rhurwitz
30th of March 2009 (Mon), 15:46
This past weekend I shot a swim meet for the first time with my recently purchased 40D. I received a lot of help from the Forum on how to get good exposures, but in the process I also learned a lot about some very handy non-exposure features of my camera. I thought others might benefit from what I learned, since those learnings are pretty generic for other types of sporting events. I apologize if this "old hat" for some of you. :)
Custom user settings (C1, C2, C3): I primarily took two types of shots at the meet: swimming action shots, and portrait-y shots of swimmers waiting at the blocks. The difference between action and still shots, and the differences between pool lighting and deck lighting were so significant that I used completely different settings for each. The ability to register those as custom settings and single-click back and forth between them was incredibly helpful.
Protect/Erase: My usual technique is to review my shots on the LCD Monitor and individually erase the rejects. I took full advantage of the 40D's 6.5fps drive, however, so my ratio of rejects to keepers was much higher than usual. I found it (a lot) easier to zip through the pictures in "protect mode" and individually protect the keepers than to delete the rejects. After I protected the few, I "erased all" the rest.
My Menu Favorites: Between events I used protect/erase so much that I added them to My Menu Favorites. I also enabled "Display from My Menu" so that my menu would come up by default when I pressed the menu button irrespective of what menu feature I was using the last time I was in the menu system. This saved me a lot of time.
Review Time: I ordinarily use the default review time of 2 seconds so I can review the image displayed on the LCD Monitor after I take it. I found for shooting swim meet events I might take 50+ shots during the event, and not catch my breath until the event was over. Not only was the LCD review time display distracting, it was a poor use of limited battery resources, so I turned it off.Thanks,
Roger
Custom user settings (C1, C2, C3): I primarily took two types of shots at the meet: swimming action shots, and portrait-y shots of swimmers waiting at the blocks. The difference between action and still shots, and the differences between pool lighting and deck lighting were so significant that I used completely different settings for each. The ability to register those as custom settings and single-click back and forth between them was incredibly helpful.
Protect/Erase: My usual technique is to review my shots on the LCD Monitor and individually erase the rejects. I took full advantage of the 40D's 6.5fps drive, however, so my ratio of rejects to keepers was much higher than usual. I found it (a lot) easier to zip through the pictures in "protect mode" and individually protect the keepers than to delete the rejects. After I protected the few, I "erased all" the rest.
My Menu Favorites: Between events I used protect/erase so much that I added them to My Menu Favorites. I also enabled "Display from My Menu" so that my menu would come up by default when I pressed the menu button irrespective of what menu feature I was using the last time I was in the menu system. This saved me a lot of time.
Review Time: I ordinarily use the default review time of 2 seconds so I can review the image displayed on the LCD Monitor after I take it. I found for shooting swim meet events I might take 50+ shots during the event, and not catch my breath until the event was over. Not only was the LCD review time display distracting, it was a poor use of limited battery resources, so I turned it off.Thanks,
Roger