Photography suggestions for my 10 year old son

[Tuberoller]

My son is a really smart and hard working kid and he's far more patient than I could ever hope to be. I'm fairly confident he could learn anything that he has interest in ,if there were someone willing to teach him. I don't know much about photography and I really would love for my son to photograph all the racing activites we both participate in. The first thing we need is gear and then perhaps some type of tutorial in a book or program form that is geared towards children. He seems fairly serious but I know the lack of gear and knowledge is really discouraging for him. I don't want to just buy gear without really knowing what's best for his purposes.

I'm not complaining one bit about my boy,but today was a complete disaster as far as his photog duties go. We went to Road America and I got a chance to test a Porsche Cup car and I made some laps in my Cadillac. As nicely as I can put it,the shots looked really bad. I think the camera(Canon G3) is too difficult for him to use and he does'nt understand all the functions(I don't either).

a few examples of his latest frustration.

This the best pic he got of me making laps in the CTS-V. I was trying to smile for the camera.

He got a good shot of the the two series lead drivers.

And another of me about to get passed

and this blurry one of me getting passed

This is not fun at all. This is about the best of my memories from today.

He took quite a few pics and most of them looked pretty decent but the results are really inconsistent. We need help. Suggestions please.

 

[Madcat05]

Do you use a tripod? If not get one, it really helped me.

Learn about f-stops and apertures, so you can get correctly exposed photos.

Run a search on google for Photography tutorials. Or search for the specifics like "f-stops", most tutorials talk about these terms.

Also if your not using a tripod, or it's inconvient, make sure the Camera is light enough that he can hold it steady.

And practise holding the camera steady and pressing the shutter release gently as to not shake the camera.

 

[earful]

have you considered a minidv camcorder (with tripod)? it's much easier to capture motion with a camcorder than a still cam. it's also possible, with a good camcorder, to extract a frame and create a still of a particularly good shot. you won't get the same resolution quality you could with a still cam, i think, but you could have an awful lot of fun watching your home movies on a tv. (with good editing software on a computer, you can also move clips around, add effects, add a sound track, etc.) just don't get one of those camcorders that records to dvd (too hard to extract the footage for editing) or that use proprietary media or connections to your computer (like some of the sony dv cams do).

 

[GWN]

The two shots of cars in the curve look pretty decent. The problem may be that with a point and shoot camera (assumption on my part, don't know the G3) you are limited with the control you can exercise over shutter speed. Most point and shoot will select a faily low shutter speed to allow the lens to close down to give you more depth of field (even the fastest speed sometimes is rather slow). Notice that the shots taken in the curve are pretty good since there is less relative motion from the point of view of the picture taker. So the low shutter speed was enough to freeze the action. The side shots have the look of too low a shutter speed, so the entire image is out of focus. Other reasons may be an unsteady hand causing camera shake or the autofocus is not fast enough to lock-on to the subject.

With action shots there are two things you can do. Select a fast enough shutter speed to freeze the subject or a more interesting method is to pan and shoot with a slightly lower speed. It requires a bit of practise but when done right the car will be very crisp and focused while the background will essentially be a blur that gives the impression of speed rather that of a car stopped on a track.

I normally use a long lens to bring in the subject and blur the background even more and I use a monopod to steady the camera in the vertical axis. The monopod allows me to pan the shot while steadying the camera.

If action photography is the key, then you really need an SLR with a decent viewfinder so that you can follow the action, semi-automatic modes (shutter priority) or manual. A good telephoto lens to bring the subjects and a nice wideangle (not too wide) for shots in the pits. A monopod or riflemount is also useful.

There are lots of guys here interested in photography, I'm sure someone will have even better insight. And don't expect every shot to be perfect. A professional photographer takes several hundred of shots every day to get one or maybe two good enough to make it past the publisher.

 

[lan]

Other (non SLR) digital cameras with manual features won't really be any less complex than the G3 so the G3 is still an ok camera to learn on. The great thing about digital is you can take as many pics as you want.

This is a good place to learn about various aspects of photography.
http://www.photo.net/learn/

He'll have to learn how to use the camera to make use of the above. Just get the camera into manual and adjust the aperature, shutter speed, and ISO settings and start shooting.

The pictures that you posted are all blurry which suggests not fast enough shutter speed. He's probably panning and you are moving so it's important it's low enough. A tripod helps if both person/camera, and subject are stationary which really isn't this case so you have to learn to hold the camera steady.

