Showjumping

Playm,

Meant to ask. Is there anywhere I can view some of your shots, this was my first horse event ,would be good to see someone elses stuff.

Daniel

jbgeach wrote in post #9174203
I would pop a flash in high speed synch on your camera, number 1 would be outstanding with a little fill

Um....not so sure on the flash. My wife would cut my hands off if I tried to shoot her with a flash on her horse.

Horses can react very abruptly to flash and why take the risk especially during a jump (Christopher Reeve)

I almost always use flash at an indoor horse show and have never had a problem but that , of course, is academic here since the op couldn't.

Even if the op could have there is no way that HSS would have helped here. At the shutter speed the OP shot at, probably 1/1000 or so in order to stop action, and at the distance the he probably shot from, the flash would have been too week to be effective.

OP: You said you are going to shoot in manual next time so I am guessing you shot in TV to get a fast enough shutter speed. Doing so your in camera meter is going to get fooled everytime by the bright skies and white jumps, etc.

Customers always want to see their faces in a photograph. By getting proper exposure for the face you are going to get some highlights close to blown out and skies that aren't that pretty rich blue that you have in yours here.

Only as suggestions you can:

1) Spot meter off a rider's face. Ask a rider to sit there for a second when you do so.
2) Take the exposure your camera gives you and open up one stop. I'm a believer in exposing to the right anyway.
3) Shoot in RAW if you have time. Sometimes you don't as Playm described. But this will give you more latitude in adjusting exposures.

HTH. You got a lot of great suggestions here.

Be sure and show some shots from your next show. Great timing and angle on these shots, BTW.

Matonanjin,

Thanks for the advice.
Yep shot TV as the "boss" wanted me to shoot 2 or three jumps each round so I just quickly dialed in some compentsation for each jump depending on light levels.
Next time I'm gonna shoot it my way, sit on a jump and shoot manual as I had a play like this and found I got the best results composition/exposure wise, also a lot less running around. Might even offer to proccess my shots to get the most out of em, that way I could shoot RAW/jpeg and quickly pull the shadows up on the shots that need it. But that will be up to the boss.

Cheers
Daniel