[dbphillips]

My sons fence and we have a dog, so I'd like to catch some action shots, but I never get a decent shot, whether using AA's or the standard battery, the kit lens or the 50-135 f2.8 Pentax zoom. Basically, if anything is moving, it's blurry, or I have to crank the shutter speed up so high that I have to crank the ISO, too, so graininess is ridiculous. Sport mode doesn't work, either. I can understand the tip of the blade being blurry, as it's the fastest thing in sports, but the fencer's body being blurry? Doesn't seem right.

My son complains that the Canon loaner cameras at his high school are way better in general than our K-50, which is very disconcerting, especially considering the investment in glass I have.

Thanks for your advice!

[pepperberry farm]

please post some examples so we can get an idea of the problem....

[ismaelg]

Post some samples with information on setting used so we can help.
You may be using small apertures that force shutter speed to be slower.

[CarlJF]

Some examples would help...

That said, if you already noticed that shots taken with a higher shutter speed are better, it's probably more a question of movement blur than anything else. For sports taken with a telephoto lens, 1/1000 is about the minimum you should aim for. And yes, if light is too low, as it's often the case indoor, you will have to raise the ISO and accept to get some noise. But, a grainy picture is always preferable to a blurry one as noise can be easily corrected in PP with a good denoiser. The K-50 can give acceptable results up to ISO 6400 with a bit of PP.

[mgoblue]

Agree on the need to see samples with EXIF. The shutter speed needed to stop the action is the same regardless of camera. I don't know which model the canon you reference is, but it is unlikely to have susbtantially better high ISO noise perfmormance if it is a school loaner. That leaves focus blur. The K50 should be able to focus fine on a fencer parallel to the frame. If the fencer is darting towards the camera it will struggle. I have not used many canon bodies but the autofocus on something like a Nikon d7200 is more capable of capturing objects moving towards the camera in my experience. Indoors my K50 is pretty hopeless at subject moving towards it. But frankly if the light is very low every camera will struggle with moving subjects towards it (I also own a D750 -- one of the best autofocus).

So if the canon is performing much better it may be the autofocus, but it might also be settings or user error. Finally, the K50 could be faulty. I expect mine would be fine in a school gym parallel to fencers for comparison.

[Bonobo]

Yeah, too many factors involved here for anyone to be able to say one way or another without more info. When you post the photos, include the EXIF data or just label them with your settings. It could be your expectations, it could be technique, it could be settings, it could be lens focus calibration, etc. The K50 isn't a sports workhorse, but it's also a perfectly capable camera, so there will be a solution to this.

Out of curiosity, what do you consider to be 'so high' for the shutter speed?

EDIT: looks like we were all thinking the same thing and typing at the same time.

[bschriver11]

I assume your shooting indoor for the fencing so your probably shooting at or near wide open aperture along with the higher ISO, depth of field becomes an issue with a fast telephoto lens wide open which may account for some parts of the photo being blurry. I also find that with the narrow depth of field the camera and lens have to work harder to nail the focus and a split second between focus lock and the shutter firing when shooting fast action will lead to missed focus. I'm sure some of the Canon lenses focus a little faster than Pentax but aside from that they are pretty equal, your dealing with circumstances that all photographers deal with regardless of the brand of camera they use. I sometimes lock focus on a point where i know they will be coming to and fire when they reach that point, that way i'm not relying on the auto focus to keep up. Or you could try panning the camera with the subject although this will take some practice.

[Audi 5 cyl]

Action shots are possible with your setup and for this camera f/2.8 (even f/4) @ISO 400-1250 should be more than enough for great action shots outside in good light. Inside, the story is about the same but ISO would have to go up quite a bit. People and especially dogs move fast and to capture the movement properly, good speed is a necessity, something in a 1/300 to 1/2000 range should give great results, depending on the subject speed. If your position is fixed, try locking focus on a spot where you know your subject will be. Always think about speed rather than ISO, keep the f-stop as low as possible in the low light situations, avoid any subject moving toward you and away from you (unless you have a good MF lens with a long focus throw that you've mastered) and you should be fine.

[Imp]

K-30, 1/200th, f/2.8, iso 3200

Considering that it was very dim in this location, it's a passable picture.

