St. Judes Maratho - Memphis, TN

My GF and a couple of her friends were running in this marathon so I figured I'd tag along and head on down. I'm going to be shooting a couple of these a year since she runs in them so any critique is appreciated. Before you go too nuts, this is my first time shooting any type of "action" sports, I'm using a trusty ol' XT, and this was my first time I've used a real lens (all of these were shot with a 70-200 F4L). I know I had a tough time panning to get the focal point where I wanted it, but I figure that will come with practice. What other help can you offer? BTW - none of these have had anything done, no cropping or anything, just straight from the camera. On to the photos:

Obligatory pic of the GF and her friends (she's on the left):

1.

where are the pics of your GF running?

She ran in the middle of the pack and was blocked by a few people in just about every shot. Once that shot was screwed I decided to head to the end of the marathon to see if I could get a shot of her at the end. They ended in the Memphis Redbirds ball park. Closest I could get was standing in the stands on the third base line while they entered the stadium at the warning track in right field. Irritated didn't begin to describe it. So, after they were all finished I got a few more candid shots while they were resting in the outfield. That's it tho.

Camera shy GF.. in the middle of the pack...lol
Nice shots... any vertical shoots of runners coming at you..
I was shooting soem runners one day and try to do a pan shot.. to show some speed . it was ok but I need more practice on panning my subjects...

keep shooting,
Joe

Ha, the one thing she isn't is camera shy, trust me. I was hoping that the runners would be more spread out by the 3 mile mark, apparently I was wrong. I don't think she knew I was there until she was basically running by me.

No vertical shots of runners coming at me. This was the only spot that we posted up. The race wasn't very conducive to picture taking as the first 3-4 miles were all bunched up in different streets and then they ran straight out for about 4 miles and straight in to the stadium. Being in an unfamiliar area and with two guys telling me that the next best shots would be in the stadium, this was all I had.

EDIT - oh, and if anyone is really, really bored and wants to take any of these and put them through PS and make them look a little better, I would have no objections. I don't even know where to start in PS.

What were the settings you used? Was your AF set to AI Servo?

settings were different for all the pics as the runners would be running faster or slower and the cloud cover went from lighter to heavier. I would say they were probably all taken at f4-5.6 and a shutter of above 1/320 (most in the 500+ range). I tried to keep the iso in the 400-800 range, but some got bumped to 1600 because it became so dark. 800 & 1600 on this XT seem to make the images almost worthless.

I don't believe I've ever turned it off of AI Servo.

Sounds like you were thinking pretty well. I sure wouldn't have left f/4 for much of it. Exposures look good, but thanks for validating my decision to go with a 2.8!

The corner is good because, as you know, you can isolate people easier there. Big races like this stay crowded for many miles - at Philly the crowd was so thick at 17 miles that we didn't see our friends run by. City marathons are hard unless you have a really great spot. With a crowd like that, going up might make sense.

What do you think caused the missed focuses? It does take a lot of practice to nail the faces.

Yeah, the 2.8 would have helped, that's for sure. Unfortunately I'm not wanting to spend much on lenses so the f/4 will be my next purchase. I'll have a 50 1.8 and the 11-16 2.8 for more low light shootings. Now, if that helps with marathons....I doubt it. I would guess that there won't be too many cloudy days when I'm shooting outdoor sports.....I hope.

I looked for a spot to get a little higher than most people and my only advantage was that I was one of the tallest people around. So, the cub + me on the balls of my feet = getting higher lol. As you can tell by the last pic, it wasn't always high enough.

The missed focuses were caused by me not knowing what I was doing I would assume. Kept it center point focused since that's one less thing to think about for a noob. This is the first time I've had to try and pan while shooting. Didn't think it was that hard. I was kidding myself.

Am I wrong in thinking that pushing up towards a higher f/ would have got more people in focus when a big group came? That was the main reason to try and come off of 4.0. I seriously haven't touched my camera in a year because I was too busy studying, so I may have forgot some stuff.

hatchd wrote in post #11429224
Didn't think it was that hard. I was kidding myself.

Exactly how I felt at Philly.

You're right. It just depends whether you actually want all of those people in focus. I think I probably err on the shallow DOF end and will try to set up some more higher-f pictures next time. But generally I think the focal point of the picture is on one runner (or the interaction between two or three people) because it needs a subject.