I like to visit a few airshows and the occasional motorcycle race. Can anyone tell me if there is a digital camera out there capable of dealing with high speed shots. Any help much appreciated.

Two things you need to be concerned about: conventional shutter speed to stop action, and shutter delay, or the lag between pressing the button and actually taking the picture. You can find reviews of digital cameras at www.dpreview.com/ I hope some more folks here can jump in with personal experience.

Thanks Misha I'll check that site out.

My D70 has a max shutterspeed of 1/8000. Should be fast enough. Shutterlag is essentially non-existant. With the right lens you can shoot anything.

Thanks 3dguy I'll take a look at that one. Great to know that there are some cameras that can deal with the fast stuff.

If you're serious about it, then you're pretty much going to hate shooting with almost every point and shoot type digital camera out there. Electronic viewfinders (aka EVF or EVW) are slow and the shutter lag that most of these cameras has would drive you crazy.

If you're talking high speed sports photography, then you really are talking about one of two types of digital cameras. SLRs and Rangefinders. I would think that almost every DSLR on the market would be able to handle sports, there are just some that would handle it better than others. Of course, the pro cams (Canon EOS 1D/1D Mark II and Nikon D1x/D2H) excel at this type of photography.

The higher consumer Canon EOS 10D/300D(Digital Rebel)/D60 and Nikon D100/D70 cameras also have high enough max shutter speeds (1/4000th-1/8000th sec). The digital rangefinders would work well for the speed (they don't have to wait for a mirror to move out of the way before taking the shot).

The problem with rangefinders is that you're not actually looking at the image through the lens. But once you get the hang of it, especially if the camera allows you to attach a Sports Finder onto it, you should be able to produce images as easily as you do with an SLR.

Back to SLRs, one of the things I loved about the Sigma digital (SD9) was that they came with a sports viewfinder (the view is >100% of the image captured by the camera, so you can watch action "outside the frame" and better time your shots). Too bad they coupled it with a somewhat noisy, low ISO Foveon chip. Not sure if the better SD10 with upgraded Foveon has a Sportsfinder.

Message edited on: 07/08/2004 16:29

Depends on how serious you are for the best I hvae seen is the Canon EOS 1D/1D Mark II or one of the better Digital SLR's None of the digital prosumer cameras just dont cut the mustard for this kind of work... The Sigma SD9 is worth a look as Donald says and as there are 3 sensors the quality is not haf bad best of all as a superceeded model have seen this in Swindon for under 700 pounds

Digital rangefinder? I thought the only one was the Epson/Cosina collaboration. Does the phrase have some other meaning? To be honest, the rangefinder cameras aren't so good with the long lenses needed for some sorts of sport photography. Now, where did I put my Lubital? :)