I going to be shooting an high school beauty pagaet,, what lens suggest i use.. any other points on what shutter setting i should use..

You want the fastest shutter speed you can get and the largest aperture possible.
If you're close enough and it's allowed, use the flash. The flash will freeze the action. However, it's likely to give you a dark background instead of a blurry background.
If not, use the Aperture Priority mode. Open the lens to its maximum aperture (smallest f/number). This will give you the fastest shutter speed for the existing lighting conditions. The fast shutter speed will freeze the action and the large aperture will blur the background, though the amount of freezing may be limited if the lighting is relatively dark, as in a high school gym.
Be aware that if you're shooting indoors you're going up against the laws of physics. The human eye can adapt much better than any camera. A high school gym will appear light enough once you've been inside for a few minutes, but it is much, much darker than a bright day outdoors.

Shooting sports and the evening can be a compromise between needed s fast shutter to stop action or a longer shutter to allow enough light for a good exposure. Fortunately, you've got a "fast" lens. My suggestions are:

Shoot in "A" mode (aperture priority) and change the aperture of the lens to the lowest number available to make the aperture open to maximum, and increase the ISO to 400 or 800. You may even get satisfactory results at ISO1600, but you should check the results on a computer screen before blindly going out shooting at the level.

By increasing the aperture, two things happen; exposure times are reduced to minimum so that motion is stopped (or blur minimized) and the the depth of field becomes very narrow or "shallow". Depth of field or "DOF" describes the distance in front and beyond the point of focus that will also be in focus. Large apertures (low "f" number s like 1.4 to 2.8 ) = narrow DOF and small apertures (high "f" numbers like 16 to 22 and beyond) = wide DOF. An example would be if you took a picture of someone's face from a2 feet away at f 1.4 and focused on the tip of the nose - the eyes would begin to get soft or out of focus - the ears would be even more noticeable - and that background would very blurred. The same picture at f 22 nearly everything would be in focus - except for maybe the background - depending how far behind it is from the subject's head. Check the example below:


Look at the backgrounds of the pictures above. The left is largely in focus at f 8 while the right is blurry at f 2.5. Had left been shot at f 22 or more, more of the background would be in focus.


Increasing the ISO to 400 or 800 increases the camera's sensitivity to light like film. The higher the ISO, the less time it takes to get a properly exposed picture. High ISO are helpful in low light situations or other times you need to have a faster shutter speed (for sports or don't have a tripod for pictures that need long exposures). Assume you want to take a picture of something that the camera tells you won't be exposed correctly unless you shoot at say for example f 2.8 and shutter is 1/30 second. If the camera ISO was set to 100, you could change it to 200. This doubles the sensitivity to light - meaning you need 1/2 the light; you can change the f number from f 2.8 to f 4, OR, leave it at 2.8 and increase the shutter speed to the next faster value 1/60 sec. If you change the ISO to 400, it is now 4x's sensitive than 100 (or 2x's than 200). At ISO 400, you could go two f stops smaller to f 5.6 or stay at 2.8 and increase shutter from 1/30 to 1/125. For ISO 800, you could go three f stops smaller to f 8 or stay at 2.8 and increase shutter from 1/30 to 1/250. You can mix and match, too. Go one up on the speed and two smaller on the aperture. The drawback to higher ISOs is that the pictures become grainier with each increase. Eventually, the pictures don't look good when you get into ISO numbers above 800 (or less on some DSLR cameras - and even less on point and shoot types). You have to experiment to find where your preferences are. See below for Low and High ISO comparison shots:


The left picture above has nice, smooth transitions between shades of colors - the right picture has a grainy appearance called "noise". Some is acceptable but others are not - it depends what YOU can live with. Sometimes it's better to have a grainy shot than nothing at all.

Lastly, you can shoot "S" for shutter mode, to control motion instead of "A" which controls volume of light instead. The same principles apply.

I hope this helps & good luck!

I could be that your lens isn't focusing. If the Auto focus can't find something to focus on the shutter won't fire. If you are shooting in low light sometimes it has trouble try shooting something that is well lit. also your auto focus point may be somewhere other than the center. there is a button on the top of your camera that looks like this [ ][ ] [ ] [ ]
More or less that will switch where your focus point is. If you look in the view finder and see a red dot when you push on the shutter button that is your focus point. push the above button until the red dot is in the centre. that may fix your problem.

You did not provide enough information to determine what your problem is. For example, were the pictures all light or all dark. Knowing this lens, I will assume that they were all dark. So...

1) This is a very, very slow manual-focus lens. It will not auto focus. It must be manually focused very precisely because it has virtually no depth of field.
2) Depending on your camera, your internal light meter may not work. On my camera (Nikon D-90), it does. If it does not on yours and I suspect that may be your problem, you're going to have to shoot everything manually, i.e. setting the shutter speed and lens opening yourself. You can use your internal light meter to help you get started by taking your light reading before you install the lens...preferably using the aperture only setting where you set the aperture at f8 which I think is the speed of the Opteka and let the camera set the shutter speed. Make a note of the shutter speed then attach the Opteka to the camera and mount the lens on a tripod with the camera attached.
Then set your camera mode to manual and set the aperture to match the lens (f8, I think). Set the shutter speed at the speed you noted earlier. Shoot a picture using a remote shutter release or the self timer. This lens is so slow that unless you're in exceptionally bright conditions you will get fuzzy pictures due to camera movement at full zoom of 1200m and above if you're using the 2X doubler. I would start shooting at minimum zoom of 650 without the 2X doubler. Shoot a picture. and check the result.

