Nikon D80 settings for the mound

[iirwin]

Hey guys,

I am an amateur just starting out in spotting at sydney YSSY. I Have my Scanner and a Nikon D80 with a 70-300mm lens. I was wondering if anyone could advise me on the settings i could use when shooting at the mound? I've tried once but I didn't center the images and got backlighting on aircraft (rookie mistakes

Someone (Ryan) said to use my shutter speed a stop and a third above the focal length. Someone else they use other settings and achieve great results.

So any help as to the settings I should use would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks very much,

Ian Irwin

[PMN]

Hi Ian,

You actually don't need to keep your shutter speed anywhere near a stop and a third above your focal length, and trying to do so may result in compensating too much with other settings like ISO or aperture! It's generally a good idea to aim for your shutter speed to be at least equal to your focal length, so 100mm would require 1/100th, although to allow for a little lee-way I usually aim for it to be one third of a stop quicker so at 100mm I'd be aiming for at least 1/125th, 160mm I'd want 1/200th, 250mm I'd want 1/320th, etc. This usually gives fairly good results as long as you're not shivering when taking the photo!

As for other settings, I'm not familiar with the internal workings on the D80 although it's generally standard practice to turn any in-camera processing off so all contrast adjustment, sharpening, saturation, etc, are set to zero. The reason for this is to allow each image to be given appropriate treatment in editing rather than have the same settings applied to everything which you don't necessarily want. You'll probably find you apply very similar processing to all your images anyway, but doing everything in editing software gives the maximum amount of control. For actual camera settings, most telephoto lenses need to be stopped down a bit for them to operate at their maximum sharpness performance; most tend to give generally slightly soft images when wide open and as they're stopped down (aperture narrowed) the sharpness increases but also the depth of field increases. This means more of your image is in focus and sharp but unfortunately has the side effect of reducing the amount of light that hits your sensor so your shutter speed goes down. There are ways to compensate for this and each one affects the image in a different way.

The optimum aperture to shoot with tends to be around f/8-f/11, and on a bright, clear day a setting to start with would be Aperture Priority, f/8 and ISO 100. If the weather's good then this may give you shutter speeds anywhere between 1/500th and 1/2000th, and at these speeds you really shouldn't have any worries about camera shake when using a standard telephoto lens. In Aperture Priority, as the weather deteriorates and the light gets worse you lose shutter speed, so you need to balance your settings to gain that shutter speed back. The simple thing to do first is switch from ISO 100 to ISO 200 which will halve your shutter speed, so if f/8 at ISO 100 is giving you 1/160th but you're at 250mm (so your shutter speed is a little too slow) then going to ISO 200 will give you 1/320th, which makes it fine again. You can also gain a cheeky 1/3 stop if needed by opening the lens a little to f/7.1. This shouldn't have too detrimental an effect but can gain you a bit of shutter speed if it's needed and you can experiment with your lens to see how open you an use it and still get sharp results. My Canon 70-200L lens is quite unique in the world of medium telephotos in that it's actually pin sharp wide open at f/4, and stopping down simply has the effect of increasing the depth of field. This comes in really handy sometimes because it means I can shoot side-ons in early morning light way down at f/5.6 comfortably, so play with the settings and see what you can get away with. You may still be able to get good results wider that f/7.1.

So yeah, generally try keep the aperture at around f/8, try keep the ISO as low as possible (this lower the ISO the less noise you'll get) and try aim for your shutter speed to be at least equal to but preferably slightly quicker than your focal length. Also spend a little time acquainting yourself with the histogram. This wonderful little tool gives you a visual representation of how many pixels are outputting what brightness and is invaluable for getting exposure on digital cameras right and avoiding blowing highlights.

Hope that helps somehow, and feel free to ask again if you need any further advice!

Paul

[iirwin]

Thank you soo much for that long Reply Paul. It was very helpful!!!

[seahawk]

ISO200, P or P* mode with one click towards a faster shutter speed. Centre weighted metering. JUst make sure that the you stay above f 6.3 all the time.

And remember that what Paul said is correct. But the old formula of shutter speed > 1/ focal length only applies for avoiding blurr caused by your own shaking hands, it does not avoid motion blurr.

[brianw999]

^^^

The D80 goes down to ISO 100 which is where I always shoot unless the light forces me to go higher.

[seahawk]

I know, but the diffrence is tiny, when I look at my D200.

[ErwinS]

Most of the times I use iso200 and F7.1 /8
iso100 is only for the nice sunny days wich are to long ago these days.....

Maybe its a tip to check the exif data on pictures allready in the dbase of some D80 users.

[brianw999]

Well, I use D80's and have standardised to....
-ISO 100,
-Aperture priority, f9. ( on my 18-135 and 70-300VR, f11 on my Sigma 120-400VR )
-Centreweighted metering.
-In bright sun ..... -0.3 to -0.7 EV
-Cloudy sun .......0 to -0.3 EV
-Bright cloud ......0 EV
-Dull cloud .........+0.3 to 0 EV ( sometimes up to +0.7 EV if it's a dark subject)

I only go up to ISO 200 or higher if shutter speeds start to get unamanageably slow. By the time I get to have to use ISO 400 I generally figure that I'd be better off spending my time in the pub !

[seahawk]

My wifes D200 is using a more simple setting.

- P* mode with 1-2 clicks towards a faster shutter speed
- EV -0,3 bright sun, 0,0 typical good weather,+0,3-0,7+ cloudy
- ISO 200 - ISO 100 under very sunny conditions only
- centre weighted metering

With that setting she does only have to care about the EV and 90%+ of the pics turn out to be ok.

[PMN]

By the time I get to have to use ISO 400 I generally figure that I'd be better off spending my time in the pub !

You go aaaaaaaaaall the way up to ISO 400 before heading to the pub?!