Hazy over histograms? Annoyed about aberration? Send your technique and camera questions to digitalcamera@futurenet.com

Andrew James

Andrew is a highly experienced writer and photographer – if you have a problem, he is here to help.

Shooting a moving subject is easier when you adjust your camera settings to be ready for action!

Andrew James

Dog gone

Q I’ve struggled to focus on a dog running at speed towards me – what am I doing wrong?

Derek McNally

A As soon as you add something moving at speed into the equation, you are increasing the difficulty of the shot.

A subject that is static is relatively easy for the camera to lock focus on, but when it moves – especially at speed – then both you and your camera have a lot more things to ‘think’ about. To give your camera every chance of locking focus, you need to optimise it for action.

For starters, set the autofocus system to Continuous AF (Ai Servo on a Canon) and make sure your drive mode is on Continuous so that it takes one shot after the other. You also need to make sure you have the right focus points active. If your camera allows you to select a group of AF points, set a group at the centre: when the dog is running towards you, target this at its head.

You also need to get yourself into a suitable shooting position – which will be roughly at the dog’s eye level – and make sure you can hold the camera and lens steady. The more you’re able to control the dog’s trajectory, the better; so if you have a family member who can call the dog towards you when you’re ready, that is going to be helpful.

One last thing to think about is to ensure your background is clean and that you have good light, so there is plenty of contrast on the dog for the AF system to get its teeth into. It probably goes without saying, but use a fast shutter speed of at least 1/500 sec or, better still, 1/1,000 sec.