Equine indoor nighttime show tips

theraven

theraven

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Jenna
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Hello all, long time no speak! I did an event this weekend and it was indoor and outdoor full day horse show and I was the only photographer. Needless to say I was run off my feet!

Really enjoyed it and have had lots of purchases from my site of the oictures, but for my piece of mind I would love some tips on how to get the most out of the pictures in the evening performance.

I used a Sony A65 with Minolta Rs 50 mm 2.8 (I was in the ring so no need for zoom) roughly around 100th shutter speed and 2.8 average aperture. +1 Ev to get the horses exposed right.

Any way I could improve upon this? Here are the pictures.



http://www.ravenphotography.co.uk/event/Equine-Rising-Stars
 
The indoor shots look fine to me, sharp and well exposed. You have documented the event well and seem to have caught all the riders well, maybe crop one or two a bit closer to remove wasted space. You did well with the lens you used, a 70-200 F2.8 would have helped a lot. But overall a good set.
 
Your shutter speed is way too low and the shots look to be generally underexposed by 1/2 a stop or more.

Your choice of background is poor on several of the shots where you have framed the steel RSG into the shot, rather than use the bare well (which is much better).
 
So glad I bothered to reply.

I take it that you are only after rainbows and unicorns then?
 
theraven said:
Hello all, long time no speak! I did an event this weekend and it was indoor and outdoor full day horse show and I was the only photographer. Needless to say I was run off my feet!

Really enjoyed it and have had lots of purchases from my site of the oictures, but for my piece of mind I would love some tips on how to get the most out of the pictures in the evening performance.

I used a Sony A65 with Minolta Rs 50 mm 2.8 (I was in the ring so no need for zoom) roughly around 100th shutter speed and 2.8 average aperture. +1 Ev to get the horses exposed right.

Any way I could improve upon this? Here are the pictures.



http://www.ravenphotography.co.uk/event/Equine-Rising-Stars
Click to expand...
Theraven, you had a difficult job with having to capture action while outside on what seems to be a dull day and inside with poor lighting. In these situations, it is best to keep the shutter speed high. I haven't shot horses before, but with runners i tend to stay at 1/500 or faster to freeze the action. This may require you to max out your ISO, but it will give much sharper shots. I would say the majority of your shots suffer from softness, probably due to motion blur.

Most of the shots seem to suffer from underexposure. The outdoor shots would make me think you were using spot metering, given the difference between the exposure of light and dark horse shots. If this is the case you may be better setting a manual exposure to get consistent results.

Most of the shots could do with cropping to crop out distractions in the background or empty space.

The plain white wall indoors is a good background, but i think your shots would benefit from an angle perspective instead of side on as this leaves it very flat. If you caught them going past front on at 45 degrees you would get more detail of the face of the rider and the horse would be better placed coming into the frame.

When you are using high ISO don't be afraid to expose to the right by 2/3 of a stop as this can be brought back in PP, but if you need to increase the shadows in PP you will bring out some nasty noise. I am not sure if you shoot in RAW, but Adobe lightroom is excellent at removing noise (as long as you don't go too far and remove detail).

You have great subjects, and i look forward to seeing more of your photos.
 
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