Hey there Gestalt thanks for your interest. Brought a new camera 5 months ago and just want to get to know how to use it even better. Not quite sure on settings to use for windsurfing so any ideas would be great thanks again.
Hi trav,
looking at your images you need to work on your metering and exposure. most of the subjects are under exposed. it's hard to get an even exposure with windsurfing in the surf and because sometimes you have no choice but to llok directly into the sun. but there are things you can do to imporve a bad situation and there are things you can do in software. looking at your last image i'd say it's on track, it is just a little too contrasty (curves in photoshop)
metering
a couple of things to try with backlit subjects to control exposure.
1. move to a position where you looking between 180 and 90 degrees to the sun
2. use spot metering when the subject is backlit
3. use exposure lock when the subject is not moving fast and is backlit
4. fill the frame with the subject reducing the amount of over blown light around the subject.
5. get up high so your are looking down at the sailor removing the sky and reducing the dynamic range.
i have a 40d, i use pattern metering in all but backlit exposures. for backlit exposures i use either spot or centre weighted depending on amount of light behind the subject, or the amount of frame i have filled with the subject.
the reason i use pattern is that on the 40d when in pattern metering the camera has some aditional metering functions including the ability to meter from a focus point not in the centre of the lens. (i read this somewhere at one point)
Settings
camera is set to aperture priority, iso around 400, shutter speed should be no less than 1000/sec, af drive mode is on ai servo, drive mode high speed continuous shooting. i also use 1/3-1/2 stop exposure compensation when in pattern metering mode or at the surf.
most people recommend to use shutter priority for sport so i am going against the grain. also be aware that when, on the 40d for example, ai servo drive mode is set the camera will take the photo even if it is not in focus. so you need to track the subject very carefully and shoot in bursts of 4-5 shoots at a time.
i mainly shoot in jpeq due to only having 1 memory card. i recomend shooting in raw especially in poor lighting conditions. i'm getting more cards so i can shoot everything in raw.
if you shoot in jpeg mode set up a custom jpeg setting that has reduced sharpening, contrast and set to adobe rgb.
i also have custom functions set within the camera, this varies on the type of photo i am taking. the one function i use in all of my setups is the ability to move the focus point from the quick control dial on the back of the body which allows me to very quickly compose each photo and control where the af point (focus and metering) is within the frame. typically i use centre af point unless i am trying to capture the scenery in the background or go for something more "artistic". never use all 9 point af.
a couple of things, nothing beats good light, sometimes when you look at something and the lighting is perfect, take the photo! good lighting improves focus, exposure and everything else about the photo. the better the lighting outcome the better the image. an example is if you take a photo from the beach, then walk 100m down the beach so the sun is at a different angle and take another photo. if down the beach gives you a better angle to the light all of those photos will look much much better.
software
i'm not using photoshop, i am toying with a lightroom type package. ultimately they all do the same thing. lightroom type software has better work flow features though.
the first thing you want to do is adjust the black point, and white points in levels. this will remove that grey hazey look as well as allow you to change the grey point of the image. google levels in youtube as there are lots of tuts.
then you want to look at the curves, curves add contrast to your images. an s curve is the most common. for images that have over exposed foreground or back grounds you may need to use a reverse s curve. basically you are either boosting or reducing the blacks or whites respectively. another thing is to just crop out the over or underexposed parts prior to adjusting levels etc.
saturation layers allow you to boost the colours but go easy.
sharpening, a wide radius unsharp mask will clean up the haze in your images. a small radius USM will improve edge definition.
if you shoot in raw mode the photoshop bridge module gives you more features including white balance controls and clarity (sharpening), vibrance and saturation these same features usually also come in lightroom type software.
forget about all of the other layer tools etc and to be honest. less is best. most gains can be made from the levels and curves.
also, when you reduce the size of an imge by exporting or saving, be aware that you are "sharpening" the image also. with a hi res image that is in focus, you will not need to sharpen a 640x480 export jpeg for example.
my dissclaimer is this. i have had no formal training. i've learnt all that i know from books and from people on seabreeze or pro photoagraphers i know. then i have tried the hit and miss approach so i am sure there are better ways then some of the stuff above. but the above represents everything i have formed an opinion on. the thing with photography is that there is so many different ways to achieve the outcome and every lens, body and person has a slightly different take on it. but at the end of the day, light, iso, exposure, stop, metering, postion etc have the biggest bearing on the outcome and changing anyone of those individual things will change all of the others.
i'm personally am just starting to shoot in full automatic. it just provides better outcomes. i have also made the decision to forget about tripods and go for a more mobile type of setup. shure tripods in poor light can mean the difference between a good and bad photo but i've always liked the philosophy behind photo journalism. (yes that's wanky)
other than that, it's all just hit an miss. 
thanks gestalt,
now i have some idea of what i am supposed to be doing.
