Quote Originally Posted by A.A
If you are taking pictures of moving cars get used to the pan shot movement if you have a steady hand (or a good fluid motion tripod). Having a longer lens (70-200mm) in this situation helps. If the car is moving fast you can get some pretty good pan shots at 1/30 or so (turn off IS if you have it) play around with your shutter speed (TV mode) to get the background motion blur to where you want it while panning on the subject (and make sure the subject is not coming or going out of your DOF).

If you want a shot where the car looks like it is just standing still just crank up your shutter speed to freeze everything and hope you have enough light (I consider these shots boring).

Which brings me to your ability to gather light. If you are shooting high shutter speeds and have low light you will need the equipment for the job. "Fast Glass" is expensive. Look for a zoom lens that has a constant f2.8 through its focal range. These lenses also do great work for portraits. If you are in soso light turn your camera to av and set your camera to f2.8 and if needed turn up your ISO to ramp up your shutter speeds and hope you have enough light for sutable shutter speeds.

The ISO now days is your digital camera sesnor's compensation to gather light. Film back in the day had a set ISO per role, these days you can adjust your camera's sensitivity to light on the fly. With film if it was 100 ISO it recorded light slower over less sensitive particles on the actual film resulting in a smooth colorful image. If it was higher ISO film these particles were more sensitive to light and recorded it faster (resulting in higher shutter speed) and grainier. Newer cameras are getting better with the high ISO management: my xti sucks balls at 1600 while my xsi only sucks at 1600... my xsi at 800 ISO is comperable to my xti at 400 ISO. Soon we will have cameras that will have high enough ISO management that we can manage with slower, less expensive, glass and still get a crisp smooth shot... but that slower glass will have less ability to have a narow DOF because of its lack of a large aperature (f/stop).

As a rule, the lower your f/stop is (wider aperture) the narrower your Depth Of Field (DOF) will be (and the faster your possible shutter speed can be). Get a 50mm f1.8 lens for your DSLR and play with it (100 bucks or so), you will have fun. Tighten up that aperature f/22 or so and it will boaden your DOF to bring almost everything into the image (you will most likely need a tripod because at f/22 you will have long shutter speeds).

Image quality tends to drop off at the far ends of a lenses focal distance and aperature. Some lenses can shoot well at wide open (smaller f/stop) but most get sharper somewhere in the middle. Example: My canon 50mm can shoot all the way down to f1.8 but the images are not exact in color and sharpness until I "stop it down" to f/2.8. My 17-70mm shoots the sharpest at f/5.6 and not above f/16 and at 17mm it has barrell distortion.

That explaines some of the mechanics of why your camera opperates the way it does. Get out there and shoot in AV and TV mode! See what your camera gives you and you can figure out why from the settings display in your image.

I try to break the rules everyday I am out there with my camera and see what it throws back at me. I pay attention to the suns position and play on it sometimes shooting directly into the sun with a fill flash.

Try using a tripod for EVERYTHING... some photographers use tripods all the time for everything... no joke... you might pick up the same habit.
thanks man. i have been meaning to get a tripod and a new lense but i havent had the time to do so let alone the money. having two expensive hobbies, cars and photography, is not the easiest!