rutt
Mar-11-2004, 12:45 PM
Over the last couple of years I've taken lots of cross country skiing photos with my 80-200 L 2.8. I like close cropped shots and I like to have the background blurred to center attention on the participants. I use a 10D, so the lens is really 300mm equivalent.
What I want are shots like this:
http://rutt.smugmug.com/photos/2755566-M.jpg
But all to often I get shots like this:
http://rutt.smugmug.com/photos/2757164-M.jpg
The difference is that focus in the first picture is good if a little soft, but in the second picture, focus seems to be sharper on the bib than on the face, where I think it's unacceptable for printing at any large size. I'd like to understand the cause of this and figure out how to improve.
So here are my specific questions:
I know that telephotos have less depth of field than wider lenses. If I use a 200mm lens on a 10D, will it have the depth of field of a 300mm lens? Or will it behave in this respect like a 200mm?
By opening up the lens all the way, I am able to shoot at a very fast shutter speed. Both of these shots are faster than 1/500th. Is that fast enough to handhold this lens? It does have IS. How fast would the shutter have to be to make this work?
Catching the action in these events is hard and requires taking a lot of shots fast. My goal (perhaps unachievable) is to take a good shot of each participant. So I set the camera's drive for multiple shots and use "AI Server" autofocus mode. One problem with this is I don't know which focus point it's using and I don't really understand what it's doing. My batting average is better than with one-shot focus. Does anybody understand this better?
Perhaps I need to back off on the aperture somewhat in order to increase the depth of field. But I still want the background out of focus. Does anyone have any specific advice here?
What I want are shots like this:
http://rutt.smugmug.com/photos/2755566-M.jpg
But all to often I get shots like this:
http://rutt.smugmug.com/photos/2757164-M.jpg
The difference is that focus in the first picture is good if a little soft, but in the second picture, focus seems to be sharper on the bib than on the face, where I think it's unacceptable for printing at any large size. I'd like to understand the cause of this and figure out how to improve.
So here are my specific questions:
I know that telephotos have less depth of field than wider lenses. If I use a 200mm lens on a 10D, will it have the depth of field of a 300mm lens? Or will it behave in this respect like a 200mm?
By opening up the lens all the way, I am able to shoot at a very fast shutter speed. Both of these shots are faster than 1/500th. Is that fast enough to handhold this lens? It does have IS. How fast would the shutter have to be to make this work?
Catching the action in these events is hard and requires taking a lot of shots fast. My goal (perhaps unachievable) is to take a good shot of each participant. So I set the camera's drive for multiple shots and use "AI Server" autofocus mode. One problem with this is I don't know which focus point it's using and I don't really understand what it's doing. My batting average is better than with one-shot focus. Does anybody understand this better?
Perhaps I need to back off on the aperture somewhat in order to increase the depth of field. But I still want the background out of focus. Does anyone have any specific advice here?