digital camera

[esskreemr]

I recognized your avatar. Good work...

[Timacheff]

Thanks! It's nice to shoot a sport where my work is appreciated...

[bernard c]

I agree with Serge, but my method is different. It will be demonstrated live and in person on Jan. 8, 2005, at the First Annual Bay Cup Photo Tournament in Lafayette, CA (a suburb of San Francisco). See www.thebaycup.org for details.

[Capt. Slo-mo]

More to the thread: I've got a Nikon D70, and will be taking it on its maiden voyage in January shooting fencing stills. I'll let you know how that level of digital camera performs.

Since I promised...

Took the Nikon D70 digital SLR camera to the Budapest JR WC...a few of the pix are in the current Budapest WC thread. I shot with the basic 18-70mm, 3.5/4.5 autofocus lense that most of the D70 cameras come with. Some observations:

1. This lense is too wide-angle for many of the positions I had to shoot from. A telephoto up to about 200mm would have been better. If I was right next to the strip, it worked pretty well.

2. Zoomed in to 70mm at a 4.5 f-stop, this lense is too slow. Even at 1600 ISO (the most light sensitive setting) I was getting significant blurring issues about 2/3 of the time. I was frequently stuck at a shutter speed of 1/60 of a second, which just isn't quite fast enough. At 1600 ISO, there is significant noise (spots and speckles) in the black area of the picture.

3. The D70 seemed prone to taking strange color balance readings on auto white balance. I need to read the manual more on setting the color balance manually. This is a pain, since there were three separate venues in Budapest, all with different lighting...but the camera would often shoot several exposures perfectly, then throw in a random golden or blue-hued frame.

4. At low light levels, the auto focus worked pretty well, but not great. A split-prism manual focusing 2.8 f-stop lense is definately on my list (once those lottery numbers come through!).

5. The camera has no lag between pushing the button and taking the image. I had it set to take pictures in bursts, and would fire off three to four exposures for each action. This worked very well, and is one of the best reasons to buy a camera of this type.

6. The built in flash on this camera works the best of any I've had.

7. The battery is awesome on the camera. I shot for four days on a single charge, probably close to a thousand images, with lots of reviewing and editing in camera.

All in all, I was quite happy with the camera. A little faster lense, and it should do very well.

[Inquartata]

Fuji Press 800 or 1600 is the very best for fencing, and it's VERY forgiving on light conditions (e.g., Tungsten, fluorescent, etc.).

I don't have a digital, so I've always used film, but for some reason whenever I try the higher speed ones like this without flash I get very grainy results. Any suggestions?

[grotto]

I don't have a digital, so I've always used film, but for some reason whenever I try the higher speed ones like this without flash I get very grainy results. Any suggestions?

it is the nature of the fast film to be "more grainy" if you are taking it to a lab for processing you get what you get grain wise. If you process at home using a developer like "accutone" (read weaker developer, longer dev time) can reduce grain and help the overall contrast of the film. there are tons of products like this from calumet photo etc.