garbs wrote:
Very steady hand, Will. I don't even try any slower than 1/350th!
Its funny, whenever I shoot that fast, I end up with blurry shots. hahah. Whenever I'm having a bad shooting day I take a breath, and slow the shutter speed down and try again. Nine times out of ten, it works. Perhaps it just makes me focus on what I'm doing more. I was shooting tons of garbage one of the days at Reno and I kept going up in shutter speed. It was so bad that I was shooting 1/800 and getting fuzzy shots. Since I had nothing to lose, I went to 1/160, and things got better. So I went down. 1/125 and 3 out of 4 shots were clear. So I went 1/100 and was about 50%. The morning I shot the these (Thursday morning I think) I was getting good shots at 1/160 so I made sure I had some good ones of the class, then went to 1/100, had 2 of 3 good shots so I kept going lower. I tried some 1/50 shots but they were not happening. I did shoot a fair number of good shots in the sport and other classes at 1/80.
1/350 is the typical go to shutter speed for "safe" shooting. Gives decent prop blur, and usually sharp pics. Going to the slower shutter speeds brings a different dynamic to the shots, especially if you have a background to blur. For Reno, since everyone is shooting nearly the same shot, I'm trying to teach myself how to take the same background and make the shot different from everyone else out there. Does it produce some garbage shots? You bet, but, everyone is shooting some garbage out there. (I'm blown away by the number of people who use the spray and pray method, shooting huge bursts of shots at a time. I'd hate to have to sift through all those identical shots looking for a good one, or one that stands out more than the rest.) My goal was at least one good shot of every plane racing. I think I'll be pretty close on that. Hopefully they will be shots different enough from everyone else that they will be identifiable as mine. I'll be thrilled if I can get 3 pics in the program next year. (I had two in it this year.)
Will