NIKON D3000 help.....?
 

Before I start I have to confess that I am no genius with DSLR camera's.

I purchased a NIKON D3000 for my wife a few years ago as she wanted something more than a simple point and shoot type arrangement. Surprisingly she barely uses this so I wanted to ask if this camera is ok for use at the track for capturing in buggies in motion.
The camera came with a TAMRON AF 70-300 lens also.

Is there anyone out there that can guide me with this thing so I can at the very least set the camera up with the appropriate settings for snapping 1/10th off road buggies in action under natural sub light?

Any help would be very gratefully received. Thank you- Jason

In terms of image quality, it should be fine, however the D3000 has been reviewed as one of the slowest cameras Nikon have made (I've not used it myself so I can't add first hand comments) so you may need to use some anticipation and press the shutter a little in advance of when you think you want to take the image.

In my experience, a 70-300 is a good zoom range. Problem is, you need both a fast shutter speed (to freeze the action) and a small aperture (to try and get things in focus as the autofocus has to work hard to track a fast moving object).

Shutter speeds of 1/400th to 1/1000th or even faster and around f8 seem to work most of the time for me which means you need plenty of light and up the film speed (ISO) a bit.

I use a D3000 with a Tamron 70-300 (I assume you have the AF-S compatible autofocus version)
The image capture is more than fast enough and the autofocus keeps up pretty well but the continuous frame rate is only around 3fps.
I would suggest you get yourself the D3000 field guide book which will be a great help as there are many settings you can adjust, all of which make a big difference.
It really depends what you want to achieve but I'd suggest starting out (under daylight) with ISO 200 on shutter speed priority mode set at 1/800- 1/1000.
This will get you going but don't be afraid to experiment, after all it doesn't cost anything.
You can see a few shots I have taken with this combo on my blog HERE.

All good advice above, I think the shutter priority might confuse you marginally if you have no experience so until you get used to that try the "sports" setting, it should do everything for you.

When you're home find which shots were best and check out the speeds / shutter / aperture the camera was using to get them and then see if you can do similar the following week.

Also practice your panning as this is essential to be able to get a good shot, plenty to find on line about that and if you're stuck with the camera look up on line or post on here, I use Nikon's at home and at work so sort of familiar with their menu systems and stuff.

Jimmy's tips are worth a read or a reread.

http://www.oople.com/rc/photos/artic...to1/index.html