Help: Bright Sunny outdoor shooting with S2 IS

[videobuff]

Ok, I'm a newbie who thought I was a great photographer with my old Olympus C-765, now I upgraded to the S2 IS and I stink... so I'm hoping I can get your assistance here.

I'm in South Carolina and the days are bright and brighter. I can shoot in Auto mode but I seem to get a lot of blurring if my kids are riding their bikes or shooting down the slide. I'm hoping you can point me to better settings for bright outdoor shooting (I tried SCN mode with Outdoor/Sunny and the shots were very grainy, or noisy). :)

[cpm440vee]

I'm also a newbie to the S2 but I'm surprised you can't capture your kids in a still shot on a sunny day. I'd first recommend getting out of the SCN modes. Flip over to the Aperture Priority or Shutter Priority modes with Safety Shift on. Maybe try AV of 2.7 first and experiment from there. Next up...the graininess. The S2 is notorious for graininess in the higher ISO settings. I almost never shoot in ISO400 or ISO200. And I'm not sure why your camera is putting you in those settings on a bright day. Adjust to ISO50 and your shots will be clear. Try that for now and report back.

[ktixx]

Just remember that the more zoom you use the faster the shutter speed needs to be. With your camera fully zoomed to 12x you are using a 432mm lens equivalent. Without IS you need to have a shutter speed of 1/500 or better to capture even still motion, with IS you should still be using 1/200-1/250.
In addition - Try aperture priority as previously mentioned - use a wider aperture to capture more light and make sure your shutters are faster than 1/125 to capture motion.
Ken

[videobuff]

Thanks for the replies folks... I have been taking photo's late afternoon the past 3 days trying to experiment. I've also been reading an online photo class posted in another thread :) http://www.morguefile.com/archive/classroom.php?lesson=2 trying to understand f/stop and shutter speed. :confused:

I'm heading to Disney World in 3 weeks and want to be half way decent with this thing to get good photo's of my family on rides (fast moving) and standing still with characters. I'm guessing 75% of my photos will be outside on a bright sunny Florida day and the other 25% inside attractions and restraunts (character meals). So I'm hoping to find some good settings to SAVE to the C mode for the 75% for bright outside sunny shots.

Thanks again for your posts I appreciate the help.