January 2009 HTM competitions at Connexions Leisure centres, Ryton on Dunsmore
Saturday 10 January 2009 and Sunday 11 January 2009
Saturday was my first HTM competition for many months and I was nervous about how the new Canon 1D MkIII was going to work with the indoor environment in the low lighting, particularly with dark coloured dogs and or dark handler costumes... coupled with the focusing issues that the MkIII is regrettably infamous for... to say I was nervous is an understatement.
In previous years I'd shot in RAW, but this time I'd decided to shoot in a moderately high quality JPG file. This would have several benefits... smaller files and quicker processing when I looked at them on the PC... it would also have several potential issues... messed up colours if I got the White Balance wrong, and loss of detail if I managed to get the exposure incorrect.
First task was to set the White Balance; I chose a white reflector for the white value; not great since it wasn't actually under the lighting in the ring but close enough so that I knew I could tweak it later in Lightroom 2.2. I set the camera to a shutter speed of about 1:200 and adjusted the ISO so that the aperture was has high as feasible under the circumstances... at least f2.8 but always aiming me for f5.6 or higher.
The competition was under way and I had decided to shoot with the Sigma 120-300 f2.8... and at 2.6kg plus the camera itself at just over 1.2kg, I soon began to regret handholding 3.8kg of camera kit in one hand... after and hour or so my arms were beginning to ache and I realised that I needed to switch to the monopod... instantly I could feel my arms beginning to recover but the downside was that I couldn't be quite so flexible with my shots.
Having taken in the region of 3663 shots at the weekend, probably the most ever, I knew I had a mammoth editing task ahead. Fortunately a friend came to the rescue and in the following few days went through them all and selected about 240 shots from each day. After I'd keyworded those I could and made a few white balance and colour saturation adjustments I thrashed my internet connection for 24 hours solid while they all uploaded to theimagefile.com; even at nearly 90kb per second upload speed it still took surprisingly long!!
Amazingly within a few hours of them going live, competitors from the weekend were writing to thank me and order them; while we're not set up to make any profits from the Heelwork to Music shows, the sales will cover a month or so of the theimagefile.com's hosting fees and more importanly have clearly been greatly appreciated by many.
Regrettably I wasn't able to photograph all the competitors, social chats with friends, lunch, calls of nature and pure fatigue from both holding such heavy kit and mental exhaustion from the intense consentration of following the routine and trying to keep dog and handler in the frame, in focus and interpreting actions and moves to try and get the best shot, all meant I had to take time out every now and then; not to mention the other duties I had on the two days helping friends with their routines.
Once again I had a great two days and am grateful for the Ryton Dog Club and Paws n Music Association for allowing me to cover their competitions for them.
Saturday was my first HTM competition for many months and I was nervous about how the new Canon 1D MkIII was going to work with the indoor environment in the low lighting, particularly with dark coloured dogs and or dark handler costumes... coupled with the focusing issues that the MkIII is regrettably infamous for... to say I was nervous is an understatement.
In previous years I'd shot in RAW, but this time I'd decided to shoot in a moderately high quality JPG file. This would have several benefits... smaller files and quicker processing when I looked at them on the PC... it would also have several potential issues... messed up colours if I got the White Balance wrong, and loss of detail if I managed to get the exposure incorrect.
First task was to set the White Balance; I chose a white reflector for the white value; not great since it wasn't actually under the lighting in the ring but close enough so that I knew I could tweak it later in Lightroom 2.2. I set the camera to a shutter speed of about 1:200 and adjusted the ISO so that the aperture was has high as feasible under the circumstances... at least f2.8 but always aiming me for f5.6 or higher.
The competition was under way and I had decided to shoot with the Sigma 120-300 f2.8... and at 2.6kg plus the camera itself at just over 1.2kg, I soon began to regret handholding 3.8kg of camera kit in one hand... after and hour or so my arms were beginning to ache and I realised that I needed to switch to the monopod... instantly I could feel my arms beginning to recover but the downside was that I couldn't be quite so flexible with my shots.
Having taken in the region of 3663 shots at the weekend, probably the most ever, I knew I had a mammoth editing task ahead. Fortunately a friend came to the rescue and in the following few days went through them all and selected about 240 shots from each day. After I'd keyworded those I could and made a few white balance and colour saturation adjustments I thrashed my internet connection for 24 hours solid while they all uploaded to theimagefile.com; even at nearly 90kb per second upload speed it still took surprisingly long!!
Amazingly within a few hours of them going live, competitors from the weekend were writing to thank me and order them; while we're not set up to make any profits from the Heelwork to Music shows, the sales will cover a month or so of the theimagefile.com's hosting fees and more importanly have clearly been greatly appreciated by many.
Regrettably I wasn't able to photograph all the competitors, social chats with friends, lunch, calls of nature and pure fatigue from both holding such heavy kit and mental exhaustion from the intense consentration of following the routine and trying to keep dog and handler in the frame, in focus and interpreting actions and moves to try and get the best shot, all meant I had to take time out every now and then; not to mention the other duties I had on the two days helping friends with their routines.
Once again I had a great two days and am grateful for the Ryton Dog Club and Paws n Music Association for allowing me to cover their competitions for them.
posted by rivergate at
20:12
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