Show jumping pictures

[Wurzel7840]

Hi all. I'm a complete amateur at photography and am looking for a camera to take pictures of my wife show jumping. I'm looking at a Canon PowerShot SX30 is will this be any good for the job?
Thanks CHRIS

[Jeff Morgan]

The slight issue with a compact cameras is that there is a delay when you press the button and that does not make them great for action images. Not sure how fast the SX30 is, you may want to go to a large camera shop and try out a few models.

[rbarry]

A high frame per second rate will give you a big advantage with action sports. Anywhere from 3fps and up, the faster the better.

[littlebro]

This was taken with a Canon Powershot A80 at Chatsworth, added some contrast cropped and resized.

[rbarry]

It looks like it has a very long reach giving a 35x zoom, and the image sabilisation giving a claimed equivalent of 4.5 stops. This means it can allow you to hand hold the camera with less chance of ending up with a blurred shakey image. But, the continuos frame rate for this camera is a paltry 1.5 fps, which I would say is a bit limiting for sports photography.