Tina wrote:
I have a Cannon 7D with a 70-200mm/2.8 IS lens . My pictures are not as sharp as I would like especially, when I handhold the camera. I was just reading some information about minimum shutter speeds and focal lengths. The author suggested that if the camera doesn't have a full frame sensor that the crop factor should be considered in the equation as well. The minimum shutter speed should be the inversion of the focal length times the crop factor when handholding. The problem becomes more pronounced with telephoto lens. For this rule of thumb, I suspect that the length of any teleconverter needs to be added as well. I understand about tripods, cable release and mirror lockup.
I'm working on the manual settings to capture waterfowl with a good depth of field (DOF) and shutter speed, it's been tricky. Trial and error works better when I can pinpoint any shortcomings and enjoy the process (lol). The question is two-fold: 1) Is it really that complicated? Has anyone else heard about and included all of these factors? 2) What's the best settings to capture waterfowl? Including AF point?
I have a Cannon 7D with a 70-200mm/2.8 IS lens . ... (
show quote)
And now here's my two cents for Tina. Hope it helps...
Waterfowl and birds can be tricky. And getting sharp images is multi-facetted. You can do everything right in camera but if you have poor form when holding the camera you could still get soft or blurry images. So here's some tips that I think will help...
1) When hand holding with any lens (but especially a telephoto) study the way that military or law enforcement personel hold their rifles. This has been a huge help for me. Are your elbows flared out when you hold your camera? Try squeezing them in to where they are pointed at the ground. This is how they train people to hold rifles to make them steady so naturally it will work with cameras as well
2) After tucking in your elbows, rest your left elbow up against your stomach as an anchor point.
3) With a telephoto lens like the 70-200 the lens should rest in the palm of your left hand. Your left hand should support 99% percent of the weight of the camera. If you're holding the camera with your right hand that is likely the problem. The right hand should only be used to squeeze the trigger...ahem...shutter.
4) Roll your finger over the shutter. A lot of people stab at the shutter which induces camera shake. It doesn't take a lot of pressure to push the shutter in, so just ry rolling your finger over it with just enough pressure to take a picture.
----------------
Camera settings:
You're on track with the shutter speed stuff. But if you're trying to freeze a bird in action you need FAST shutter speeds. The one below was shot at 1/1250th at f/2.8 with the same lens as you mentioned. ISO was at only 100. I could have gotten faster by increasing the ISO but those settings froze the bird in place and STILL added a nice soft blur to the water behind it.
AF Point: This is where my ebook really gets into depth on this topic. For the shot below I used a single auto focus point and then used back button focus to track the bird in flight with the camera in AI-Servo mode.
Single AF helped because I could choose what to focus on instead of letting the camera guess at it. It would have likely failed several times by focusing on the water instead
Servo: This of course allowed me to track the movement of the bird and keep it in focus as long as my single AF point was over the bird.
Burst Mode: This is just to ensure the best chance of capturing just the right moment. Rather than taking one shot at a time, you increase your odds by shooting at your cameras maximum FPS rate. In my case, I was using a Canon 1Ds Mark III which shoots fairly slow at 5 fps. But I still managed to get plenty of good shots and picked the one with the best wing placement to edit.
Hope this helps :-)
quote=Tina I have a Cannon 7D with a 70-200mm/2.... (