Shutter Speed

[APB]

So after a bit advice from NotSpavin I've been tinkering with Aperture and getting some nice results, well considering I've been using Auto all the time it makes a nice difference.

I'm going to head out to an event going on down the beach now, there's a wakeboarding competition going on and I want to try and get the kind of image where the competitor would be in focus, and the background would be blurred out. You know, the kind you see of racing cars etc.

I've only got a D40 with Nikon 18-55 and 55-200mm VR lens.

Any advice?

[clyde]

try and get as close to the action as you can and use a large aperture, the effect your looking for i presume is called "bokeh"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bokeh

[Roger]

IF you mean a bit like this:



It was done with a slowish shutter speed (and hence a small aperture) and panning the camera to follow the middle bike. The slow shutter speed and camera movement 'smears' the background.

For that particular shot I used shutter priority and a shutter speed of 1/60th of a second. The camera picked the aperture of f/11

Problem is I can't see that working without a background (ie. on the sea) and I reckon for wakeboarding you would be better like clyde says, large aperture, small dof and freezing the action.