I should have a copy of your comments in my camera bag for future reference,I should also read the instruction book that came with the camera,that might help too!
cheers
i find myself reading the instruction booklet every now and then also. sometime i might not shoot any photos for a month or 2 and start to forget some of the settings on the camera. 
JUst a quick comment on what Gestalt said about aperture vs shutter priority.
It does not really matter ultimately which one you use, as you effectively control both parameters using either. You just need to think about which one is dominant in any given situation.
For a shallow DOF to get maximum pop of a subject against a blurred background, you wnat to open the aperture.
For crisp definition of a moving subject and a clear background, you want a fast shutter speed.
Whe you buy more expensive lenses, esp the primes, you get bigger aperture sizes, which enable faster shutter speeds and better bokeh, or blurring of the background.
Buy your CF cards in the US. My wife recently bought some camera bags, and got a 16GB card for about $100 at the same time, since it was no extra postage. That card is like $500 here in Oz.
well said Ken,
as a side note, that's why i always shoot in aperture mode when not in manual. my preference is for dof in photos.
yeah, no they are not $60. 16 gig can be from $120 up to $200. BUT it depends on what speed card cause they can also be up around $400 and the 32gb etc are $700.
got to be carefull with the cards, the names of the models sound similar but there is a very big difference in speed. what can look like a bargain is infact old technology.
cards for my cam are $120 for 8gb 60mb/s from a normal shop. less at other shops but i don't have time to wait for postage. will also order a 16gb which are on special at a very few grey market outlets for about $100 but you gotta wait. 
my current card is 30mb/s which is fine in burstmode with jpegs.
but in raw it is slower. what happens is you shoot a burst the camera drops it into the buffer, then you shoot another burst. the first photo of the second burst goes straight to the card and the rest go into the buffer.
so you end up with photos out of order.
am upgrading to a 60mb/s and will see what happens. i think that's the limit of my cameras card speed. you can get 90mb/s. the sandisk site has the 60mb cards listed for my camera so i;ll get one of those. i'd hate to buy the latest and greatest and not have the camera recognise it.
speaking of sandisk,
there is a photography vid section and there is a section on surf photography.http://www.sandisk.com/microsites/SanDiskTV/index.html
click the tips and tricks tab and then chris burkhard
www.burkardphoto.com/
Fair nuf on the speed thing. However...
www.ausmobilecompare.com
16gb 60mb/s are only $128
16gb 90mb/s are $234
not sure where $400/500 comes from but that is some markup.
feel free to send me the money you saved. I'm sure cheaper prices can be found if you look harder. But fair call on buying from america, I'm sure you could get the 60mb/s for under $100 posted no problems, postage for something that small is probably only $10.
fair call swooshy, its the 64 cards that are $700.
the cheapest place i have found is IT Device online store.
if this is any help - i've got a few of sandisk extreme III in 8gigs & 16gigs and they are more than fast enough for long bursts of 15mp and 21mp stills in raw, and 1920x1080 30fps video from the 5d2, with no hiccups at all. The extreme 4 might be overkill at the moment. Maybe 8fps from the 7d at 17mp might be on the limit?
However; apparently there were two versions of the extreme 3's released with slighly different speeds. Apparently it's just pot luck what you get.
I just read all of that at 30 words per second and now I have a headache. It's like another language.
thanks very much gestalt for sharing ideas and to everyone else aswell will keep trying different things out now. Went to Bathurst last year and got some great action motion shots of the cars moving will try post one up just got chatting to another guy about settings and he told me to try what he was using, as ya say try things out.
I think as in most sports/hobbies it all comes down to experience. Get out there and take lots of photo's, look to see what worked and what didn't. Try different settings to see what appeals to you, everyone has a different thought on what works best for them.
But also as others have noted, take note of others experience and try it out. Good way to short cut getting to the level you want to be.
Every talk I attend on photography warns you that the fastest way to ruin your camera gear is to go near salt water, spray, wind off the sea, sand, etc. So be very careful and protect and clean your equipment if you want it to last. Also a professional clean every year or so greatly helps.
Cheers and good photography!
Smile now......
following on from richies comments re waterproof housings.
i found this on another forum.
"yeah Baltronics are the only ones who rent out AquaTech housings here in OZ.. if it's too expensive to rent you can come to us to check one out.. we have a demo unit here on the Gold Coast.. http://www.baltronics.com.au/"
this works, i remember "demoing" a 3.5m sail from dieter at sunshine coast sailboards during a cyclone in the 90's. 
I think this is very important.
To get good shots, you need physical access to teh right vantage points but also you need to understand the sport/hobby in order to know what story you are trying to tell with the photo. Great technical shots that fail to connect with the activity or tell a story are of low value.
HAving a subject or an assistant that understands what is going on makes a world of difference.
Which is where my knowledge comes from. I'm the assistant.
