i took some pics on saturday that did not turn out to well – they were blurred
i am guessing it was because the pics were of my pup running etc and taken in some woods where the lighting was low
the camera was set to auto so i am guessing that the low light levels caused the aperture to stay open slightly longer and hand shake caused the blurring?

what setting should I have been using?

the camera is a nikon d70s with a 75 – 300mm lens if that makes any difference

thanks

put the camera in shutter priority mode and set it to at least 1/60th

boost the ISO setting to 800 or more in low light

D70 may have a 'sports' setting but i'm not sure

If it's low light, you need a wide aperture to let in as much light as possible. that means you've got a very shallow depth of field, so you need your focus to be spot on. If you want to freeze the action, you need a high shutter speed, but you might not get it if the light is really low – in which case you need to track the dog with the camera. Make sure you keep tracking as the you take the photo

hand shake affects pictures more obivously when the shutter speed drops below 1/60

The old rule of thumb used to be to keep the shutter speed faster than the inverse of the focal length you're using eg at 300mm the shutter speed should be less than 1/300 sec, at 100mm less than 1/100 sec.

As MrMW says, whack the iso up to 800 and set the shutter speed.
Something to lean/brace oyurself against will also help.

All good advice above. Did you have the flash on? How close was the subject to the lens?

Yup, all good advice.
Also, bear in mind that low light and a running dog is not an easy combination to work with – don't forget that the dog is not just moving in a side to side direction – there's also elements of up and down in there as well making blur all the more likely given the conditions you were in.

If the pup is close enough try a bit of flash…?

Keep practicing – it's all good fun and 'free' – cos you can delete as you go……!

no flash gun, just the little speedlight thing on the top of the camera

subject was about 5 – 10m away

can't fault all the stuff above…

remember, even with a 2inch display, check your photos while you are out, so you can make adjusts there and then. Remember to zoom in a bit to really check the image out.

For fast moving stuff stick the camera in 'Sports' mode. For poor light use high ISO.

5 – 10m away

Well the camera flash will have been useless I reckon (certainly at 10m away).

So all the above advice regarding film speed is the most pertinent.

Put simply if, at 100 ISO, the shutter speed is 1/15 (at a set aperture), double the ISO and half the shutter speed.

So:
100 ISO – 1/15
200 ISO – 1/30
400 ISO – 1/60
800 ISO – 1/120

So you can see how increasing the 'film speed' gets you a quicker shutter speed and a quicker shutter speed gives less camera shake/blurring.

Of course a well composed and well taken shot can actually look good with blurring if it adds to the overall effect (not saying this is a fantastic image, but it was just a quick Google search)…

But the higher the film speed (or software equivalent), the more grainy the image. Some cameras deal with it better than others and/or have image stabilisers built in.

But the higher the film speed (or software equivalent), the more grainy the image. Some cameras deal with it better than others and/or have image stabilisers built in.

A quick look on http://www.dxomark.com suggests that the d70s should give acceptable results at iso 1600 (assuming you don't want large prints).

Just to muddy the waters a little, the inverse focal length rule applies for full frame cameras, the d70 has a smaller ccd, which effectively increases the focal length by about 50%.
so the rule is modified to s>1/(f*1.5).

The D70 (and I think all other Nikon DSLRs) has a wonderful setting called ISO-Auto that will automatically boost the ISO setting if it's too dark to produce a properly exposed picture with the other exposure settings you've chosen – it's a godsend, and one day Canon will have it on their cameras too…

I have that setting switched on all the time, so I don't have to think about ISO sensitivity at all unless I want some specific effect (eg I want a grainy picture even though it's light enough not to need a high ISO, so I'd set the high ISO manually, or I'd rather have a smooth picture with a slower shutter speed than a grainy one with a faster shutter speed)

As above, faster shutter speed would help (moving dog, I'd say getting a sharp picture at 1/60 second was optimistic, regardless of the focal length of lens, but vinnyeh's rule of thumb re lens length/min shutter speed is sensible anyway), so pick sports mode, make sure you have VR switched on if it's the 75-300 VR lens, and let the camera adjust the ISO itself. Of course, it may well have been just too dark to get a hand-holdable shutter speed anyway.

– it's a godsend, and one day Canon will have it on their cameras too..

It's the norm on all brands of camera (you'd be hard pushed to find any camera without it).

Canon's Auto ISO is optimized to choose lower, cleaner ISOs in exchange for the slowest shutter speed you can hold safely

Taken from the blurb about my Canon

Canon's Auto ISO is optimized to choose lower, cleaner ISOs in exchange for the slowest shutter speed you can hold safely

Taken from the blurb about my Canon

Ah I see. Presumably in sports mode or shutter priority it would boost the ISO to match the shutter priority though? Or is it only a low iso range thing?