[dbphillips]

Awesome feedback! Thanks. I'm working on compiling some examples. I'm just getting into the debugging, so don't have many pictures after giving up on it. What I did notice today, though, is that Sport mode was shooting at 1/125, so I guess that's not something to count on. Is there a way to bias the mode to fastest shutter speed? One of each, Sport and TAv here (they're RAW): Microsoft OneDrive - Access files anywhere. Create docs with free Office Online. Microsoft OneDrive - Access files anywhere. Create docs with free Office Online.

The parallel motion is going to be tough. Typically, the ref wants to be there. ;^) Far side is usually another match, but maybe I'll try telephoto from the far side while the far side ref isn't in the way. But then there's a table in the middle...

My standard approach is TAv, with the widest aperture and 1/400-1/1000 shutter speed. i just ran a test outside with overcast skies (not ominous, fairly light) and 1/1000 shutter speed on f4 was yielding an auto ISO of 2000-2500, which would be my answer to the "how high is high" question. For sure 3200 feels high. It does seem "accurate", as lower manual ISO settings do result in dark images.

So, how expensive does a camera have to be to focus on objects moving at you? We're so spoiled, aren't we? Photographers not so long ago got great shots without all the tech trickery. But then again, they took a LOT of shots to get the right one.For example, look at this shot: http://www.gostanford.com/images/2017/2/6/fencing17_71.JPG?width=1920&height=1080&mode=crop It's so crisp, it looks like it could be staged, Except the tip wouldn't bend that way. *Correction. it is staged, forgot epee blades do bend like that, was thinking foil. Still, amazing DOF. Not an out of focus region in the picture.

Last, a plug for Fast RAW Viewer. Holy cow! there are some dogs of applications I found out there trying to review photos. This thing is stupid fast.

[dbphillips]

K-30, 1/200th, f/2.8, iso 3200

Considering that it was very dim in this location, it's a passable picture.

Oh, yeah, no way I'm getting shots that clear...

[ekip]

Try shutter priority, set the auto iso to a range you are comfortable with (say 100-3200) and increase the shutter speed faster than 1/125 until your iso starts to automatically increase. That will get you a frozen action shot

[Bonobo]

So for sure the environment is not helping you. Shooting wide open gets light but you'd have a better chance of catching in focus if the DOF was wider. I notice that sometimes Pentaxes don't like monocolor (black or white) focus targets. It may be hunting. Have you tried setting it to underexpose by 2/3 a step? You can recover quite a bit from the RAW and that may save you some ISO. And a k-50 still shoots really nice shots at 1600 ISO.

To add to @Ekip 's settings above, I would also try to put it on manual focus, find a place you know the target will be, switch to burst mode, and shoot a burst as the target is moving into that focus spot. It'd help if you had a monopod and could just set up and not move.

[othar]

I think beside motion blur you also strech the limits of your kit lens. You where panning with the dog at both attempts so naturally the lawn can't be sharp, but you will get a better separation between the dog and the lawn with a longer focal length maybe in addition with a faster aperture like your 50-135mm lens offers. Shooting from a lower angle will also help with subject separation.
The picture with 1/400 sec is at least one stop overexposed, so you could have used a faster shutter speed or maybe stopped down the lens one stop here. The picture with 1/125 sec is maybe a little backfocused but concerning sharpness this picture is not a bad attempt for such a slow shutterspeed.
In addition to the motion blur is your kit lens not a sport lens. It does OK when stopped down but just because it can use F3.5-5.6 wide open doesn't make it a good idea to do so, I think you will get better results with your 50-135mm lens.

[SunValley]

As a father of two with a K-30 and the 50-135 F2.8 I feel compelled to add my two cents! I have shot, basketball, badminton, and ice skating mostly for indoor sports. The 50-135 is not known for its fast AF (to say the least) but I've allways been able to get most of my shot good enough for a sharp 8X10 print. First thing I did was adjusting focus because on my K-30 the 50-135 was backfocusing a bit. I set the autofocus mode on the central point. I set the back button focus rather than focussing with half pressed shutter. That allows me to set "focus traps". When you see the action is coming towards you, focus on a point between you and the action, when the players get to that point, shoot. With practise you can get the distance between the trap and the action smaller and smaller. Good luck!