Illusion of Speed?

[Hill Country Hack]

I captured this yesterday at a local small lake. My original desire was to practice panning shots. I could not get to a proper angle so I had to make do with more traditional captures. This is of a personal water craft pulling a wake boarder. The tow vehicle was making a turn around to head the other way as I was shooting the boarder. This was a lucky capture.

Is the image properly cropped (5:4 for 8x10 print?) to give some illusion of movement/speed?

Any other C&C welcome

Canon Rebel XS
Shot in AE
f5.6
1/800
Evaluative metering
ISO-400
75-300mm
focal point 300mm

[Krusty79]

I think you have a focus issue because nothing is particularly sharp. I see you used a 300mm lens, so I guess the auto focusing had a hard time keeping up with the speed. But getting back to your question, I think that by capturing the rooster tail behind the jetski, you have conveyed the concept of speed. In fact, I wouldn't mind seeing more of it.

[RichardTaylor]

The unsharpness of the water craft is a major problem.

Composition wise a little more space on the right would give room for the craft to move into.
I like the relationship between the craft,rooster tail, and person being towed.

[Hill Country Hack]

Originally Posted by RichardTaylor

The unsharpness of the water craft is a major problem.

Composition wise a little more space on the right would give room for the craft to move into.
I like the relationship between the craft,rooster tail, and person being towed.

Thanks to you and Krusty for the input. I know it was out of focus and I am working on it. I'm working on one thing at a time and soon it should all start coming together.

My thoughts are I had stacked both UV and polarizer since it was such a bright day. I'm going back soon to experiment with no filter, UV only, polarizer only to see if the hazyness gets better.

I just learned about back-button focus and will give that a try also. Most of the shots I took were in the 200-300mm focal length. Without the filters I should be able to get the shutter up and over 1/800 while maintaining f8 or so and ISO below 600. I'll re-post the next attempt.

[Jim Bryant]

Originally Posted by Hill Country Hack

Thanks to you and Krusty for the input. I know it was out of focus and I am working on it. I'm working on one thing at a time and soon it should all start coming together.

My thoughts are I had stacked both UV and polarizer since it was such a bright day. I'm going back soon to experiment with no filter, UV only, polarizer only to see if the hazyness gets better.

I just learned about back-button focus and will give that a try also. Most of the shots I took were in the 200-300mm focal length. Without the filters I should be able to get the shutter up and over 1/800 while maintaining f8 or so and ISO below 600. I'll re-post the next attempt.

We all learn by mistakes......thats the best part about photography. Don't worry about your depth of field. Use your smallest fstop. That'll give you a higher shutter speed and will blur out the background so that more emphasis it put on the jet skiiers.

[BK553]

Yeah, keep trying. I'd say lose the UV filter, the polarizer I'd keep for anything with sun and water together. Practice your focusing, either learn to pre-focus on an area, or make sure you use ai-servo autofocus mode.

As Jim said, if you use aperture priority, with the aperture set as wide as it goes, you'll get the fastest shutter speed possible for the amount of light you have. Try to pan with the action too, even if you can't get it fast enough to freeze everything, at least your subject will be in focus and not motion blurred.

[dbright007]

I think the composition is pretty darn good - many great elements.
If you opened the zoom just a bit off the 300mm it will help the lens and give you a bit more room for the skier and the jet-ski to 'go to'.

For a shot like this, I think you would capture the speed more effectively by slowing the shutter to something like 1/200 and panning. Blur the background but catch either the skier or craft in single point focus

[EOBeav]

+1 on ai-servo mode. As soon as I saw opened up the image, I knew that was the issue.