The Wind Beneath My Swing

February 26, 2009 at 12:30 PM — Jeremy

We went out swinging again, and I got some more pictures:

A note on the photography: it's very difficult to get a good picture of a kid swinging.  Obviously a fast shutter speed is important, and generally pretty easy, considering kids are most likely to swing outdoors during daylight hours.  The problem is focusing fast enough to catch them in focus.  With my camera set on AF-C (AutoFocus-Continuous), the lens was just continuously refocusing (hence the name) as Jonathan would swing forward and back.  Unfortunately, as fast as the lens focuses, it was usually a little behind.  

When I try this again, I think I'll go up a few f-stops (smaller aperture) to increase the depth of field (so more depth is in focus).  I might also need to manually focus to a particular point in his swing and then try to catch him as he reaches that point.  And of course, shooting digitally, I'll take tons of pictures knowing I'll be throwing out lots of out of focus ones.

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United States brandon says:

I think I'd go manual focus for this.  Just pick a spot to focus when he's close to you and snap away when he gets into that range.  At 3fps you should get him after a few tries.  I like your DoF so I wouldn't change the aperture to get more in focus.  You could also try this on manual and actually move the camera in rhythm with his swinging.  He will be frozen in the frame while you will have motion blur for your background.  That'd be pretty cool.  Smile

United States Jeremy says:

Yeah, I was really liking the depth of field, too; I'd hate to lose that.  I think I'll give the manual focus a shot.

Trying to get the background to motion blur sounds difficult, but since it's digital, there's no harm in trying.

I'm assuming that if I want a slow(er) shutter speed (for blur) with my already wide open aperture (for shallow DoF) and my sensor as insensitive as it already can be (ISO 200 in daylight), I'm going to need something outside the "triangle" to keep my picture from blowing out.  Exposure compensation?  Or will that just give me a darker overexposed image?

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