Too dark for fast shutters?

Everytime I try to take daytime sports shots outside, I still cannot get the higher shutter speeds I am looking for.
I see pictures on the web that were taken over 1/1000 and f.4 and are beautiful.
To not be dark, I have to max my D-50 at 1600 iso, then use f2.8, and I still cannot get my shutter speeds over 1/200 usually not over 1/150.
And the 1600 ISO is grainy.
Is it me or my camera? I guess probably both...

You're shooting in Manual mode, right?

Jamesan said:

Everytime I try to take daytime sports shots outside, I still cannot get the higher shutter speeds I am looking for.
I see pictures on the web that were taken over 1/1000 and f.4 and are beautiful.
To not be dark, I have to max my D-50 at 1600 iso, then use f2.8, and I still cannot get my shutter speeds over 1/200 usually not over 1/150.
And the 1600 ISO is grainy.
Is it me or my camera? I guess probably both...

Click to expand...

Let me make sure I understand you correctly... You're shooting outdoors, in full sunlight, using f/2.8 @ 1/200 using ISO1600 and your shots are too dark?

Could you post up a couple examples, please? Something's not adding up here...

....

Yep. Not too dark but any faster shutter and it is too dark. I will try to find some examples tonight.

Something must be wrong if those values are correct. With ISO 800 and f/5.3 I shoot at 1/1000s outside.

A silly question maybe but are you certain it's f/2.8 and not f/29 or something. I ask because when I use your values with f/29 my shutter is around the 1/200s.

I assume this to not be the case but it doesn't harm to ask.

READ THIS
Okay....My mistake...BUT....
My values that I told you were wrong. I had forgotten what I had actually done, so let me start over.
Let me retitle this thread "Shutter Priority questions" lol

My wife was using the D50 camera at a soccer game for the second game in a row , so in an attempt to keep it simple for her, I thought I would set it to shutter priority and let the camera pick the aperature. The previous week I had done the same thing but with a 70-300 f4-5.6 zoom. The pics did not come out great and they were grainy at 1600 iso. This week I gave her the tamron 17-50 f2.8.
I think the problem lies when I tried to set it up. I knew that with this lens I would have to crop to get good pics, so I changed from the grainy 1600 iso to 800iso. I thought that would work since I had seen sport pics on the web at 400iso, f4 or so and 1/1000 shutter that looked great. I then go to see how fast a shutter speed I could get. I was under the assumption that with shutter priority whatever shutter speed I picked, it would just keep changing the aperature down as far as 2.8 to keep the pictures bright. I set it to about 300-400 and the pics are dark. a 200 speed pic is slightly dark but very viewable. I end up setting the camera to about 150 just to make the picture bright. I figured that if the pictures were dark then it must have adjusted the aperature down to 2.8, but now I see that it doesn't really do that. I went back and looked at one of my dark pics and the aperature is F32!
What good is shutter priority?

Is auto ISO also on. If so then the camera may not be changing the ISO as much as the aperture. When I keep ISO constant - auto off, then in shutter priority only the aperture changes. At the max aperture the view finder starts blinking denoting that the aperture should be even wider. If I recollect correctly, this problem has been discussed previously (do not remember where and when). The reason is usually third party lenses not communicating properly with the body.

To check, why not
. Set ISO to 400, auto ISO off
. Set mode to "S"
. Now track the objects in bright sunlight, and note the aperture reported.

If the aperture is still very narrow, then it is a communication problem. Try again with "A", and check the speeds reported.

Lastly, if nothing works, use the Sunny 16 rule - ISO100, F/16, 1/100, which gives
ISO 100, F16, 1/100
ISO 100, F4, 1/400
ISO 400, F4, 1/1600

So set the camera on ISO400, F4, 1/1000 and see if your exposure is correct, then adjust the speed/aperture accordingly. Remember even D50 has a DR of 10EV, so underexposure by 2 stops can be easily recovered in post.

The D50 is an old camera and ISO 1600 will be very noisy. ISO 800 will be noisy. That said, on a sunny day you should be able to get the speeds you want at a lower ISO.


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Jamesan said:

I figured that if the pictures were dark then it must have adjusted the aperature down to 2.8, but now I see that it doesn't really do that. I went back and looked at one of my dark pics and the aperature is F32!
What good is shutter priority?

Click to expand...

f/32 explains why you couldn't get shutter speed faster. You're using a pinhole to let the light through. At least there's nothing wrong with the cam. I'd do what aroy suggests; turn off auto-ISO. I'm not familiar with the D50 but if you have a shutter speed mode, use that, set ISO to 100 and when it can't get a fast enough shutter speed, up the ISO one. You should easily get fast enough long before ISO 800.

What conditions are you shooting ??
Bright sunlight / Outdoors

Indoors ??

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Thanks Aroy. You understand my explanation.
To answer some of the everyone's questions:
Yes it is a bright sunny day.
I did set the iso to a fixed 800. (good to verify that I should be able to go much lower)
The way I had it figured, the only thing left for the camera to do was pick a correct aperature. I will do some test today with the knowledge I now have that shutter priority should work the way I thought.
I will also test aperature priority just for curiosity as suggested.

Normally if you have auto-ISO off and manually defined, when you set to S, you should see shutter speed increase at the expense of aperture until fully open. If you set to A, you should see the opposite happen.

Just make sure you have the auto-ISO setting in your cam disabled because when on, even when in manual mode it will override your selection.

The ISO performance between cameras can be extremely different. The D50 like Geoffc stated is horrible if needing to raise the ISO to levels other cameras can perform very well at.
My D3s can perform quite well at ISO levels way above 6400. The D50 has a max at 1600. Your problem is the D50 can no way perform the way todays cameras can. Your expecting to much out of it. Time to upgrade.

Jamesan said:

Yes it is a bright sunny day.
I did set the iso to a fixed 800.
I will also test aperature priority just for curiosity as suggested.

Click to expand...

Can you also try manual mode?


On a bright day, 1/2000 Shutter Speed, 1/4 Aperture and 400 ISO should give you well exposed image for sports.

Yes, I have tried manual mode, and manual mode works.
But I figured out the problem........
Exposure Compensation has been set at -2.0.
On the D-50, it is a hidden setting, and it does not affect the manual mode which I usually shoot in. But it sure does affect the priority modes!!!

Thanks for all the input.