^ your so right there Ken, that's the one thing i struggle with the most and i guess what seperates the amateurs like me and the pro's. I've found the only way i can even give myself a shot at getting good composition is to really know my camera and the conditions/settings. otherwise i get caught up on what to do and not what i'm doing.
out of all of the photos i took on sat i only kept one. the rest are destined for the bin. anyways for me that's the biggest struggle and the thing i was most unhappy with at currumbin. what is the story?
this was my keeper
Yeah, having a natural eye for composition is so valuable. My wife has it, I don't.
Especially if you are working with a shallow DOF.
Which part of the pic will be in focus ??
Knowing th camera is very imortatn to get all that right.
But hey, you got a keeper !! I reckon if you get one keeper for every 200 shots you take, that's pretty good going.
I was not there on Sat (actually, I was, but there was nothing happening, and I had other things to dom, so I split), but the conditions were against you. IN such light wind, you had no idea what teh sailors were going to do, so you could not anticipate them and tell a story.
In better conditions, you would know when a bottom turn was coming up and when a lip hit or a fron-side aerial was coming.
That pic below shows Oli coming around the bottom of the wave, running out of speed maybe, thinking aout what he might do next. If he was powered up, he would be focussed on where he was going to hit the lip, and the next shot would have the sail tucked against his leg, with the rail buried in a bottom turn, all of which would add drama to the shot. In surfing, the shot at the end of a turn tells the most, as the wake and spray shows where the guy has been and the nature and extremity of the turn
In thoses conditions, you get nice shots of the cigar-store Indians.
Hard to get a shot of a running horse, if the horse won't run.
We have thousands of shots of our horses looking like flipping donkeys.
Love to catch up sometime and hang out, BTW.
well the story got across then.
that's what i liked about the photo.... shows oli thinking, what the hell is this wave going to do next! lol.
being picky i would have liked him to have been 3-4 meters to the right so the image was broken into 3rd's and if i could shoot it again i'd open the aperture up one or two more stops to blur the back ground ocean further.
if you're up at burrum i'll see you there otherwise will catch up at currumbin at some point. it's a great spot to take photos. 
lol.
Hey there Gestalt here are 3
of my pics i took at bathurst last year have loads more but think these are up there with some of the better ones. I have not photoshopped them at all either as not long had photoshop and still learning.
If i remember correctly the guy i was talking to told me to use TV mode ISO 400 and a shutter speed of either 1/100 or 1/1000 think it was more 1/100 will see if i still have any on a card.this is how they turned out anyway tell me what ya think?
can anyone tell me how to save and resize an image that has been photoshopped so that i can post them on web, what is best format to save a photo once it has been played with in photoshop keeps saying file is to big to post once ive played with it in photoshop
not bad trav, i think the 2nd and 3rd ones would scrub up really well.
photoshop.
when editting your original images in photoshop, use layers for the levels and curves and saturation etc. that allows you to keep the integrity of the original image. once done save the whole files as a psd extension.
when exporting to jpeg you can use save for web devices or save as. but you need to reduce the size first by selecting the image tab and then selecting image size and reset it to something like 800x533, keep it locked so it resizes uniformily. and remember, save before resize and then after you've resized and you exit don't press save or you wil save your psd file as the reduced size and then you can't go back. the other way is to keep the originals in a seperate folder and have a working folder with a copy of the photo you want to manipulate.
also only sharpen the reduced jpeg, don't sharpen the original. use save as or export and then open your reduced jpeg in photoshop and apply sharpening to that.
the images you have attached need some noise reduction also.
camera settings
with cars i would use shutter priority which is TV mode if i wanted to get motion blur.
i'd stick with the 1/1000 for cars as they are going very fast and as they go past track them as carefully as you can and the background will be motion blurred and the car in focus. the faster they are going and the faster you pan the more the motion blur. if you want to motion blur the wheels and background then you need to start to use slower shutter speeds around 400/s. but this is much more difficult as any miss focus or shaky hand treatment will blur the car body also. but this is wher eyou need to be heading. set you camera to TV mode and use a range of shutter speeds from 500/s and down.
with windsurfing (speed sailing) anything from 600/s to 1000/s will give you motion blurr to help inforce the feel of speed in the image.
i use TV mode when i want to get motion blur on slow objects and i need to guarantee a certain shutter speed. for people 60-100/s works fairly well.
the other tip with motion blur is to use a narrow aperture (high f number) the more focal distance you have the better the motion blur. f11 - f18 works well.
as far as composition goes, have a look on the brisbane photography site. there are some outstanding Super car images.
for an image where the car is rounding a corner coming front on i'd go for a high shutter speed, which means a wide aperture so giving yourself some distance from the car will help keep everything in focus.
what this means is the depth of field (dof) is related to hyper focal distance. basically the further an object is away for a particular fstop the longer the depth of field becomes. so with lenses that go down to f2.8 for sports photography giving yourself some space from the subject and zooming in gives you a fast shutter speed and helps with focus as the dpeth of field stays fairly long.
edit** i forgot. a pro's tip!
never shoot at a shutter speed slower than your focal length. as a rule of thumb.
