Was struggling with my Sony Alpha A200 and a 18-75mm lens, not expensive kit by any means. In a dark woodland and raining, wasn't the best conditions for photography. Anybody got any tips for good settings? I was using a shutter speed of 200, ISO of 400 and getting really dark photos. Any higher with the shutter speed would have rendered the photos useless and I didn't really want to go any higher on the ISO for losing quality. Again any lower than 200 shutter speed would have resulted in blurry photos as these cars were coming in at high speed! Think the answer is a much better lens......... The results:
I'm not familiar with your camera/lens set up, but that picture doesn't look too bad. You could crop and tinker with it in Photoshop (or similar) using shadow/light adjustment or curves. You could also try using a longer shutter speed and panning with the cars, which would give an impression of speed (in the one above, you have frozen the action, as the wheels and background are not showing movement. Considering the circumstances weather-wise, that picture isn't too bad. Taking succesful photographs of moving cars is a bit of a black art anyway and even with a more professional camera/lens set up and experience, it's not always guaranteed to come out well. So just keep doing it over and over again and be grateful you don't have to pay for film/developing!
By the look of things youre sat on a slow ish corner so it will always be hard not to freeze the background. You need to use a longer shutter speed to get any blur of the background. Pros use a speed of 80. Hows your panning technique? This will give you good motion blur; its something that takes a lot of practice to get right You mention you were in a dark woodland and it was raining so it will be cloudy and dull I.e. overcast so generally your pictures will be darker and less vibrant than a clear day with good light, but they look reasonable to me for the circumstances. Also what metering system were you using? Sometimes a partial metering is better on overcast days, otherwise over expose it by a click and see whats it like. ISO 400 should be fine you should not notice any difference up to 800.
