need help !! New to digital photography

[dkblooms]

I have a Nikon 3100 (Lens is 55-200mm 1:4-5.6G) and would like to know what I can do to get photos sharper.. Im taking youth baseball pictures, should I just use the sports auto setting, should I change to ISO sesitivity setting also. I have the AF-area setting on auto as well but can change it to Dynamic-area, or 3-D tracking... any suggestions for this weekend's Tournament
Thanks
Deb

[3bayjunkie]

probably going to have to set the ISO from somewhere between 400 and 1600, depending on lighting. The rule of thumb with sports is to try to shoot with your shutter at 1/400. Idealy 1/750 unless you want motion blur, then of course you would want to go as low as 1/125. 1/250 works well for auto racing or fast moving sports.

Set your camera to Shutter Priority mode. "S" and try those shutter speeds. Anything above 400 should stop the motion. but the higher you go the sharper it will be. Good luck

[Tzetsin]

I just want to note something about ISO. The rule of thumb is that the higher you go, the LESS clear, and more grainy the picture will be.

You should do some test shots yourself to find the ISO cut off point for your camera as every model does this differently. I've got 2 cameras a canon 60D and a 5dMK2 the 60D is a pretty new model from canon and I find that ISO 640 is about the highest ISO i'll use with natural lighting. if i'm using flashes, i'll bump that up a bit, but not much. Anything more and my low light details are grained out. This is important for you because baseball caps are going to make alot of low light faces for you.

That said, I dont think ISO is going to help you much unless your games are at night. Any game you shoot in the afternoon is going to have more light than is good for you, so you'll be needing fast shutter speeds and good autofocus instead. I would recommend using the center point autofocus setting and aiming it at their faces every time. Use a loose focal length and crop in the proper composition later.

Some hints to get the most clarity out of your lens. Every zoom lens has a "sweet spot" a spot that is going to be its sharpest. Your lens isnt exactly top gear, so dont expect to get pin sharp details from 200 feet away. I dont know where your lens's sweet spot is, you'll have to figure that one out by testing it. I can tell you were it most likely ISNT though. zoom lenses are NEVER at there best at min and max zoom, nor its fastest F speed (aperture). so for you, stay away from F4 55mm and F5.6 200mm. Also stay away from F4 and F5.6 altogether, as well as 55ish mm and 200ish mm. I'm not saying you should never shoot there, just that when clarity is your ultimate goal, you'll probly want to pay attention to this. A good habit to get into is when your zooming and you hit the minimum or maximum, just back it off a little bit. If you havn't got your subject quite framed, move your body in or out to get the framing. (yes that means get out of your chair ;D)

If you ARE shooting evening/night games, just put your camera down and enjoy the game. you dont have the kit to get it done. Unless of course this is just for your family album, then you just need to remember that pretty much any lens at any setting is capable of getting the maximum clarity out of a drugstore 4x6 and you can forget everything I just said. Except the part about center AF setting, you'll still want to do that to make sure the faces are focused.

[JFSanders]

This guy did a high ISO test for the 3100 and it looks to me that you would have no serious image degradation until you get to 6400.

Crank it up and fire away. You will need it to get your shutter speeds high enough to stop action.

Jim

[3bayjunkie]

you can always go to Nikon D3100 Review: 16. Compared to (JPEG): Digital Photography Review on dpreview.com and test most newer cameras iso...