I just bought this camera what is the best setting for nighttime action shots

Okay I just upgraded from the Canon PowerShot S3 IS. I was having some trouble with the night shots and the dust on the track. This is my first SLR camera and I am so lost. What setting should I use and how do I set this up. I take pictures at a dirt track on weekends. Any help would be great

Hi KK,

With a dSLR it's always best to get used to using full Manual mode to fully exploit the camera's potential. The basics of getting the best night shot are as follows (assuming you want crisp, un-blurred shots):

1. Select a high shutter speed. The higher the shutter speed the better the camera is at stopping the action. Unfortunately, higher shutter speed means less light has time to get in through the lens and your pictures will be underexposed. There are two ways to compensate for this, the first of which is...

2. Selecting a wider aperture. The wider the aperture the more light gets in through the lens--the more light that gets in, the better the exposure. You want to select the lowest f-stop possible (f2.8, for example) for the zoom setting you're at. The more zoom you use, the narrower the aperture you'll be forced to use.

3. Raising the ISO setting. The higher the ISO the more "light-sensitive" the digital image sensor is. Higher light sensitivity means a better exposure, but when you get into the higher ISO settings serious image noise can start to creep in, so use this sparingly and as a last resort.

Getting great night time images is a tightrope walk of balancing these three settings (and sometimes sparingly using flash), so spend some time playing around with them until you get the results you want. The XT is a very capable camera... the pictures are there to get, you'll just have to do some work to get them.

Good luck!