Hi Guys,

My 7 year old daughter is in a 100m race at her school's athletics carnival soon. I want to stand at the end of her lane and photograph her as she runs towards me. My preference would be to have most of the background blurred but I guess this would be a given as the nearest things behind her will be closest at the start of the race and progressively be further away and thus more out of DOF.

My equipment is a Nikon D90 with a choice of the following 3 zoom lens:

  • Nikon DX AF-S Nikkor 18-105mm 1:3.5-5.6G ED VR (part of twin lens kit purchase)
  • Nikon DX AF-S Nikkor 55-200mm 1:4.5-5.6G ED VR (part of twin lens kit purchase)
  • Tamron 18-270mm F/3.5-6.3 DI II. 62mm diameter


What lens would you use and what setting? Should I leave it on Auto or should I choose an aperture setting or a shutter speed? On Auto, I have the ISO set to a maximum of 400. If I was to set the controls to either aperture or shutter priority, should I set the ISO to say 200 with a maximum of 400 to ensure I have no noise? If I use shutter priority, I gather 320 should be fast enough as my daughter is running towards me rather than across my field of view and needing to track her.

My shooting method will be to set it to "Continuous High".

I have selected "AF-area Mode" and set it to "Dynamic Area" and set the Autofocus mode (via the top screen) to AF-C.

What would you guys do, remembering you only have one shot at it as they aren't going to re-run the race just because the photos were blurry, or under/over exposed etc.

Thanks in advance.