Advice on settings

ash h

Hi
I have a fujifilm s5600.I got it last week and have taken a good few pictures.Most of them have come out good except ones i have taken in woods of mountain bikes.They all come out too dark.I put the iso up to 400 but they were still dark.What settings should i be using?
Usually for bikes i have it on s mode and have a shutter speed of 640 and the camera sets the aperture and i put the iso to 400.
Any advice greatly appreciated...

latchiko

Hmmm.. sounds like the largest aperture available still won't let enough light in with that shutter speed. If that's the problem you can either set a higher ISO (if available) or reduce your shutter speed.

digitalbeginner

Can you post some shots so I can look at the Exif data? With the Fuji Bridge cameras I believe you can choose any shutter speed you like, regardless of whether the camera can give you the correct aperture (it usually goes red if it can't). The bad weather we've been having this last few weeks would lead me to believe that 1/640 sec was too fast for the available light,

Dave

ash h

Well il be taking a few photos of a race on sunday.Thing is that i dont want the shutter speed to slow because riders will be going at about 30-40kph.
Maybe il try a slower shutter speed with a slightly higher iso.Would this solve the problem?

FreeAnd..

to be honest you are asking alot, especially of a bridge camera. As far as i know the ISO on these cameras isnt great. To be able to use higher shutter speeds in low light conditions you will need a fast lens and a snesor that works well with high ISO..probably not the answer you want, but i dont think this camera will allow you to do what you want - as soon as you start trying to capture action in adverse conditions you really need to invest more money to get he results you want..

latchiko

Yes, increasing the ISO will make it more sensitive to light and therefore your exposure will be brighter. The cost of this is (possibly) increased noise/grain in the image. A slower shutter speed will allow more light in, but you may get blur if the riders are moving too fast, or if you move yourself. You could try experimenting with the settings beforehand and see what results you get, I'd recommend a higher ISO at the cost of some noise rather than blurry images though.
You could also try panning with the riders using a slow shutter speed to capture the motion.

digitalbeginner

Higher ISO's help give faster shutter speeds, in theory. The problem with the Fuji Bridge Camera's is that they use a very small sensor, so 400 ISO can produce very noisey shots, higher ISO's of course will just worsen the problem.

The goal first of all is to get a good exposure. In "S" mode this means you must be checking that the camera can give you the aperture it needs to do this, if not you need to reduce the shutter speed. If you have to use a slower shutter then the next goal is to catch the movement when it is at its slowest, say at the top of an arc where the bike is no longer climbing and just before it starts to fall. Failing this then panning is a good option as it needs much slower shutter speeds to work, typically 1/30 of a second. Google "panning" to find some tutorials on this if you don't already know how to do it,

Dave

ash h

Digital beginner heres one of the first shots i took.ISO 100.


And heres one iso400 at shutter speed 640.

digitalbeginner

Wow, it really was a crappy day. Looks to me like the shot is between 1 and 2 stops underexposed. The max aperture the Fuji can give you for the zoom length you were at is f3.3, you really needed something nearer f1.8. Photoshop will correct this a little using levels, is this something you can do?

This is what levels was able to do (it would need some more work to put back in some of the contrast that's been lost as a result):


Dave

ash h

The picture looks much better after your photoshopping.I downloaded corel paint shop pro xi.Can you do the levels thing in that?
Im going to another race on sunday.Im going to try panning with a slower shutter speed (1/30) and just mess around with the settings a bit.
Hopefully it will work...

digitalbeginner

ash h wrote:

I downloaded corel paint shop pro xi.Can you do the levels thing in that?

Yup!

Here's a graphic from one of my tutorials on using shutter speeds. Hopefully it will help:



Good luck with it,

Dave

ash h

Thanks for all your advice digital begineer.I didnt get to go to the downhill race today but a road race is going on my road later on and il try some panning there.Il post up the results.

--woo--100posts--

Fajitas!

Just out of interest, where are these bike races?

ThOnda

It looks weird that it doesn't set the exposure correctly. Try to look at the preview after ezch set of shots. And use external flash.

Fajitas! Try to have a look at http://irishdh.com

I am a little out for some time, however I have to attend some more races. I am still fighting with my external flash gun and setting it as off-camera flash.

DaireQuinlan

Just tried shutter priority with my fuji s602 (predecesser to the camera mentioned above). It actually doesn't even give a warning if the shot is going to be underexposed due to whatever shutter speed you've chosen, just pins the aperture at the lowest level and takes the shot anyway. The s5600 might do it differently of course, I don't know. Back when I was still using the s602 on a regular basis I used to prefer to use aperture priority ('A' on the command dial) anyway. That way you'll always get a properly exposed shot (I think the exposure time on my cam goes up to 8 seconds in AP mode) though of course it could be hopelessly shaky ...

ash h, My camera does this, yours might not, I don't know, But I can set mine to display the shot right after taking it. Then one of the command buttons on the back of the camera specifies keeping the shot, another one to delete it immediately. I found that quite useful at the time.

ash h

Fajitas:
http://irishdh.com/raceinfo.htm
The ones in green are the irish ones.

Daire il try a few shots in a mode tomorrow and see how they come out..

Fajitas!

Cheers Ash & Thonda, I may check out the next ones near Waterford.

Thonda, I've been playing with a lot of off camera flash lately, if yer up for coming to the next ones down near my side of the country, I'll show you a trick or two!

ash h

Fajitas you just missed the one in Wexford last weekend.It was some craic even though it lashed rain for the race runs.

Oriel

Choose the 'A' mode on the camera, and set the number to the smallest.
Set the ISO to the highest.