So for the first time, I've been shooting moving subjects. I've got a new camera and a lot of stress, so I barely had time to set it up completely before the shoot (nothing professional though anyway). The subjects weren't too challenging: Kids on a dance show. The stage was outside, and the sun was out. Lighting condition was good, but due to a lot of moving clouds it was changing a lot.
To sum my three questions up:
- Which camera mode do I use for moving subjects?
- Which AF area do I use for moving subjects?
- Which image stabilization mode do I use for moving subjects?
I wanted to get a depth of field as shallow as possible and also keep the ISO as low as possible. So I've put my camera into Av
mode, set the aperture to 2.8
and my ISO to 100
. This worked very well at first, the sun being out and my camera picking a shutter speed between 1/2000
and 1/4000
mostly. Quick enough, clouds started to rise and I've noticed the camera going down to 1/160
-1/1000
, the lower end of this definitely not being good enough to freeze the motion (which I'd say happened around 1/500
-1/640
).
I ended up putting the camera in full manual, setting a shutter speed of 1/800
, aperture of 2.8
and the ISO to auto. Once the clouds were gone again however, I'd get overexposed images. And while changing the shutter speed accordingly worked, I feel like the camera would do a much quicker and more accurate job at that than me.
So which settings/mode would be prefered for this type of situation? There is a setting for "Minimal shutter speed" in my camera's setting, should I be using that? The options there are only full stops, so it'd be either 1/500
or 1/1000
. I feel like 1/1000
is a bit too much for dancing kids, but would 1/500
be enough? Is there any other way to properly shoot moving subjects like this?
My second question would be about the autofocus. Using Large Zone AF
or Auto selection AF
, I feel like, with a lot of possible subjects in the frame, my camera would just not do the right job of picking who I want to pick, so those were out. With Spot AF
or 1 pt AF
, I felt like it might be too hard for me to consistently have my subject right in that point, so I went with Zone AF
, combined with AI Servo
. Did I do anything wrong here? Most of my shots were in focus.