Indoor Dog Agility (really tough lighting)

Hi all,
So Ash had an indoor trial this weekend so I decided to practice taking some shots indoors in what has to be the worst possible lighting. The lighting was incredible uneven meaning within just a couple of feet I had completely different exposures. Before I even took a shot I knew I had to shoot in M, I also tried using an Custom White Balance based on the boards which worked out OK but because the lighting was so uneven I even had to fix that in Lightroom for a bunch of shots.

Keeper rate was way down and dynamic range was of course much less then it would be at lower ISO's making photos of black dogs almost impossible. I really need to get that 135L f2 lens!

All shots shot with the 40d and ISO H(3200 equiv). I shot manual with a shutter mostly at 1/640@f2.8 Noise reduction was applied to all of these shots.


1/640s f/2.8 at 200.0mm iso3200

palmor,
It looks like you caught some great action. A couple of quick basic suggestions would be to straighten the horizons and crop them down some. You mentioned you had LR and it is a quick adjustment you can add to your work flow pretty easily.
Jeff

Great job considering the conditions! The colours look really good. I must say, the whippet cracks me up with his paw crossing over like that. Too cute

Nice shots for the conditions!!! I tried that in Fairbanks with my 75-300 f4.0, I just gave up cause I didn't gat anything near that nice. I'm ordering my 70-200 2.8 today...Yeah!!!

Good color and it seems just barely doable with the 2.8 John. Nice job. Personally I don't see much of an issue with horizons, I suspect you already straightened these if they needed it. I just shot my last outdoor event of the year, everything else is inside. It's not as fun when you have to worry about the quality of the shots, though it's always a learning experience...

Dave

Thanks for the comments everyone!

tracknut wrote in post #8852248
Good color and it seems just barely doable with the 2.8 John. Nice job. Personally I don't see much of an issue with horizons, I suspect you already straightened these if they needed it. I just shot my last outdoor event of the year, everything else is inside. It's not as fun when you have to worry about the quality of the shots, though it's always a learning experience...

Dave

It really was just barely doable. I'll post some of the non-processed shots so you can see what they were like.. all underexposed slightly (which is not good with such a high ISO) but there was no way I was going to go down to 1/500th shutter speed (or lower). I'd rather deal with noise then a lot of motion blur. My next lens purchase is going to be a 135L f2.. just saving up a few more pennies. I had been saving for a 1d III but decided to order a 7d and use the extra money I saved towards the 135L. I figure if I can get good shots from the 40d then the 7d will be more then enough camera for me and having the better glass will help more

Even though it was awful lighting I welcomed the challenge, things would be really boring if it was always the same.

Here are a couple of the non-edited shots. You an imagine the amount of noise that came out after having to brighten these up.

There are not edited at all. Just converted from Lightroom

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I think that these are a nice effort considering the conditions. You timed the action very well and the exposures are good which keeps the noise to a minimum.

Great job!