I'm doing a photography project for a college class on zoos or similar institutions and would like to know if anyone could offer some advice to a problem I've been having: I've been frequently unable to photograph moving targets (people, animals etc) without the image becoming blurred. The camera I'm using is a Nikon D3000. Does any photographers on Zoochat have any suggestions?
Check your shutter speed, that is probably your problem. If its on auto it should be fine in bright environments but will becomes slower the darker your surroundings become. If this is in fact your problem, this can be fixed by using shutter priority mode which allows you to select the shutter speed you want causing all other aspects to shift to automatic to accommodate the speed. Be warned though, if you do this and enable your iso to become automatic (which is very helpful) you will find your photos will become very grainy in low light environments. What I do to avoid this problem involves a bit more work up front but you don't need to worry about it down the line. My camera (Nikon D600) allows me to select a maximum iso and minimum shutter speed. This allows me to not have to worry about excessive grain if the iso gets too high, since I set it so that it could never go above the level of iso that, for my camera, causes significant grain. This also allows me to not allow the camera to reach a speed slow enough to be blurry if I'm still enough in low light environments. If you do this, I would keep the camera in aperature priority mode so that shutter becomes automatic and will adjust to as high as you need it to be or as low as you need it to be depending on light, without becoming too slow.
There are two potential reasons for the blurriness. One is the shutter speed is too slow (as diamOndback described) to freeze the action. Their suggestions will help you solve the problem if that is the cause. The other possibility is that the autofocus cannot track the subjects fast enough. Make sure you are on continuous focus and not single shot focus. If that is the problem and you are in continuous mode there may be no solution other than buying a more expensive camera.
