Canon Digital Rebel shutter speeds

[Roddy1506]

I have a quick question.....I am new to SLR cameras in general and have been learning with the Canon 350D. I use the kit lens and a Tamron 75-300. I especially notice it with the Tamron but when using the cameras auto settings, like portrait, sports or action, landscape, then camera always seem to choose a slow shutter speed. What causes this??

I was at my sons swimming class and was taking some pictures of him and some friends children and put the camera on the sports or action setting because everyone was moving and splashing around. Well, when a got home and downloaded the pics they were all blurry. I then noticed that the camera had chosen a shutter speeds between 1/10 and 1/30..Isn't this a bit slow when shooting action pictures The same thing happened at my brothers college graduation. Had the setting on action for the graduate walking to, across and off stage and the shutter speeds were slow resulting in blurry pictures.

I'm learning quick and soon will be able to remedy these problems manually, but shouldn't I be able to rely on the auto settings to take a decent picture on their own?

Matt

[dc2]

Think most people won.t rely on auto settings ,not trusting them enough.
For action I tend to use Tv mode [shutter priority]
You may like to adjust you ISO acordding to conditions.

[scoundrel1728]

You don't mention your other settings or the lighting conditions under which you were shooting. If you were indoors and shooting at a fairly low ISO setting, that was probably the fastest the shutter speed could be and still have proper exposure. Blur from camera motion is also made worse in proportion to the magnification at the telephoto end. In other words, any time you use the 75-300 mm lens indoors, chances are pretty good that you will also need a tripod or other sturdy support to avoid motion blur.

If you do a lot of this kind of shooting, I would recommend investing in brighter lenses like the Tamron 28-75 mm f/2.8 XR Di etc, a decent and comparatively inexpensive lens that will allow shutter speeds at least 2x faster than your kit lens, as much as 4x faster at the telephoto end. I skipped the kit lens altogether in favor of this one, plus a Tamron 17 mm f/3.5 prime (now on order) for the wide-angle end. Sigma offers several lenses with a similar focal length and price range to the 28-75 mm zoom and Tokina also has a good offering. So does Canon, but the Canon version is likely to be more expensive.

For the longer telephoto requirements, Canon makes some excellent, though somewhat pricey, offerings. The least expensive of these is the 70-200 mm f/4L, which offers somewhat better light gathering power and a lot better sharpness than your existing lens. There is also the 70-200 mm f/2.8L, either with or without IS (image stabilization). The IS version moves some of the internal lenses around to compensate for camera motion and allows handheld shots at shutter speeds that would otherwise make such shooting a blurry disaster because of the image magnification. However, this lens costs more than the rest of your existing kit put together. The non-IS version gets the price under US$1000. The Sigma 70-200 mm f/2.8 lens is also well thought-of but not quite so good as its Canon competitor, but it can also be had for a price more or less comparable to Canon's f/4L version.

Meanwhile, you can try shooting at higher ISO ratings. Your pictures won't be as smooth at these higher ISO levels and will show a tendency toward graininess and color blotching (chroma noise) but they are still quite useable.

[WayneM]

Cannon also makes a 70-300 F4-5.6 IMAGE STABILIZATION lens which is available for approximately $560.00 and If you buy one before July 15 there is a $25.00 rebate. I certainly am considering buying this lens .

WayneM

[croma65]

It seems that the Canon 70-300 F4-5.6 IMAGE STABILIZATION has problems when shooting in vertical (blurry images).
Many people I know sent the lens to Service and got back another (new) with the same problems.
The Service told them that Canon does not actually have a solution to this problem.
I would buy the Canon 70/200, with F# and IS according to your budget or the Sigma 70/200 F2.8 MACRO.

Always in my beginner's opinion.

[FocusingOnFlorida]

I have never used the presets on the camera. Come to think about it, it took me a long time to go with camera that has auto settings at all. I always used an all manual film slr. Just over the past couple of years, I started using cameras with the auto functions. I would say 80 percent of the time the auto focus does pretty good. I still find that I use manual focus for a bit more control. The AF comes in handy for the sports and action shots. I have Canon's 70-200mm f/4 but for lower light would prefer the f2.8. I just can't justify the cost right now.

I would say if you are shooting in low light even if it is action/sports, try putting the camera in AV mode and set the aperture to the widest setting your lens will allow. Look through the viewfind and press your shutter release halfway and look for the readings. For action, you would be looking for a minimum of 1/1000 for handheld shots and that's pushing it. If your not able to get that, I would suggest trying to use a hot-shoe flash. That may freeze the action of some of your shots if the subject is within the range of the flash and flash is allowed at the event.

[Roddy1506]

Thanks for the replies guys...they have helped alot.

I think my main problem was that I was using the action auto setting on the camera and had the flash turned off. I let the camera choose the aperture so I'm not sure what that setting was. But due to the low light and no flash I guess the camera was compensating the only way it knew how......slow shutter speed. I guess it is a newbie mistake...Gotta learn somehow though.

