Lens seems to be rubbish at capturing cars in motion..

[Conor D]

Either than, or I'm rubbish at it.

Anyway, no matter what I try with AF Areas, Shutter Speed, Aperture, I can't seem to get my Nikon 55-200 (It was about £110 I think) to focus correctly on a car on a track for example. If it's a single shot, or a string of images the background is normally in focus and the object is blurred.

Any advice for taking decent moving shots? Or is it to do with the lens I'm using?

[Crafty_]

Can you post some examples with exif ?

try center point, and continuous AF mode (don't know what Nikon call it).

[davepoth]

The camera doesn't have time to focus on a fast moving vehicle - focus it manually.

[Turbo Harry]

davepoth said:

The camera doesn't have time to focus on a fast moving vehicle - focus it manually.

What Dave said.

I use the AF to focus on the spot on the tarmac where the car will pass, flick the switch on the lens to MF and then just smoothly squeeze the shutter when the car passes that spot.

Don't get too ambitious with the shutter speed either. Start by running a pretty fast speed (maybe 1/100th of a second), take a look at your results and work slower from there when you are achieveing consistently strong results. So many people start trying to shoot at 1/30th or thereabouts and come away with one in twenty or thirty that are in any way salvageable.

[Conor D]

Crafty_ said:

Can you post some examples with exif ?

try center point, and continuous AF mode (don't know what Nikon call it).

EXIF:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/49543629@N03/60419384...

This is generally what I get:

test by conaghy, on Flickr

[LongQ]

Conor D said:

EXIF:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/49543629@N03/60419384...

This is generally what I get:

test by conaghy, on Flickr

It's a bit difficult to tell at that size but is sort of looks like the nearest rear lights may be the sharpest part of the car. Doews that seem to be the same at full size or are they just as soft as the rest?

I take it you are panning? If your pan movement is the problem you can look closely and usually spot an evident double image on lines with good contrast.

On a fairly near subject and filling the frame at a wide aperture you may not get all parts of the subject sharp - or anywhere near sharp - because they are moving in a different plane from each other and the plane of focus but you would hope to get your point of follow-focus quite sharp. However there are some contraints in the speed of the focus system, the type of focus employed and how quickly the lens can respond when it needs to.

I'm not familair with Nikons but Canons have an AI Servo mode which attempts to provide continuous focus adjustment for moving subjects. Does your Nikon body offer this sort of feature and if so were you using it?

If my guess about the rear lights is correct there may be some clues to work with.