and taking pictures

In anticipation for my upcoming ski trip I picked up a Nikon D40 with the standard lens. I'm a bit of a photography fish but this thread has given me some good ideas for composition possibilities. Any general tips for outdoor action shooting?

keep your shutter speed on the high side to freeze action and dial down the exposure comp. a bit to avoid blowing out the highlights. snow can be a real pain in the ass. if the d40 has raw (think it does), underexpose and then adjust during processing.

Experiment. If you dial down the exposure on the slopes, you are really going to have some gray snow. Snow normally fools the meter into underexposing, so that would mean you need to expose more than the meter says. Just check and make sure that you don't blow the highlights doing this.

got my D70 jacked when my house was burgled in early December, but now I have a D200 & 18-200 nikkor on the way.

I'll probably be going out more after I get them and will try to get some posts in this thread

These are a few shots I took of my wife. Not professional by any means but I like them. I may be a little biased though.

oh btw if you know my wife dont tell her I posted these, she is shy. k thanks

How do you guys take hand held macro and not have super blurry shots?

My kit lens crapped out on me: it stopped focusing. Felt like something was making it stick. Since it is so cheap, instead of repairing it, I bought the new kit lens, the Canon 18-55 IS. I must say I'm not very impressed. The pictures look soft and the colors are drab. They were taken hand-held, so that may explain the softness. But still, the reviews say that the 18-55 IS is one of the sharpest Canon lenses out there. Not quite as sharp as the 17-55, but $800 cheaper.

Here's what I mean by soft:



And what's a photo thread without a picture of this:

Depends on a few things.You can't get something without giving up something else or adding something else. What I mean is that in order to get non-blurry shots you have to first have a fast enough shutter speed. The minimum shutter speed that a person can take sharp images at differs from person-to-person. I have unsteady hands so the best I can do is about 1/60 of a second.

In order to get a faster shutter speed you'd either have to add more light (that's the adding something else) or increase your aperture to let more light in (you lose depth of field) or increase your ISO (you introduce more noise).

Additionally, for true macro shots you need a macro lens. You can use a regular lens, but your minimum focusing distance is going to be larger. You can find out what your minimum focusing distance is, zoom into where you want to be macro-wise, and shoot like that.

Ultimately, easier to do all of this with a tripod.

I like the composition of all the shots and the exposure seems good too. I can't help but feel that they are a bit overprocessed though. I mean, obviously that's the look you were going for, but in at least one of the photos, I can see specific dodging lines, which I don't think is intentional.

LOL, no problem, your secret is safe with us. She is beautiful, btw. Dodging lines and all.

Nice shots. Are you finding the IS useful at such a short length? At that resolution, the shots don't look terribly soft.

IS wasn't useful at all, but it was daylight. I'm it comes in handy indoors or at night.

About the softness, for some reason it looks a lot better here than it did in Photoshop. In Photoshop, it looked really soft, even after applying a lot of sharpening. But then I saved to JPG and it looks decent.

BTW, here's the review of the 18-55 IS. As I said, it was a rave review.

http://www.photozone.de/Reviews/Cano...report--review

For the cockroach picture the shutter speed was 1/60th of a second. Distance to subject was ~ 1-1/2 inches and I got more light to him by using a homemade ring flash diffuser.

I'm waiting for my Raynox DCR-250 to get here from B&H so I can get even closer shots. I'm a total beginner and really just get lucky by snapping a bunch of shots. I also have a pool playing buddy who happens to be a very good photographer and I pepper him with a ton of questions.

By-Tor, I love those thouroughbred shots! I may have to try out some action shots when the Super Bikes come to my neck of the woods. Any more tips for a point and shoot (Canon S3 IS) camera newb?

Thanks a bunch.

The S3 IS is a very good camera. I actually own one as well.

If you have good sunshine, I would shoot in AV mode at f/3.5 (widest possible while fully zoomed), ISO 100. With a bright sun, the shutter speed should be fast enough to stop action.

If you have a little less light, either switch to ISO200 or 400, or change back to ISO100 to TV mode and set the shutter to 1/1000 or faster. If you get underexposed shots, increase the ISO to 200 or 400 and try again.

Good luck!