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First attempt at mountain bike photography

ebarker9

Monkey
Oct 2, 2007
848
242
Looking for some feedback...I was up at the Windham WC this weekend and tried my hand at taking some pictures. I understand the basics of photography, but this was my first attempt at shooting action. Still in the process of going through and cropping, but I've included my favorite so far below (still annoyed that I clipped off the left of Blenki):



Some thoughts. Using a Canon T1i/500D and the kit lens I shot full manual the entire time, primarily using evaluative metering of the background to set the exposure. I was trying to keep a shutter speed of 1/400, which seemed to be fast enough for decent shots. In the woods, this meant shooting wide open and typically ISO 3200. This approach worked pretty well, but obviously wasn't great for compensating for changes in ambient lighting which, in the woods was pretty much constant and I also had to do a lot of adjusting to properly expose the rider based on being back-lit etc. I think next time I'd probably try shooting aperture priority, manually setting ISO to 3200 (seems like auto will only push it to 1600, which typically wasn't enough under those conditions), and using partial or spot metering on each rider. Does this approach make sense? Also, the variable aperture lens was incredibly annoying shooting manual. Might have to borrow something better if I do this again.

Appreciate any suggestions/feedback. Main goals were to get decent focus, correct(ish) exposure and avoid having a bunch of course tape in the shots. Had a ton of fun and definitely eager to try again.
 

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Quo Fan

don't make me kick your ass
While this is a decent shot, you could improve it by panning with the rider to get them more in focus and give the background a little blur to show speed. If you are going to be that close, you need a wider lens. To keep the ISO down, you will need faster/better glass, or get an external flash and remote triggers.

You could leave a little more to the right so the rider has some "negative space" to ride into, and like you said, not chop off his arm to the left.

Hope this helps.
 

ebarker9

Monkey
Oct 2, 2007
848
242
Definitely appreciate the advice. I will probably beg/borrow/steal faster glass if I am to try something similar in the future. Been avoiding flashes for the most part because most shots I've seen with them (other than from the pros) are really unnatural looking and, aside from that, I have enough that I'm trying to sort out without them at the moment.

I was actually panning to get this shot, although the rider was approaching nearly head-on, so the effects aren't very pronounced. I was hoping for more background blur as well, but the focus was pretty much down to luck since the riders were emerging from a tree right before here (may try pre-focusing next time). And the image actually has a fair amount on the right cropped out...may have to play around with that.

Ultimately I guess it's a lot of practice. Shots at the end of the day were tons better than those at the beginning and I'm sure another 5/10/100 days of shooting would help even more. Still have to go back through all of the images to see what worked and what didn't.

Thanks again for the feedback.