Running barrels

[clemmb]

XTi, EF 100mm f/2.0, ISO 800, Av, 1/1000, f2.5


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[Chuck Lee]

Single Shotor Servo AI?


Good job. It must of been getting pretty dark. After sundown?

[btaylor]

Nice one mate, that's agreat looking horse. In keeping with the county life theme here, this is a shot I took a while back of a friend of mine ridingat a rodeo in Quamby, NW Queensland, AUS. Quamby is absolutely in the middle of nowhere. It's basically a small pub (or bar for you northern hemispherites) and a rodeo ground. My favourite pub in the world to go and have a few "sneaky" beersbut and once a year it's comes alive for the rodeo.


Don't remember any of the exif data unfortunately. All I know is it was low light so high ISO with the 40D. I particularly like the guy up the back with a neck brace on (more than likely another rodeo injury). Cheers.





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[clemmb]

Servo AI. Yes, it was 8PM. Forgot to mention this is my daughter.


Mark

[Mark Elberson]

Mark : Wow 8:00 PM! That's where your EF 100mm f/2.0 really shines. Great job stopping the action with such little light.


Ben : Amazing shot! The guy on the bull was really enough for me but the way you also captured the spectators and their expressions made it a truly phenomenalpicture Also love the guy in the neck brace!

[George Slusher]

Nice! Here's a shot of a different event--pole bending--at an Open Gaming Show put on by our county 4-H program a few weeks ago. I've blurred the young woman's face, as I don't have a model release for this use. (4-H members do sign a media release form, but that applies to use by the 4-H program and Extension Service.)








That's about as close as one can cut it--maybe even too close. I don't remember if she knocked the pole down. (She sometimes does, as she really pushes the envelope. She's one of our better games riders, but doesn't win our "medallion" for the fastest time in all five events--barrels, pole bending, key race, figure 8, and NCSA flags--because she usually has one penalty for a knockdown.)


I hadn't noticed the obtrusive white cap on the post on the arena fence at this point, but did move a bit laterally later to get it out of the way. I couldn't get any higher and she was on the nearer of the two lines that were set up.


This was taken with a 30D & Canon 85mm f/1.8 lens (the image was cropped to the framing of a 100mm), ISO 1600 (the light is
REALLY bad!), f/2, 1/500, fluorescent light balance, Landscape style (saturation +2, sharpness 4--I use that to get more vivid colors in situations like this, though it's terrible for portraits). I used manual
exposure to avoid the exposure changing as I swung around the arena,
sometimes picking up the bright doorway, sometimes not. Even so, I had
to underexpose a bit to get the shutter speed high enough. (The RAW images were brightened in Digital Photo Professional by +1.2.) It's not too
bad here, as this is the slowest part of the pattern. (She's rounding the last pole after completing the run, turning for home.) That's why I concentrate on that spot, plus the turning is more dramatic, as in Mark's (clemmb) shot. To see what I mean, here's a shot a few seconds later (uncropped):








It's hard to see here, but the feet are a bit blurred. 1/800 would have been better, but that would have meant using ISO 3200, which is terrible, as you can see below. I was crouching down, shooting between the fence rails, looking up at the horse and rider.








(Obviously, this was cutting it too close![]) This was taken at last year's Fair, with a Canon 35mm f/2 lens, ISO 3200, f/2, 1/800, brightened in DPP. While the motion is stopped better, you can't see just how bad the noise is in this scaled-down image. As an experiment, I applied Pictocolor's iCorrect EditLab Pro plug in to adjust the color (I also tried their iCorrect Portrait) and Noise Ninja.





The image is definitely smoother, but it can also look a bit artificial if it smoothes over the inherent textures.


I couldn't get rid of the green patch without mangling the rest of the image. It's possible that the Fairgrounds changed the bulbs from last year to this, but it also seems to be a function of the angle I'm viewing the surface, as shots taken last year from high up in the stands look pretty much like the first two.