 

[dffman2001]

The probable reason why the photos are blurred is because the shutter is bing pressed without allowing for pre-focusing. Since there isnt any time for the camera to focus (the car is moving to quickly) it might be better off to set the camera into manual mode.

Since the vehicles are pretty far away from the camera, it would be safe to set the focal distance to infinity. This is a rough setting that will usually work for anything more than 30' away. With this setting, there will be much less shutter lag and the camera will focus at the same distance each time, without having to gues and try to find a contrast to focus on; something that is not possible because the camera is being panned to follow the car without allowing the camera to lock focus.

With the small sensors that are in cameras today, you should get a decent depth of focus even with the largest aperature. Set the largest aperature that is available, as long as it does not overexpose. This will maximise the shutter speed so that your pictures will not be blurred due to vehicle movement.

 

[stuartr]

Fred -- I am pretty into photography (check out my website if you like...even if my photos are not that great, I have spent more time learning about it than audio, so I know a decent amount), so I can offer some suggestions. First of all, you need to decide how serious your son is (or he needs to decide). In order to photograph something as fast as race cars, you really need a camera that has a maximum shutter speed of 1/4000th of a second. You will also want a camera that can shoot 4 or more frames per second. Currently, due to the problem of digital data flow, film cameras are more economical in terms of high speed shooting. A Nikon F5 film camera will shoot 8 frames per second, which means you will be done with a 36 frame roll of film in 4.5 seconds. This is a bit of an overkill, but you get the idea. Alternitively, you can pick up a used professional SLR. They are very rugged, and you can get an extremely capable one for less than 1000 dollars. I would recommend a second to the top of the line AF SLR like the Canon EOS 3 or the Nikon F100. These run about 800 and change for the body, which is not substantially more than a prosumer digicam. For that, you will get a camera with a 1/8000th shutter speed and up to 4.5 frames per second shooting speed. This is more than fast enough to shoot a formula 1 car from 40 or 50 feet away.

You need to add a lens of course. This is where you really have to decide hwo much you want to open your wallet. Ideally, you are going to want a lens that is at least 200 to 300mm. Canon offers IS lenses, which are image stabilization...essentially they make it easier to make less blurry photos...but at a cost. They are much more expensive. A high quality telephoto lens can cost anywhere from 1000 to 7000 dollars. If you want to go for a more consumer lens (which is more adviseable), you can find something like a 75-300mm IS lens for 350 dollars: http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/cont...102854&is=GREY
Good news for you, photography is exactly like audio in terms of the law of diminishing returns. There is a certain threshold, and once you cross it, the gains are moderate. It is up to you what you want to spend.

You will also want to invest some money in a decent tripod. There is no way you will get good pictures with very long lenses without using one...especially if your subject is travelling at 180 mph.

Here's what I would get if I were you. I am basing my prices on B&H photo in New York. The biggest reliable mailorder camera store in the world. They will usually have very competitive prices with very very low risk.
I don't know your price range, so I am just guessing based on what you spend on audio. All these prices are new, and just like audio, you can save a ton by buying used at fairly low risk if you know where to look. I can help you if you are interested.
1. Canon EOS-3 $874.95
2. EF 75-300mm f/4.0-5.6 IS USM lens. 389.95
3. EF 50mm f/1.8 II 74.95 (for less light and general purpose photography)
4. 5 roll packs of Fuji Superia 800 print film (27.45 per/5 rolls)
5. Bogen or Gitzo monopod or tripod for camera support. (120-500 dollars depending on how good a head you buy...trust me, it makes a difference).

I choose Canon because they are cheaper than Nikon, their autofocus is faster, and their digital bodies are more advanced.

If you want to go for a digital SLR, it will cost your far more off the bat to achieve similar quality. The best body to get would be the EOS-10D. It is 6.3 megapixels and will shoot 3 frames per second, up to 9 frames before the buffer can't keep up. It will have a street price of about 1200 dollars for the body, which will soon go down as the EOS-20D is introduced.
You can use the same lenses, and they will actually become more telephoto (the 50 will become an 85mm, and the 75-300 will become...well, longer).
The initial investment is higher, the performance for high speed shooting will be arguably lower, and the body will become obsolete more quickly, but you will not have to worry about film and processing. It is a tradeoff you need to decide for yourself. The 10D is a quality camera that will perform at least as well as the two lenses I listed.

