Here are a couple shots from my recent barrel racing event that I shot. Comments are welcome. I did not have my 700-200 2.8, which really shows with the DOF.

And another

Nice to see something different here.

What lens did you end up using? I'm trying to work out if there is a little motion blur in the riders or if there is something else causing the slight softness. Did you apply unsharp mask as this will really help lift the shots? Another thing, I would just do a quick rotation to sort the horizon out.

Were you children riding at this event?

Mark

Hi Mark,

Thanks for the comments. There is more softness than what I would like. Your right though it may just be some blur. I was using the 28-135, not my favorite for this type of sport. Unfortuantely my 70-200 was being used at a different event.

When you ask about the unsharp mask, is that in Photoshop? I have to say that PostProcessing is my weakness. I am really trying to get up to par with those skills. The picturs are straight from the camera that you see. Any comments or help on that, is much welcomed.

My girls (14 & 7) both ride speed events. They were not at this particular show. My request for these events have really picked up a lot though.

Thanks again for taking the time to look at them.



john

Hello Jyeast, welcome to the forum:-), my 6 year old daughter has been riding for 2 years now but nothing like this young girl Wow she can handle a horse. USM is a simple tool to use (smart sharpen is even easier if you have Adobe CS3) just have a play with the settings as you can see instantly what effect it will have on your pic. i took one of your pics and set the USM at

"amount" = 86 (a Tad too much with hindsight)

"radius" = 0.4

"threshold" =1

The settings are to ones personal tastes and not all settings match all actions, so just have a play until you find your own variant

p.s personally wouldn't set the threshold any higher than 1, play with the other 2 settings.

pps If you have CS3 smart sharpen also has the option of "motion blur", & "lens blur" correction above the "gaussian blur" that USM works on. Kind regards Graham.

Seems like itd be fun to photograph an event like this. Nice job. Besides, the aforementioned suggestions, Id like to see what theyd look like cropped really tightly.

I have a Nikon D40 camera. I am looking at buying a 18-200mm VR lense. My family rodeos so I was excited to find a post from somebody that understand this sport. I would also be shooting some basketball and softball. Do you think the lense I mentioned would work for those things?

jweehler wrote: The 18-200 will probably be OK for the barrel racing and also for the softball (or slightly short). As for the basketball, in a word (or 2) no chance!! For basketball you will need a fast prime (fixed focal length) lens of f2 or faster. With Nikon I think you have the option of a 85mm f1.8 which as long as it has an motor in the lens (I'm quite sure it does) then you will be able to use it with the D40.

wow! those are great shots! I'll echo Bluesman's comments that those kids can really ride. My daughter has been at it just over a year (she's 10)but nothing close to this. That is really great to see, I can't wait to show her these pics.

Sorry I can't give any helpful pointers as I'm a complete newbie. Just wanted to give a big for the shots AND the riders.



Natty

John, if you don't have the more sophisticated software, try a free download of Picassa2 (google) and or Fastone.

These two freebee's have saved a lot of my photo's. Easy to crop, sharpen, blur, straighten, color adjust.

For one like me, ( A true non pro ) these programs work pretty well.