Best advise I can give is to pay very close attention to the angles that the sun is at. 90% of the battle is getting set up at the right angles in relation to the lighting. I had a conversation with one of the top East Coast pro photographers a couple of years ago and he really opened my eyes to how to set up shots. He was shooting at angles in relation to the sun that I would have never considered.
Also be aware that your raw digital photos may not look right but can come to life with just a little tweaking with photo software. The two pics of the longboarder above for example were way darker when the raw files came off the camera and with a little tweaking you get the images above.
Great looking shots. I’m not familiar with that camera, but you’re on the right track shooting in RAW. You can do a lot more with those files compared to jpeg. Other tip I could give as a fellow amateur photog is to always shoot biggest files your camera will allow. You can always downsize them to post or share but you can’t make a small file bigger.
My wife picked up a HX300 while in HK recently as a Christmas present. The thread you directed me to will prompt me to get some photography dummy books from the library.
On the HX300 nearly everything I shoot is in the “Intelligent Auto” mode on the camera. Its the green camera icon on the dial at the top of the camera. I’ve also experimented with the Sports mode on the SCN scene selection mode. That’s about all I’m doing…I’m not messing with any other settings. I also shoot almost everything in burst mode so I’m getting multiple pictures of the subject…that way I can sort out and pick the best image. I wish I had more time to shoot but every time I take this camera out of the bag I am amazed by the images I get.
My grom on a good one a couple weeks back.
My grom with Atlantic City in the background on a frigid day. Those Casinos in the background are about 10 miles away.
I don’t want to start a debate… But if you ask me, image processing is as necessary to the digital image as wet chemical processing it to film. Especially if your camera shoots RAWs, you can restore some highlight and shawdow detail, and get a more natural looking result quite easily now. Colors are also a cinch with RAW files. With proper exposure, you can get quite good dynamic range with current cameras. Just don’t over edit, that looks awful.
Manual mode isn’t hard, especially for a bunch of dudes who likely enjoy understanding how stuff works (that’s who’s on here, correct?). If anything, run shutter priortiy and get it decently high, to avoid blur from your subject or you being so zoomed in. There’s that old “shutter speed should be the reciprocal of your lens” rule, so a 300mm needs 1/300th sec to be handheld without blurring it, unless you’re a statue.
Not familiar with this camera, but I like to use the P mode for general stuff that is not going to be manually set. I often find the IA mode messes with the ISO or choose settings I wouldn’t normally choose.
For surfing you can use the sports mode on a lot of those kinds of cameras. It will set the shutter speed higher to capture moving objects better. Always remember that the longer zoom will exagerate any camera movement so higher shutter speeds are important. If you have built in stabilization use it. We used to use a simple calculation for lenses and shutter speeds back when we used Kodachrome 25 and 64, fast film was 100 ASA Ektachrome. If you are shooting handheld try to use 1/60 sec shutter speed for normal lenses, good photogs could go down to 1/30 or 1/15 for non moving objects. If you start using telephotos, match the lens length with the shutter speed, 300mm lens, use 1/250 or 1/500. The sweet spot for apertures used to be about f8, you’d get really sharp images and decent depth of field. As you get toward f16, f22 the depth of field is greater. Most older photos like to have a shallow depth of field and just keep the main subject in super sharp focus. Today’s lenses are often f3.5-5.6 for the wide open settings. With the smaller imagers in these kinds of cameras, even using them wide open the depth of field is not very shallow. In other words, the whole picture stays in focus. That’s not a bad thing for surf shots.
I like to set the camera on Shutter Speed mode to hold the shutter where I want it, then bring up the ISO high enough to get a decent aperture. Sometimes the sport mode will not allow you control over the ISO/ASA. The newer cameras are not bad shooting at 400 ISO. I often shoot my DSLR at 800 and 1200 ISO when it’s dark. Where I live surf is almost always shot in a brightly lit day. You can use lower ISO and still have a high shutter speed and decent aperture for sharpness.
A tripod with a video/film fluid head will be handy for surfing and super long telephoto lenses. I use my old film camera tripods with the older style fluid heads with my DSLR to shoot surfing. YOu get smooth panning from left to right and smooth tilting up and down. Never shoot video holding you camera or phone vertically. Shoot it with the image wide not tall. If you plan on doing a lot of cropping or having 3 images side by side it would be OK. Nice thing about shooting things far away like surfing is that you’re probably focussed at infinity all the time, so you can leave it set to infinity manually and don’t worry about the camera having to try and autofocus on every shot. Not familar with the 50x range of camera, so I may off on that a little. I only have 600mm lens for my longest. About 20x for my camera.
Just picked the Panasonic FZ200, has a 600x optical zoom, F2.8 across the whole zoom, pretty astounding Leica lens. Pick of the litter on DPReview and other photo blogs for superzoom/bridge cameras.
couldn’t be happier with the shots it delivers. Shooting surf shots in iA+, Sports mode, Deblur on, Image Stabilisation on, shutter priority and min 1000 ASA. Very happy with it, will post some pics once I download them (still have to install the edit program on my PC). A very accomplished photographer friend reccomends unless going for publication quality or serious blowups, shooting in JPEG fine, as the processing engines in these new cameras does so much to provide a quality shot to begin with, easily touched up in JPEG format afterwards. No doubt RAW is the superior image, however, it also is a much denser picture and takes longer to write onto the card, even using Class 10 SHDC cards. If you’re shooting rapid fire, or using 2-5 burst shot mode, lag time to write onto the card before ready to fire again is much more perceptible in RAW vs. JPEG+.
Had a Nikon D80 with several lens, such a hassle to tote the bag and tripod around. With this little gem, no excuse to not have it with me.
No idea what zoom this is but I was standing in the same spot when I took photo 1 and 3. Photo 1 is a guy surfing off the distant rocks in photo 3. This is a secret spot on the Gold Coast.
I was really testing the zoom and what distance I can get a reasonable photo. Surfing close-ups next time.
There’s a way to view all camera info when you shoot digital. Download a free program from Opanda called iExif. You can find it here: http://www.opanda.com
There’s now a version for Firefox. Pick the one that suits you best. When you open a digi pic in a browser, iExif can display all the data on the shot. Shutter speed, f stop, focal length ISO, etc. It’s really handy. It does not work if the image has been edited with some types of software, or when it’s uploaded to certain sites (like Facebook). Newer versions of P-shop retain the data, even after editing.
OK. I used IExif and here’s the data for the top pic of the last two you posted:
**Camera dsc hx300
Date/Time 2014-01-26 09:44:10
Shutter speed 1/640"
Aperture F6.3
Landscape mode
ISO Speed 80
Focal length 163.56mm**
Just a tip…Raise the ISO value to around 200 or 400. It will increase the shutter speed and yield better sharpness in action shots. Do everything else as you’ve been doing, such as relying on auto exposure, etc.
Last year we bought the Olympus SZ15 for my wife. She wanted a camera with a long zoom but didn’t want a bulky camera, and she didn’t want to use my DSLR. The camera has a 24x zoom and is very compact. It easily fits in her purse, or my shirt pocket. Best part was got if for just a little over $100, definitely below $150.
