I need a couple of cameras for indoor photography at a large horse show. Events vary in the degree of motion (Reining is continuous, halter is pretty well static). Lighting varies, but is decidedly indoor quality.

I tried a Kodak DC50, but it would not stop motion. Some blur is acceptable, but I figure that ISO 200 equivalent is a minimum.

We will be taking nearly 15,000 pictures in 15 days, so download speed is important, and zoom would be handy.

Any suggestions?

-- Tony Lewis (tlewis@qn.net), July 28, 1998

Answers

No blur on rapid motion is going to be tough at any reasonable price point. High-end SLR-based digicams (Eg, the Kodak/AP Newscamera 2000, and the newer Kodak DC520 have adjustable ISO speed up to (I think 1600). These pro units use removable hard drives (PCMCIA Type III cards) for storage, so download would be very fast to a laptop with a type III slot.

Among amateur digicams, speed is a much more precious commodity. The Oly D500 claims ISO 180, which is about the highest I know of (at least the highest "official" claim of the cameras we've tested). The Casio cameras, including the new QV-5000SX seem to do exceptionally well in low light, so might get you the shutter speed you're looking for. I've also heard favorable comments about the Sony DSC-F1 in low light, but we haven't tested it, and I'm not even sure if its still being sold.

You'll want to pay attention to lens speed as well as ISO of course: Some cameras with high ISOs lose out because they have slower lenses. Likewise, you'll want to think about focal length: All the amateur cameras I mentioned except the Oly 500 have fixed focal-length lenses, tending toward the wide-angle end.

Given the huge number of pictures you're looking to capture, over a pretty short period of time, your best bet may be to just rent a pro unit for the 2 weeks. (BTW, on "pro" units, a great information resource is Rob Galbraith's pages, at http://www.robgalbraith.com)

Anyone else out there have experience with low light/motion?

Good Luck!

-- Dave Etchells (detchells@imaging-resource.com), July 28, 1998.

Sounds like another important factor is storage space. Working 8 hours a day your average data rate is going to be in the neighborhood of 36M/hr (approximating typical JPEG compression of "megapixel" iamges). So you'll probably want a couple of 48M Compact Flash cards (or equivalent smartmedia) to keep in rotation. That's not going to be cheap!

On the other hand, I don't know of any CF or SmartMedia using cameras that are going to stop motion except in very bright sunlight. If you can't afford a Kodak professional camera (as Dave mentioned) maybe you should just consider a Canon Optura digital video camera, and extract stills with a firewire connection. 30fps (if I remember specs correctly) isn't going to stop motion, but for any given animal you'll have hundreds (!) of frames to choose from...

Another idea would be to choose a camera with external flash sync and some degree of manual control and try to stop motion with some gigantic strobes. If you have to light an arena that would be impractical for you (though Sports Illustrated does it for the NBA!).

-- Ben Jackson (ben@ben.com), August 07, 1998.

A followup to this posting... I had considered a Canon Optura, but I have seen a number of postings regarding poor low-light performance. I may pick one up just to test.

I just bought a Canon A5, to use as a test bed for evaluating the new P70. These cameras allow a lower resolution shot at ISO 400.

My initial testing showed one immediate problem. The camera seems to decide when to take the picture, sometime after the button is pushed. This would make action photography difficult at best.

If anyone has any experience with professional cameras (esp the Kodak DCS 315), and/or can address this other timing issue, I would be grateful.

Thanks!

-- Tony Lewis (tlewis@qn.net), August 07, 1998.