Please take all my recommendations with a grain of salt. This is not my type of photography at all, (all of my cameras are manual focus and my main camera is essentially the same as it was in 1954...vinyl vs. digital etc. etc.), but I think this system would do an excellent job of photographing the races. If your son is more interested in other types of photography and just does the races on occasion, than other things might be better suited. Also keep in mind that there are still hundreds of thousands of durable, excellent manual cameras on the used market that will cost a fraction of what I listed and are capable of delivering as good or even better results than what I described. There is a whole world out there, just as diverse as hifi, so it is wide open. If you describe exactly what you want and what you want to spend in more detail, I could probably narrow it down further, but what I listed is a good start.

 

[stuartr]

Realizing that your son is ten...it might be a bit much to go with all the stuff I just listed...that is probably PG-13(15?) stuff. But, I am sure your kid is bright, so who knows. I think the comment about prefocusing is probably correct. With most autofocus cameras, you need to depress the shutter button halfway for it to focus, and then the rest of the way to take the shot. Looking at the problem pictures, it is not just the cars which are blurry, which means that it is not motion, which is causing the blur (unless the camera itself is moving...very possible if it was dark or cloudy), but the fact that the camera was not focused. Since the cars are moving so quickly, you will be best served by pointing and focusing on the place the cars will be (on the curve for example), and then fully depressing the shutter once the cars are in the frame. This should make for better pictures. Also, the suggestions for setting the camera to pre-focus for infinity are also a very good idea. The final problem is that digital cameras (especially point and shoots) have a very very long shutter lag. I.E. the time between you pressing the shutter and the camera actually taking the picture. For a point and shoot it can be anywhere from 100 milliseconds (at best) to a full second by the time the camera focuses and takes the picture. By comparison, a Leica M camera has about 10 milliseconds shutter lag. Believe it or not, this makes a big difference, especially when you are trying to capture things moving as fast as racecars. Pro SLRs (digital or otherwise) usually have a shutter lag of about 50milliseconds. Anyway, at 10 years old, I think it would probably be best to learn how to use the G3 very well, and teach your son the best you can. If he is still interested, you can buy one of the fancier systems and help him learn how to use it. The auto-everything cameras will be easier to use at the basic level, but in order to really understand photography, he will need to learn about how photography works. What f stops and shutter speeds mean, how depth of field and focus works for different lenses and so forth. The national geographic guide is very good, but probably not for a child, and the same goes for Ansel Adams's books -- excellent for the college-age beginner, but not for a child. I really wish I knew something that I could suggest.

 

[EyeAmEye]

Maybe the best thing for you to do is stick with the Canon G3. He seems to have gotten some nice shots in there. He's only 10, so this may be a phase that will dropped in a short period of time, and if you go all out and purchase better equipment, he may get pressured and learn to dislike it. I can't speak about you personally, but you may also become more disappointed and upset if you spend more money and he drops it. If he's serious, he will learn to use the G3 better and will be able to consistently capture photos like the clearer ones you posted. That might give him greater confidence and make him want to pursue it more. Then introduce him to better gear and techniques. For now, the time you spend with your son is the best part of the whole experience, and maybe with time he will develop into a good photographer.
However you slice it, the shots he took are not bad, especially considering the speed of the objects he attempted to capture. Most people can't take a clear picture of stationary objects. Have fun and good luck!

Also, does he take other shots? Maybe you could take him on a trip to some scenic area and let him get some experience with easier shots. Doing that a few times might also help you guage how serious he is, and help him learn, too. Even if he is a highly intelligent and patient child, he still is 10, and getting into technical aspects at this stage may be too much for him to handle. Keep it simple until he matures a bit more.

 

[The_Mac]

used to post on HERE a little and read a lot when I was looking into higher-end digital photography.

I'm too tired and drunk to really offer much more tonight.

 

[gsferrari]

Fred,

* Dont lose your head with your son. Always encourage no matter what the
results are.

* Stay away from point and shoot digital cameras

* Buy him a BIG and HEAVY SLR from Minolta/Canon/Nikon etc. (A heavier camera will reduce shake and a larger camera gives a better grip. ALSO - when you click with an SLR there is a KatCHAK! sound and it feels like pulling a trigger...gives you a good feeling and a LOT of control over the shot)

* MANUAL is best - he will learn quicker about what different terms mean and what he can tune in and out

* Explain to him that he HAS to move the camera with the car to keep the car in focus and he has to keep the camera stationary (with respect to the scenery) to keep the scenery in focus and give the car a blurry look (maeks it look faster).

* DONT GET HIM A TRIPOD!!!

