Friday, October 22, 2010

swimming action

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I shot some swimming action photos tonight and ended up being happy with a couple of them. Swimming is not the easiest sport to shoot i have found. First my camera and lenses were in my car for an hour or so before i went to the pool and as such were cold. The second i stepped on deck the lenses fogged and 15 minutes later were still fogged. I spent the next five minutes wiping them off with a lens cloth and was then able to shoot. I found out a few years ago that they do not like it when you bring in a couple off camera flashes, thus i was shooting in a fairly dark, wet area. My iso setting ended up being 2000 and my camera settings were f2.8 (70 - 200mm lens) and 1/400 sec. I ended up using aperature priority mode as the light fell off about two stops as they got closer to the edge of the pool. It worked out pretty good shooting horizontally but was a bit dark when i switched to vertical. The next tricky part was the focus. I used continuous focus tracking and continuous high motor drive. The camera however liked to focus on the water being splashed up in front of the swimmer. I think if i were shooting this sport for a living i would play with my cameras fine tune focus to tweak it just a bit further back. The only other problem i encountered was a huge splash on a swimmers turn that covered me, camera, and lens.
I shot 4gb worth and ended up with a few keepers and wet jeans from the knees down. Just another day at the office.
I played a bit in photoshop too by the way. I bumped up the clarity, sharpened, and lowered the saturation for a more muted look.

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