NSW / CORC Round 1 Downhill - 6th April 2008

Saturday Practice

By my estimation 227 riders turned up for the NSW MTB Round 1 Downhill comp. at Mt Stromlo - that's a lot of subjects to practice fill-flash with.

I like these downhill events for photography practice - the Downhill course mostly faces east so riders are coming out of the afternoon sun which tests the fill-flash thinking; access to the jumps is easy and I can get great angles, and these riders are not what I'd call camera shy - they're happy to 'work it for the camera' so to speak so most shots have plenty of action about them.

For Saturday I stuck to the plan of the 70-200mm f/2.8 on the D3 and the entirely workable Tokina 12-24 DX on the D300. For tight berm shots the 70-200 is simply awesome - I just set the AF auto AF-area and let the D3 figure out the best focus points. But this doesn't work perfectly since the wide sensors are not cross points (I believe) and can suffer in low light, but at 3pm on a sunny day this is hardly an issue.

The great thing is that as riders come around the berm they're about 5 metres away so the focus can be on their handlebars, hands, front wheel or their head but at that range it matters not. That's why the 70-200 cranks - it is just so fast. (I shot the Vets at Lookout Hill last Saturday arvo and I spent some time testing autofocus speed with a single focus point and it continues to amaze - focus feels instantaneous - spooky).

Having the D300 mated to 12-24 is very handy. But it requires thinking and planning. With such a relatively slow auto-focus in this combo you need to think about the comp beforehand and watch carefully as the shot evolves else you lose the rider and end up with an average landscape.

I tried some heavy-handed fill-flash with the D300 and 12-24 but as the experts would attest the flash is going to struggle to fill that space. So I zoomed the flash to 50mm or so and directed it a little to the left where I wanted to comp the shot.

Worked pretty well the sun as the main light from behind and fairly hefty fill-flash - but generally I wasn't particularly excited by it. - back to Strobist and Planet Neil for more practice me thinks.

I'm thinking I'll just go with D-Lighting on the D300 and no flash and see what I get. I read Graham Watson mentioned D-Lighting recently and how it 'has almost made the flash obsolete' - I'm yet to be convinced but a few tests of D-Lighting on the D3 yesterday is very interesting and more experimentation is planned.

I'll follow this up with some chat about the Sunday comp. round on 6th April - I left the 70-200mm at home and went with my 24-85mm. I felt the 70-200 was just a bit too long for such close action. And as I mentioned in previous blog the 24-85 is not particularly the crunchiest nut in the pack, but I was happy with the result. It has inspired me to get the new full frame 24-70mm AF-S VR (don't really need the VR but there it is) to see how it goes. I'll probably mount the 18-200mm DX VR on the D300 and turns things around completely.

bfn.