Please dont make this mistake. Let him tough it out with a large and heavy SLR and develop the skills requierd to keep his hands steady while taking a shot.

* DONT USE PRO-SUMER DIGITAL (Canon A70/g3/g5 etc. are not good cameras to develop essential skills with) - or at least get a Digital SLR like the CANON EOS REBEL. The feeling you get when you click a film SLR camera is just awesome...the shutter feels like the recoil from a gun! Digital SLR is also good and it allows you to see the results instantly.

* Steady hands, Steady eye, Steady feet, Steady back (send him to the gym mebbe to stabilize the muscles? swimming is also a good idea)

* USE MANUAL FOCUS (have I said this already?) get him to set the focus using the other cars on the track and keep it set for THAT CURVE and THAT POSITION and THAT SHOT so that when you come around he is just following your car and shooting away. With a good Digital SLR and a nice Film SLR he can make several shots in a short time. This is the best because you get to choose from a larger selection for the best picture.

* MAKE MULTIPLE SHOTS OF THE SAME SCENE I am POSITIVE you can afford it...

* GET LOWER TO THE GROUND WHILE SHOOTING A CAR NEARBY AND GET HIGHER WHILE SHOOTING A CAR AT A DISTANCE (this gives it an impressive look - most professional auto photographers use this method whenever possible).

* Be alert for the good picture. Once its gone...its gone...(example - Dad spins, dad gets overtaken by mum...you get the picture

)

* Ask him to post here and we will be HAPPY to help him out

 

[gsferrari]

When using G3 ans most modern digital prosumer cameras you have to follow this methos in making a picture :-


[size=small]1] Depress shutter button halfway until you feel resistance
2] Autofocus will kick in and do its magic
3] green square will show up on the screen - this means you have a good focus
4] now fully depress the shutter button[/size]

[size=small]
AT NO POINT OF TIME IS THE SHUTTER BUTTON ALLOWED TO LIFT ONCE YOU START PRESSING IT DOWN IN STEP 1. AFTER STEP 4 IS COMPLETE AND THE PICTURE IS TAKEN YOU CAN RELEASE THE SHUTTER BUTTON![/size]


Another suggestion :-


Tell him that it is important to press and release the shutter (shutter button action) in a smooth process without jerking the camera or shaking even slightly. This will ensure a good shot if the focus and setup of the shot is good.

Cheers!

 

[N@Z]

Just like to point out that that might still get you a slightly blurry picture because the subject is moving. Effectively what you are doing is focusing on the subject in question at that distance at that point in time & then depressing the shutter button when the subject has moved to a different distance (especially when trying to track fast moving racing cars). That technique is great for taking shots of static objects or if you want to produce a blurred moving subject in the foreground with a focused background.

 

[Tuberoller]

I gotta go to a wedding today and my poor son has to attend as well. The photog doing the wedding attended one of the many parties last night and I talked to him for a bit. He has offered to help my son out a bit and I'm gonna buy two of his used film cameras and some lenses. Is $1600 a good deal for a a Nikon F100, a Nikon F5 and three lenses(forgot which ones) which he says my son should start with? He's also throwing in a fluid head tripod that rotates all sorts of ways and two bags. He says I will likely need a better lens for shooting racing but is supposed to fill me in on this stuff today after everything is over.

After looking through some of the other pics my son took I do see that he took some really good ones and I guess I was just disappointed that I spent the entire day racing and only got a few good pics. My son is a really determined kid and has learned to weld,fabricate and paint very well in an amazingly short period of time.

My son had someone(he was walking around all day with the Girls from the Porsche racing camp) take this pic of him standing next to an Austin Mini.

He has a good eye for shots but his skill is what needs development. He suggested this shot after seeing how small the real Minis are( He's 5'4" tall )and thought this would be a good contrast pic. He also considered the backround and his expression when posing.

Some of his still shots look pretty good:

 

[mbriant]

It's difficult to get good shots of action photography (especially speeding cars) with a point and shoot camera. As has been mentioned, a manual 35mm SLR, when used properly, can give you excellent results....but it's still difficult. This may be a little overwhelming for a 10 year old, but if he's the same one who does the welding, he can probably handle it.

With car races it's best to find a location, use a tripod, and pre-focus on an area. Then take the shot when the cars enter the area you are pre-focussed on. It's easier to shoot at corners where the cars are coming toward you. If you want to shoot them as they pass, you should follow the car with the lens for a few moments before hitting the shutter. Also, a high shutter speed will help.

Local schools and camera clubs often offer beginner's courses.