You should have an image but it may be too light or too dark.

If its too light you'll need to increase the shutter speed or stop down the aperture to, say, f11...or both. Make the adjustment and shoot another picture. Remember that if you increase the aperture, you increase your depth of field, making focus less critical. If you increase the shutter speed you make camera or subject movement less critical.

If it's too dark, you can only increase the shutter speed because you can't open the lens any wider than f8. Make the adjustment and shoot the picture.

Keep doing this until the pictures are the way you want them.

This is a decent lens for the price and worth the little money they cost if you can't afford $10,000 plus for a high quality telephoto lens of this size. I would forget about the 2X doubler because as others have said, it further reduces the speed of an already very slow lens with such a high rate of magnification that a knat landing on the lens could cause the picture to blur from movement.

Hi,

Giving the lens your using and depending on the shooting mode your in. I assume your shooting in a low light situation. The lens you have is not good for low light shooting because the F-stop is only 3.5 at widest, so minimal light gets in so the camera decides what speed to set it at to close the shutter. for example shooting in the school gym or church, the camera speed will be 1/20 second or even up to 1/2 second to get enough lighting into the sensor so the image is properly expose but for you to have a sharp image you will need to shoot on a tripod.

Without tripod and just handheld will create blurry images. I would suggest you bump up the ISO setting to minimum to 3200 or higher that way the camera speed will be higher and reduce handheld shakes that will create blurry images. But remember, increase ISO will increase in image grain.

That is why I suggest you invest into a 17-50mm F2.8 lens for low-lighting or 50mm f1.8 lens.

I hope this helps

Jet

You have a cheap Chinese copy of a Ricoh KR10-Super.

Assuming the shutter is actually broken (you didn't give details of symptoms) you cannot get spares for either of them. Throw it away (keep the lens) and buy any other Pentax K-Mount 35mm SLR camera, they're virtually worthless these days (except for the all-manual Pentax K-1000 and a few high-end models).

The near-worthless resale values means that you can pick them up from your local FreeCycle (also Freegle in the UK only) groups for nothing.

Pentax, Cosina, Ricoh, Chinon are the main brand names for K-Mount SLR's, but if you have a choice go for Pentax first, Ricoh second and only take the others if they're free as they're worth even less than a set of new batteries.

The sports mode on a DSLR just picks high ISO and fast shutter speeds for you. Go Karts are very fast subject to focus on, so there are two techniques you can try.

One is to set your focus to manual mode and pre focus a point where the car will pass through. Set the camera to multi shot mode and just before the kart gets to the pre-determined point, hit the shutter button. The camera will fire off a few shots, then review later on a computer to chooset the best one out of the sequence.

Another way is set your focus mode for AI-Servo or Focus Tracking mode, this will enable the lens to track moving subjects (as single shot mode is way to slow to keep up with karts). Go to the slowest part of the track to get more sucess.

One problem you maybe having is that the shutter speed is too slow for karts. Being indoors the lighting will be very poor, so a super high ISO rating will need to be used to get faster shutter speeds. Having a lens with a very wide aperture (like f2 of f2.8 or even less) will enable you to get faster shutter speeds because they let in more light.

Good luck.

Congrats on the D40! It is a great camera! Best buy out there for a DSLR. You can spend more, but for the money you can't get a better camera.

I've been shooting football games from the sidelines for four years with a Nikon D70, which is almost the same camera as the D40.

For shutter speed, you'll need to use a maximum of about 1/350. With the lighting at most high school stadiums, you won't likely be able to get enough light at this shutter speed with the "shooting modes".

You need to set:

ISO to 3200 (max)
Program mode to "S"
Shutter speed to 1/350 or maybe 1/500. The 'S' mode will keep the shutter speed where you set it and vary the aperature to control exposure, as best it can.

This will give you photos at most locations with the 18-55 that are a bit dark, and you'll need to adjust the lighting in whatever software you use. If this gets you photos that are acceptable at your location, you can stop here.

But if not, then you'll need to move to some more complicated "tricks".

I could describe some techniques, but Ken Rockwell has a good explanation of how to do this on his website (you also may find it useful for general photography hints).

http://www.kenrockwell.com/nikon/d5000/high-iso-comparison.htm#3200

And then look at where he talks about "pushing".

http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/photoshop/pushing-iso.htm

Ken also talks about setting ISO to 6400, which can be done on this camera. You'll need to work with removing the grain (noise) afterwards, though.

If you're using the 18-55 and are happy with the zoom, then you could potentially switch to the straight 50mm f1.8 lens that Nikon sells for about $120. This won't autofocus on the D40, but the f1.8 will get you far better low light capability. The 50 is easy and fast to focus manually.

You could also go after the 80-200mm f2.8, which goes for about $800 new or $500 on ebay. Again, you'd have to manual focus, but the f2.8 will get you way more light into the camera.

If you post what you are using for lens and give a general idea of what you use for software, I can point you some other places that will show how to deal with noise and also lighten your exposure if you need to.

hi

try the Digital Photography School website they have almost the perfect solution the beach photography problems

http://digital-photography-school.com/?s=beach

hope this helped
cheers, pls rate it

With the camera you have, noise isn't much of an issue when pushing the ISO to 400, 800 or even 1600. Try setting at ISO 400 and change it to manual mode or shutter priority and then choose a faster shutter speed. Take some test shots. If it's still blurred, increase the shutter speed and ISO to 800 and try again.