Sisquoc State Championship Bike Races

[DwightMcCann]

Took yesterday to shoot at the Sisquoc Road Race, explained at http://bikebarn.net/site/page.cfm?PageID=162 ... the Bike Barn owners are casual friends and I shot this race on film five years ago. These two images are Q&D uploads ... I will get some larger ones on my website sometime this week and probably replace this thread but race news has a timeliness factor and I didn't want them to be too old.

[Cadwell]

Excellent shots. I particularly like the use of depth of field on the first one.

[DwightMcCann]

Thanks, Caldwell. Here's a couple more. It was a good exercise and I think I've discovered quite a few things I could do better.

BTW, almost all shot with 300mm f2.8 L IS in aperature priority at f2.8 ISO 250 (chosen arbitrarily.)

[DwightMcCann]

Well, not many comments so I guess there aren't enough images! :-) Since I have about 800 I guess I need to get something on the website, eh?:rolleyes:

[bachscuttler]

Beautiful shots as always Dwight.

I'm now officially a fan of yours!

[gmen]

Nice stuff Dwight! I've only had one chance to shoot cycling myself and I enjoyed it very much - it made for some good images. Despite my limited experience shooting cycling, you're probably seeking some constructive comments, so here we go...

Great DOF in image #1 - the fact that the bottom parts of the wheels are cut off makes the pic slightly 'uncomfortable' - also a vertical composition may have worked well isolating the centre rider...

I like image #4 - it gives a good sense of the racing although I'd probably crop out that orange cone on the left.

The point of focus in image #3 is on the riders chest rather than his face - perhaps using an off centre focus point would have corrected that.

Image #6 certainly shows the dangers of cycle racing!

Some side-on shots or some panning etc... would show some variety... but you've almost certainly got some of those as well if you've shot 800 pics!

--- Gavin

[DwightMcCann]

Bach, thank you again. Gmen, yes, always looking for criticism. I did discover upon review that I tended to wait too long to shoot for the most part so they were too close ... probably should have used my 70-200mm f2.8 rather than the 300mm f2.8 since I was so close, but I wanted to get some experience with the glass. I also discovered that its closest focussing range wasn't short enough for this position on the road. And I need to take much better advantage of the focus points ... I have the camera set to use fewer than all 45 and this doesn't work well for these conditions since it limits which ones I can select ... I most often needed a point 3/4 to the right of the frame or more because of the angle to the road but was using the center. I would expect to do much better next time.

Actually I didn't try much panning. There were two places on the loop that I should have gone but didn't (I stayed in a single spot): the long steep hill which if I recall lines the riders up really nicely over about 150 yards, and the big turn where I could have had perfect panning opportunities. Next time I won't be so preoccupied with trying this lens and expect to do much better. I am attaching two more.