More Gym Kids

As Christmas draws closer things are getting busier but I've been getting the camera out regularly, and have been shooting whenever possible. Today I did some promo shots for a friend's band that I should be able to process and post tomorrow.

Tonight I managed to process some shots I took yesterday at my daughter's final Gym Kids session. I shot some earlier this year but this time I brought a flash to deal with some shutter speed and exposure issues.

Just more pics of my kids, but I thought I'd share them.







Thanks for reading :)

Raceday!

Day 135 and I spent about three hours up in Gimli, MB, shooting the opening race of the MRA motorcycle season. It was a great chance to play with the 70-200, and work on some high shutter speed and panning shots.

The weather was great, but the sun was incredibly bright, so expect some blown skies in the pictures, and a lot of pictures to boot. I shot about 400 exposures, and a good 50% of them are usable, but I picked a few favourites to share.

The pit area was set up with a variety of tents and shades from various competitors and teams:



There were about twenty or so racers all together, and they were kind enough to line up a number of their bikes for me:



Some of the hardware on display was pretty impressive and expensive:



And of course, my friends team, Defiant Motorsports, was in attendance:



You have to love it when the competition flies the Jolly Roger as well:



Now to the racing itself. Initially, I went with some straight high shutter-speed shots. I kept the aperture fairly wide to achieve that, and to blur out the terrain and trailing bikes. This first series was shot in one of the main curves, at f/4, ISO 100 and roughly 1/1600th shutter, manually focused on the tripod:





From there, I moved on to some panning shots on a slower section of the track. It took some fiddling, but I found that my magic exposure was about 1/160th shutter and f/11 still at ISO 100. IS is on in mode 2, which allows for movement in one direction for panning, and I handheld all these shots:







These panning shots worked fairly well, and I kept about 1/3rd of these shots. The bikes were only hitting about 80kph here, so it was a good starting point.

I moved back to the corners for a bit, and tried some different angles to find interesting points to shoot. I actually had to cross the track to get this angle, please don't tell the guys at the MRA.







Finally, a challenge. Panning shots, close in, on the main straightaway. I was about fifteen or twenty feet away and these bikes were hitting 240kph or so at this point. Handheld again, same 1/160th shutter at f/11. This was a challenge, and I kep a lot close to 10% or so of these shots, but I consider the fact that I managed to keep any of the a huge victory. Here are my best two from this section:





All in all, a really fun day, and I got away from the kids for a few hours :D

The 70-200 performed *admirably*. Sharpness is everything I should have asked for, focus was accurate and fast, and the panning mode for IS made my very first attempts successful.

Love.

This.

Lens.

Springtime is swingtime!

Day 97 was a really nice day out. A bit cool, but sunny, and a great day to hang out with the kids in the back yard after work. Well, the kids and the camera :)



Let me say that focusing on a kid on a swingset is *not easy*, but the 50mm f/1.4 performed admirably given the tough conditions. These pictures were both back-lit by the sun, so a nice wide aperture to help bring in the faces was a help. I shot this with no light modifiers and no fill flash, so these are mostly SOOC, although I did run a desaturated high-pass filter on them to help with the contrast and clarity a bit. I like the effect in portraits.

Work, work, work...

I managed to get the family shoot set processed and sent off for printing, and I also managed to finish processing about 30 shots from the soccer game last night. It's a good start, but I have a lot more to go.

For day 87, I'm sticking with the theme, and I did a shot of something their coach dropped off for me on Friday:



A little shot taken for their website. Nothing serious, but then again, I don't have a heck of a lot of time for a shot tonight! Hope I'll finish off the soccer pics tonight, and then I can get to work on the rest of the bar gig shots.

I feel like a real photographer!

Another late night...

Another late night on Day 82, but this time I had a good excuse. I was invited by my coworker to shoot his girls' indoor soccer team again, this time at the city championship. It was a great game, but it ran quite late, so I'll just post a few of me favourite shots of the night.

All were shot with the 50mm f/1.4, mostly at f/1.8 and shutter speeds around 1/200th at ISO 800. I hate, hate, hate indoor arena lighting. Photographically it's useless, so I did a but of spray and pray, taking over 400 exposures in the course of the game. There were plenty of issues with exposure, focus, and noise since my little XSi suffers pretty badly at ISO 800. Still, they stand up pretty well when compared to my earlier soccer shoot which was done with a $2,100 L-series lens, and supplementing with flash. I can't complain.

Enjoy!











p.s. I have been asked to do a shoot on Thursday night for a friend and his band at a local hotel bar. Should be loads of fun.

A big week coming up...

As you might remember, I have a rented EF 24-70mm f/2.8L USM coming in to do some portrait practice with family friends this week. The lens arrived today, and it is sitting in it's Pelican case at home with my lovely wife. I am itching to go home from work and get it, but I still need a paycheck from my day job!

My rental was arranged with a Canadian company called LensLenders and so far my experience has been excellent. Very good communication, and the lens arrived several days earlier than my rental period is scheduled to begin. They do $99CDN weekend rentals, or $149 a week including shipping both ways, with discounts for additional weeks. They rent a wide variety of Canon and Nikon lenses, and a few Olympus ones as well. So far, I would highly recommend the service.

As is my history with hobbies, I tend to overdo things a bit, so I have also purchased a background support system with 10' x 20' Muslin backdrops in both white and black. As I was chatting about this with friends at the office, one of them has actually asked me to come and shoot some promo photos for his newly formed motorcycle racing team. It's just a local team for a local league, but it's a way to get my name out there.

I never intended to do this as anything more than a hobby, but if people are going to start asking me to do shoots for them, maybe I can make a few bucks on the side evenings and weekends? The only thing stopping me from that idea is a simple question of self confidence. I'm not convinced I'm any good at this yet!

Maybe I'll have some answers by next weekend.

Pictures from the Soccer Game

I spent a lot of time tonight on post-processing. Never let it be said that shooting indoor sports is easy! Even with that loverly 2.8 lens, I had to lock in at ISO 800, f/2.8 and deal with a lot of noise. Most shots I managed to get at 1/125th to 1/200th shutter at least, so that action was mostly frozen.

So, after 6 hours or so of cropping, fixing white balances, brightening, noise reduction and red-eye removal, I present my best shots from the epic battle between the Maples Monarchs under-15 girls team and my office co-workers!



The Maples Monarchs are city champions both indoor and outdoor, so you know they play tough defense. Here, one of their defenders throws out the armbar in the corner.



Aha! Office workers can play defense too! This fellow plays in a league as well, so you know he has some chops.



Conditioning played a big factor, these girls are fit and they were able to move the ball well all day, even in the face of defenders twice their size and age.



The office workers are no slouches though, three or four of them were ringers who play regularly, so you say a fair handful of nifty passes and dangerous rushes, like this one.



The Monarchs took some hard shots early and often, and took the early lead, going up three to nothing in the first half. The irony here is the office workers' keeper was not just an office worker, he is also the Monarchs' coach! For shame!



Probably my favourite shot of the day, this girl deked the defender completely out of the frame of the shot!



Despite their youth and conditioning, the Monarchs fell apart a bit in the second half, and the game ended in a tie. Fun was had by all, there were no serious injuries, and I got an excuse to rent an expensive lens. Yay!