Is it luck, skill, settings, or all 3?

I am posing a question here that I hope doesn't get tossed over in general chat, because I think that sports photographers deal with this specific issue most often. (If I have to post a photo here so as not to get moved, please let me know)

I shot a rodeo this weekend. The most difficult action to caputure is when the action is moving speedily towards you and your camera. Like calf roping.

I shoot in Manual 99% of the time. When your focal point is constantly changing as the action is moving towards you, how do you nail the focus on the shot? It's such a hit and miss deal with me in some venues, especially when the lighting is not good.

Any suggestions?

( I decided to add to quick samples...not much done to them except sizing)

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I believe it's Luck,settings, & intuition. Though having a 400mm is nice, that way you have to do less cropping, and mark series. Makes life a lot easier, but it won't live for you

Tony,

I assume you are using AIServo for focusing and not one shot mode. AIServo is definately the mode I feel you should be using in this situation since this is what the AIServo is designed to support (moving subject).

The situation you have (indoor/poor lighting) is the most demanding on a camera simply bacause you don't have sufficient light. To compensate for the low light, you are forced to up the cameras ISO and lower the aperature to wide open which I see you have done in the above images. The problem with shooting wide open is your depth of field (DOF) gets very small.

With calf roping, you need a very large DOF to get the calf, horse and rider all in focus; unfortunately, shooting indoors makes this very difficult if not impossible due to the poor lighting. The only way I can see getting sufficient DOF for this scenario is to use strobes (I suspect this is not allowed to prevent spooking the horses) or you can increase your distance from the subject which is not really prefered since you would have to really crop the final image down to have a worthwhile final image.

With the above said, I think you have to pick what do you want in focus, the horse and rider or the calf. When you pick one, the other will be soft since it will be outside of the narrow DOF. I would use a single focus point and keep that point focused on the riders chest to keep the rider in focus and most of the horse.

The other issues you are most likely seeing with soft shots are the limiation of the cameras ability to focus in low light and some possible blur due to a low shutter speed. The 30d is a good camera, but it will struggle to nail focus in low lighting situations. This is where you would want the Mark III to improve on the focusing in low light. With the Mark III, you wil also be able to go to ISO 6400 which should enable a fast enough SS to eliminate the motion blur.

Your first shot is not bad (need to watch your horizons), the second looks like it might be motion blur.

Here is a shot I took recently using a 40D shot at f2.8, the main difference being the shot was taken outdoors with terrific lighting. WIth good lighting, the cameras have a much easier time of locking focus and you get fast shutter speeds to minimize hand shake and motion blur.

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Yep...you summed it up pretty well for sure with everything you said here.

I would love to try some outdoor events sometime in normal daylight...just to see the difference. I shoot a lot of night football...but all the action/focal points stay pretty constant as you go up and down a field, and not towards you.

I would imagine a Mark III and a 300 2.8 is worth of being on my wish list, yes?

Nice shot here by the way...so crisp.

Merciez wrote in post #6096062
Tony,

I assume you are using AIServo for focusing and not one shot mode. AIServo is definately the mode I feel you should be using in this situation since this is what the AIServo is designed to support (moving subject).

The situation you have (indoor/poor lighting) is the most demanding on a camera simply bacause you don't have sufficient light. To compensate for the low light, you are forced to up the cameras ISO and lower the aperature to wide open which I see you have done in the above images. The problem with shooting wide open is your depth of field (DOF) gets very small.

With calf roping, you need a very large DOF to get the calf, horse and rider all in focus; unfortunately, shooting indoors makes this very difficult if not impossible due to the poor lighting. The only way I can see getting sufficient DOF for this scenario is to use strobes (I suspect this is not allowed to prevent spooking the horses) or you can increase your distance from the subject which is not really prefered since you would have to really crop the final image down to have a worthwhile final image.

With the above said, I think you have to pick what do you want in focus, the horse and rider or the calf. When you pick one, the other will be soft since it will be outside of the narrow DOF. I would use a single focus point and keep that point focused on the riders chest to keep the rider in focus and most of the horse.

The other issues you are most likely seeing with soft shots are the limiation of the cameras ability to focus in low light and some possible blur due to a low shutter speed. The 30d is a good camera, but it will struggle to nail focus in low lighting situations. This is where you would want the Mark III to improve on the focusing in low light. With the Mark III, you wil also be able to go to ISO 6400 which should enable a fast enough SS to eliminate the motion blur.

Your first shot is not bad (need to watch your horizons), the second looks like it might be motion blur.

Here is a shot I took recently using a 40D shot at f2.8, the main difference being the shot was taken outdoors with terrific lighting. WIth good lighting, the cameras have a much easier time of locking focus and you get fast shutter speeds to minimize hand shake and motion blur.

HTTP response: 404 | MIME changed to 'text/html' | Byte size: ZERO

Hope this helps.....

Your seems to be better than theirs nice shots.

I find in the calf roping you must make sure your point of focus stays on the rider, because you are talking 35 to 40 feet of depth other wise. I shoot most of my stuff at 5.6 but with strobes for indoors and try to stay with 5.6 in the calf roping outdoors this does not give you that blured background everyone wants but it ups your chances for more in focus shots.

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I've been thinking about what you wrote here and I'm curious about something. Having never really used anything larger than my 70-200, when using a longer focal length lens like a 300 or 400mm, is the DOF less of an issue when shooting action events like this? Does that extra reach 'help' in situations like I mentioned?

ACDCROCKS wrote in post #6095528
I believe it's Luck,settings, & intuition. Though having a 400mm is nice, that way you have to do less cropping, and mark series. Makes life a lot easier, but it won't live for you

CatchingUp wrote in post #6099145
I've been thinking about what you wrote here and I'm curious about something. Having never really used anything larger than my 70-200, when using a longer focal length lens like a 300 or 400mm, is the DOF less of an issue when shooting action events like this? Does that extra reach 'help' in situations like I mentioned?

There is a combination of variables that determine your DOF; aperture, focal length and distance to subject. If you were to take a picture of someone 25 ft away at f/2.8 you would have less DOF with a 400mm than a 200mm.

Here is a link to a site that calculates many different things regarding DOF. Play around with this and hopefully it will answer your question better than I did.

http://www.dofmaster.c​om/dofjs.html