Why are parts of my photo blurry?

Hi

I am trying to take photos with a Sea & Sea 1200 HD. They are very disappointing with not so clear images and blurry "parts" where the divers are moving. My husband uses a Sea & Sea 5000G and is able to take fantastic photos.

I am convinced I am doing something wrong...

The settings I currently have are:

Auto white balance (I use a slate to correct this with great results);

Auto focus (when I half depress the shutter a block in the middle goes green to show it is focussed);

ISO 400

However, I always land up with not so crisp photos and very blurry hands / arms / legs, depending on what is moving at the time! I am about 2m away from my subject which is usually students doing pool skills and use a wide angle lense.

This is in a big indoor swimming pool with good lighting. I don't want to use a flash. My shutter speed seems to be slow.

Does anyone have any ideas? My results have been very disappointing.

Thank you very much for any advice!

Kate

Hi Kate!

I think You are right and the problem is low shutterspeed. Try to shoot with 1/100 and see if fastmoving objects on You'r pictures are still blurry.

Cheers

Karel

Hi Kate!

 

I think You are right and the problem is low shutterspeed. Try to shoot with 1/100 and see if fastmoving objects on You'r pictures are still blurry.

 

Cheers

Karel

Thanks Karel - problem is I cannot find anywhere to set the shutter speed and am not sure whether this can be manually set in any way...

If anyone knows how the shutter speed can be set on a Sea&Sea 1200 HD or what setting I can set the camera on to make sure the shutter speed is faster would really be appreciated! Sorry I am totally in the dark on this one! Thanks!!

I am off to the pool to check out more of the settings.

Will let you know if I manage to sort it out (for future reference for others!)

I don't have experience with the camera but by the specs on the sea & sea site it only has programmed AE which suggests no control over shutter speed

as you are in relatively low light (indoors) the only way I can suggest you may force a higher shutter speed is to increase the iso up to 3200... you will suffer a loss in image quality / increase in noise as a consequence though.

Thanks Darren!

I increased the ISO to 1600 and 3200 and the blurriness went away (yippee). Yes, there was a lot of "noise" in the photos and the images were not as crisp as they should be (and I was shooting on 12MB). This is not so great but perhaps I can still learn how to prevent this with more trial and error.

However, I think I had the "metering" on the incorrect mode as everything was totally overexposed (I had it on spot metering instead of multi metering). I think this is because the pool walls were white and reflected a lot of light. I will try multi metering next time instead. Fortunately I can fix this to some extent with software.

Well, I suppose photography is all about trial and error so perhaps someday soon I will get it right!

Thank you everyone for your input, I will report back after testing the multi metering in the pool next time!

I think that you are going to need a strobe for pool photography. It's difficult to freeze movement when, effectively, in Aperture-priority mode (the camera keeps the hole behind the lens at a fixed size, and adjusts the light entering by altering the time over which an exposure is made), without using sufficiently bright illumination. Otherwise, by accepting a limited depth of field,you can push up the shutter speed (more light enters a wider hole, but for a shorter time: the lens doesn't work as well, however, and less of the image is in focus). Of course, under some conditions, movement blur can be used to make an image more exciting.

"Spot" metering, by the way, usually works best underwater, as "multi-" or "matrix" metering often employs an algorithm derived from terrestrial photography.

Tim

I think that you are going to need a strobe for pool photography.

 

Of course, under some conditions, movement blur can be used to make an image more exciting.

 

 

Tim

 

Hi Tim

Thanks for this. I guess using my strobe in the pool will get me to learn how to use that too! (onward and upward!)

I must agree there are some photos where a bit of blurred movement (usually the hands though!) can be quite interesing ! Thanks for the info on spot and multi metering, too!

Will see how the strobe goes and give some feedback on that too.

Cheers

Kate