Photographical people - manual focus and RAW.

A) How do you take action shots using manual focus - is it just PRACTICE PRACTICE PRACTICE?

B) Does anyone shoot in RAW and can you give me a dummies guide as to how you process your pics (I appreciate this may be impossible)?

Merci.

Yes, I put my ISO at the appropriate setting to allow my shutter speed to stay above 1/1000th and yes, I edit in raw and save copies as jpegs.

Hmmm - the UK is sadly mostly cloudy and putting even with a high ISO it's hard to get a shutter speed that quick. Reserved for the about 3 sunny days we get a year then.....!

Re. RAW - what editing do you do? That is what I am curious about. I have never shot in RAW, but would like to try, but editing is something I don't really do atm past basics.

Hey Dizzy,

What software do you have? I can give you general raw tips, but if you're using something specific, I suspect you could get tips specific to the program you're using (ie, photoshop, lightroom, aperture, etc....)

As for manual focus action shots, it's a lot of practice. The more you're familiar with your lens and quickly focusing it, the better your chances of success. A smaller aperture, higher ISO will help out. I think you can likely get away with shutter speeds of 1/125 of a second, although faster is better....just try not to go lower than that. Having a tripod with the head slightly loosened (free to move, but not flopping around) or monopod to help stablize the camera will allow you to concentrate on following the action and focusing.

Currently just have Gimp, and as far as I can see it has nearly all the tricks you might need. I've looked at a few tutorials and happy to follow them, but its really about knowing where to begin! Will probably try in raw at the weekend and see what's what.

Never thought about tripod! Good idea. Will have to find a compact lightweight one as we're usually on the hoof.

Thanks