Thursday, August 17, 2006

Horses for courses

Really tried to work on that smooth panning action today, but the location was against me. Low cloud and the sun to my 12 when I was at the track barrier made the light awkward for detail on the jockey's (I was just lazy and should have asked if I could move to the inside ring).

I think I now see the benefits of an expensive lens like the 70-200mm VR for high speed sports. The speed of focusing on the 70-300mm was unacceptable. Hopefully the new nikon 70-300 AF-S VR will be cheaper, even at the sacrifice of wide apertures.

Gotta love 5fps, good for 25+ frames on the D200! I wonder what people do with the 8fps on the D2x?!







I switched to a higher shutter speed to make sure I at least got some decent horse photos.



Rest of photos here...

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Nice pics.. although I don't think panning really works that well with horses, kinda like cycling cos there's too much movement in the thing that's moving :P
I'm not sure 8fps would make much of a difference for horsies so you're probably not really missing anything.

But... I really just commented to say that...
If you can....(that is if you don't have them already..)
Get tickets to see Ash Grunwald
you MUST see him..
Although I think he's in your area kinda soon (like this weekend) so he might be sold out.
Beg, borrow, steal to get tickets.
If you like blues/roots type music you'll love him, and even if you don't it's a great act.
Even better.. see if you can get pics ;) (haha my ulterior-ulterior motive for this comment)
Phone cams suck so much :(
My ears hurt :D

Unknown said...

I see what you mean about too much action going, i.e. legs and forground and background. Plus the horse looks just plain goofy when it's legs are outstretched forward when running.

Ash Grunwald sounds pretty cool, but I'm away camping that weekend :( will have to track down some of his music other than what's on his website.

Thanks for the heads up, been listening to Jose Gonzalez recently if you get the time.

Anonymous said...

Oh well, better get some good photos :P
His recordings do not do him justice unfortunately.. really gotta see him live, he should tour again early next year I'd imagine.

I like Jose alot.. love his Heartbeats cover :)