Well, after my first photographic visit to an action event, I've learned quite a bit, but had some problems also.
The event was Husky dog sled racing - brilliant fun, friendly people and lots to look at. The big advantage was that the runs were continuous, with teams starting at 2 minute intervals throughout most of the day. This meant lots of opportunities!
I'm looking for advice from people who are more experienced with this kind of action shooting. The main problems I had were:
- Snow
It was pretty bright at times, and with the snow, it made metering a bit tricky. I dialled in between +0.3 to +0.7 exposure compensation to combat this, but some shots came out a bit dark. I was shooting RAW, so I could tweak the exposure later, which helped in some shots.
The other problem with snow was the contrast between white dogs and white snow. Not a lot to do apart from choose the background carefully I suppose.
- Shutter speed
Obviously, a fast shutter speed was required. I settled on a compromise of 1/200th, but this wasn't fast enough in some cases.
- DoF
I think my biggest problem was DoF. The distance from the lead dog to the sled was probably about 8-10 feet. Getting a high enough aperture to achieve this when focussing on the lead dog or the sled, was pretty difficult. I put on ISO Auto to give me more control, and this seemed to be quite effective. At the end of the day, I'd rather post process the noise, than lose the shot completely. The other thing I tried was trying to get manual focus on the mid point for a given position, then keeping the same focus when the next team came by - I wasn't very successful with this approach!
- Composition
When I was taking close up shots of the dogs as they passed, I kept filling the left side of the frame. I realised this was because I was tracking on their faces, and taking the shot. I was thinking about it on the way home, and next time I'd try selecting the right/left focus area and tracking with this on the faces - only wish I'd tried it at the time.
The other thing that was new, was that I'd never really used continuous autofocus before. It seemed to go OK, but any related wisdom would be useful.
I've realised that there are two things bug me about handling on the D70. First, the fact that you can't switch between ISO Auto and fixed ISO without using the menus - I don't know why they can't just make it another option when changing with the button/command dial combo. Second, you have to use the menu to swap between AF-S and AF-C.
Anyway, any tips would be appreciated - I'm definitely going back next year, and hopefully get to another action event before then.
Here are some of the shots from yesterday:
  
  
  
And on the way home...
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