I am looking for a digital camera that would be good to use at sporting events. Reading through a lot of information here gives the impression that most cameras have a 1 to 2 second delay before the actual pic is shot. Is there a good camera that has a fairly good zoom function (to catch action shots some 40 yards away)and a good response time from the button push to the actual picture? Cost is not a huge concern, but I would like to avoid selling blood to supplement my income! ;-)

Mike

-- Mike Weible (weible1@slb.com), June 07, 2000

Answers

What you need to look at in the reviews is the amount of shutter lag with the button half pressed. Most digitals have a shutter lag time you can live with once the camera has prefocussed, usually 1/10 of the 1 to 2 seconds you mention, and usually pretty regular. The trick is to pick about where you want to snap your shot a few seconds before the action gets there and half press the shutter to lock the focus in. Then keep the button half pressed, pick up your action in the viewfinder and then finish pressing the shutter just a split second before the action comes into the range you prefocused at. Not exactly simple, especially if the action goes the opposite direction you thought it would or moves sideways in a radical move, but "them's the breaks..." The best way to avoid that being a problem is to try and position yourself so that the action is moving directly or at least generally towards or away fom you in a straight line and then prefocus, follow the action and nail it where it's interesting. The focus isn't going to be that critical because of the great depth of field inherent with the small diameter lenses that are used in digicams.

You can also catch action shots from the side or at an angle, but it's a bit tougher timing-wise. I have a Toshiba PDR-M5 which has a prefocused shutter lag time of about 3/10's of a second -a couple eternities when you're trying to grab a fast moving shot. With about five minutes practice I was able to shoot my 7 year old neice whipping down a hill around a circular driveway on her bike and stop her COLD -complete with a nice background blur. I'm hoping this translates equally well to speeding race cars, galloping horses, and swooping birds. :-)

The trick is to prefocus, pick up the action ahead of the shot, track with it, finish pressing the shutter a bit early AND THEN CONTINUE TO TRACK THE ACTION! Just like a golf swing, you MUST follow through -at least until the #$@% "shutter" finally trips. You'll get the shot even if the camera takes a while to trip the shutter. It may be a split second before or after you wanted it, but it'll be close. With a little practice you'll be able to get it just right.

Good Luck!

-- Gerald M. Payne (gmp@francomm.com), June 08, 2000.

Some cameras (which I do not own) have a sequence mode, in which something like 5 pictures are taken at the rate of 1 or 2 per second (depending on the camera, of course).

This wasn't a big selling point for me until I saw an example from someone on the forums at dpreview. The series of pics was of a child swinging at a pitch (of a water balloon). The shutter button was pressed before the balloon came into the frame, and the third picture in the series caught the splash from the breaking balloon perfectly.

I would imagine that this sort of feature would be useful for other action shots. Just press the button a second or so before the "perfect" shot, and pick the best one of the series.

Perhaps someone that's using a camera with this feature can fill us in on the costs and benefits of this feature.

I was all set to buy the Sony DSC-S50, but now I think I'll do without the sound recording capability to get the rapid series and panoramic capabilities in an Oly C-2020.

-- Mike Merrell (zoom@llamalust.com), June 08, 2000.

I read the above post, so consider this a post from the "Boy, is my face red department..." :-)

My Toshiba Pdr-M5 has a burst mode, and I haven't played around enough with trying to grab action shots yet to try it outdoors -well, to be honest, it didn't even occur to me when I was trying to see how well the prefocus/tracking method would work with the camera.(Doh, just call me "Homer"...)

In fairness, I think the burst mode would only be suitable for outdoor use with a LOT of light. I don't think it would be very good for indoor sporting events unless they were REALLY well lit, since the in-camera flash doesn't fire in burst mode and doubtlessly couldn't recycle that fast anyhow. I'll post back when I get a chance to try it outside in good lighting and see what happens.

On a similar note, I recently bought an inexpensive($20) Vivitar external flash unit with a bounce head. What I'd like to do is trigger it with a slave sensor and use it to get more flash power and to be able to bounce the flash so I can eliminate harsh shadows and get better lighting for portrait type shots. In playing around with it, I noticed that I could shut the flash off, and depending on the room lighting and the mode I had the flash in, I could get up to 4-5 bursts from the flash by hitting the manual test button. If I could find a way to trigger it, I'd love to see how this would work in the burst mode. Kind of a tall order since the in-camera flash is disabled in burst mode... Maybe I can come up with an auditory sensor that will trigger when the shutter snaps, but I'm kind of doubtful. Maybe something like those piezo electric glass breakage sensors you see on windows. Anybody have any thoughts?

-- Gerald M. Payne (gmp@francomm.com), June 08, 2000.

If the camera has a remote port to accept an external flash, then perhaps there's hope that you can enable it for burst mode. I say this because if external high-speed flashes are available, then hopefully the camera will support this.

Of course, all the normal disclaimers apply... :-)

-- Mike Merrell (zoom@llamalust.com), June 09, 2000.

I've been shooting sports professionally, mostly high school and small college events, since 1986. The shutter delay in consumer digital cameras makes it impossible to get good photos consistently. For the example given above you can work around the shutter lag, but in most sproting events it is very difficult to predict where the action will happen.

Even is swimming events, where you pretty much know where they're going, the digital cameras under $3,000 for the body alone cannot do the job. Consider, for example, trying to get a photograph of a competitor in the butterfly event. Each competitor is in one lane, but how are you going to prefocus a digital camera for the spot the swimmer will burst above the water, extend her arms and take a breath? Football and basketball are even harder to predict. If I limited my baseball photos to batters or pitchers my editor would send someone else to the games.

Currently the Nikon D1 ($5,000) is the least expensive digital camera that will give consistent professional results while shooting sports. I'm hanging on to my F3 until the price comes down and the picture quality goes up.

-- Darron Spohn (dspohn@photobitstream.com), June 11, 2000.

Nikon 990.

Key: push the shutter button halfway to establish your initial focus, then fire at the moment of action. Unless they're running straight at you it should work fine.

I'm shooting horse shows (jumpers) and have found I get better images with the digital than I did the 35mm.

Regards, Frank H.

-- Frank Herzog (Fherzog@mindspring.com), June 15, 2000.