But I am learning enough to venture into some of the more manual settings and feel confident that I am aware of what and why the camera is doing certain things.

Thanks,
Matt

[Max@Home]

Originally Posted by Roddy1506

I think my main problem was that I was using the action auto setting on the camera and had the flash turned off. I let the camera choose the aperture so I'm not sure what that setting was. But due to the low light and no flash I guess the camera was compensating the only way it knew how......slow shutter speed. I guess it is a newbie mistake...Gotta learn somehow though.

But I am learning enough to venture into some of the more manual settings and feel confident that I am aware of what and why the camera is doing certain things.

Roddy1506,

The main problem with the 'auto' modes is that they use AUTO ISO, which only chooses between 100ISO-400ISO

So as you said, the camera compensated the only way it can: by lowering the shutterspeed.

Note that when your shutterspeed gets (too) low for handholding, in the 'Auto-modes' the shutterspeed indication will flash, on both displays (OVF and LCD on back) Nice, but you cannot correct it in Auto, as you cannot choose a higher ISO... only option left is use a tripod...

Avoiding 'Auto-modes' now that you have a better feeling of what and why the camera is doing certain things is the best remedie against 'auto-pilot errors' )

...*my* €0.02 worth...

Kindest regards,

Max@Home

[scoundrel1728]

Originally Posted by WayneM

Cannon also makes a 70-300 F4-5.6 IMAGE STABILIZATION lens which is available for approximately $560.00 and If you buy one before July 15 there is a $25.00 rebate. I certainly am considering buying this lens .

The Sigma 70-200 f/2.8 is currently selling for US$839 at B&H Photo/Video/Pro Audio. The Canon 70-200 mm f/4L that Russell was talking about sells for $584, not counting the $40 rebate. No IS on either of these lenses, but they give better image quality and open up wider than the 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS. You really do need the wider lens opening if you shoot a lot of indoor events or events like the graduation, basketball, volleyball, gymnastics, or indoor swimming, and a good monopod is a lot less expensive than the IS feature.

The 1/1000 second feature only applies if you want to "freeze" movement. With good technique, you can get by with handholding at 1/250 second or so even at 200 mm. The "rule of thumb" is to keep your shutter speed at least as fast as the reciprocal of 35 mm equivalent focal length. The 35 mm equivalent focal length for a lens on the Digital Rebel, this works out to about 1.6x times the actual focal length. For a 200 mm lens, this is about 320 mm for minimum shutter speed of 1/320 second. My quoted 1/250 second is pushing things a bit but this isn't a hard and fast rule and some people can get by with half or, if they are really careful, 1/4 the minimum prescribed by this "rule of thumb." A properly used monopod will help get this minimum down below the threshold where other considerations start taking over.

Once you have gotten camera movement under control, you must still worry about subject movement. Image stabilization offers no help at all with that. Worse, some of the techniques, such as panning the camera - deliberately moving the camera to track the subject's general motion - interfere with image stabilization's proper operation. (Some IS versions offer the ability to stabilize in one direction only to allow such techniques.) Fortunately, a little blur of hands and feet for walking or running subjects is allowable and may even be desirable to indicate motion. Photographers have also been known deliberately to choose a medium to slow shutter speed even when a much faster one was feasible that would have "frozen" the motion.

Another possibility, but one I strongly discommend at sporting events, is to use flash. The output from a flash unit is largely over with in less than 1/1000 second at full power. This is enough to effectively "stop" all but the fastest motion, with some caveats for macro shooting that don't apply here. Unfortunately, flash is often misused and has several problems associated with it.

First, the range of the on-camera flash is limited. At ISO 400 and an aperture of f/5.6, the effective range of your on-camera flash is only about 15 feet or 4.5 meters. This sounds like a lot, and it is a lot, when compared to the average living room. However, people often greatly overestimate the effect range of their flashes when shooting in commercial or public places. The range of the XT's internal flash is only 4-5 rows of seating in an auditorium or stadium. That Eveready Energizer commercial showing flash after flash from the upper deck is totally bogus: the flash would be doing well even to illuminate a subject at the front rail and has no hope of illuminating the field effectively. The range will double when shooting at ISO 1600 and double again when shooting at ISO 1600 and f/2.8, but even this would barely cover a basketball court.

You could use a more powerful external flash unit, but this brings in a second problem. Perhaps you remember spots in front of your eyes when you last had your flash picture taken. Now imagine something like that happening to your vision at a critical moment while you were performing a gym routine or playing basketball. If you are shooting from the stands, the repeated bursts from the flash won't make you very popular with the surrounding spectators either.

Finally, the fastest shutter speed you can use with flash on your XT is 1/200 second. Try shooting any faster than that and you will get a shadow of your shutter curtain on the image. If the ambient light is already bright enough to contribute significantly to your image with the shutter speed, aperture, and ISO rating you have selected, you will get motion blur anyway. Furthermore, if you are shooting indoors, the color balance of the ambient light is likely to be very different - usually much yellower or more amber - than what your flash is producing. The result probably won't be what you expect or want.