Advice shooting equestrian indoors please

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minimoog

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Jordan
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Hello I'm very new to 'proper' photography having recently gone from an Ixus 40 to a 500D DSLR with kit 18-55mm. One of my interests - and more importantly that of my wife - is shooting her horse riding. Straight away I'm feeling very challenged as the combination of ineptitude, movement, distance, and low light in indoor arenas is leading to some very underwhelming results. The following, with a bit of PP sharpening, is about the best I've managed so far :(

4987506205_fed08cf95f_z.jpg


But mostly they're like this or worse:

4987514671_d54a79ab68_z.jpg


Shot in Program at ISO 400 (too slow I suspect), leaving the rest up to the camera. How can I make some improvements? Oh and should I have the lens IS switched off?

Thanks!
 
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The combination of movement and low light is very challenging yet (as you'll discover) people often see a "proper camera" and assume you'll just take a few snaps and they'll be brilliant.

Sadly, this isn't the case - it takes a lot of very expensive kit to get images like you see in magazines.

You need a high shutter speed (if they're doing anything other than trotting at least 1/250ish) and the best way to do this is with fast glass, ideally f/2.8 or better (which the kit lens isn't). The alternative is to up the ISO and given your lens I'd have thought at least ISO 1600, maybe higher (better a noisy picture than a blurry one).

At some point you'll probably want more reach from your lens and will be tempted to buy a cheap zoom lens. Don't as it'll just compound the problems.

Wrt IS, I'd probably turn it off as you're aiming to have the shutter speed high enough not to need it and you'll probably be panning a little bit too.

EDIT: if you're going to shoot high ISO it's generally best to shoot in RAW and use a third party noise reduction too to remove the noise - Lightroom 3 has an excellent NR tool built in, it isn't cheap but you can DL a trial and have a go for free :)
 
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as above your biggest issue is going to be the gloom of 90% of indoor arenas.. especially coming into autumn/winter, the last indoor event i covered a couple weeks ago i was running at (in manual setting) f2.8 1/640 and ISO3200 so the light is dying fast.

to be brutally honest i think you'll struggle with the at least the lens you have, ideally you want something like a 70-200 f2.8 (sigma to keep cost down?) to keep the shutter speed to a usable level and have a decent reach. not entirely sure on the ISO handing of the 500D to be honest.. but to get more of an idea can you tell us what aperture, shutter and ISO those above shots are taken at?

regarding the positioning of the horse, ideally as a benchmark for dressage/general riding you want to aim for the M shape with the leading foot just hovering off the ground.. something like this:


722Q3159 by neilgates, on Flickr

and for jumping for side on:


bsja1_800 by neilgates, on Flickr

same can be applied for head on alternatively i quite like this:


bsja2_800 by neilgates, on Flickr

oh and those jumping shots have reminded me.. watch your backgrounds arent too distracting (see horse refuge sign lol), a large aperture like 2.8 will help with that..

any questions, fire away..
 
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Good advice already given. As Neil says you'll need more reach and faster glass. The Siggy 70-200 2.8 is pretty good value for money. IS isn't really much use. I get away with Shutter of 1/250-1/320 for Dressage and Show Jumping. Get used to shooting wide open in indoor arenas and raising the ISO to suit. Getting the M shape is all about practise and timing. I like to use High Speed frame mode when I can to give me more chance to get the correct positioning. I've had a few complaints though because in a very quiet arena it can spook a nervous horse or rider. I've been told it's too loud !!
Probably over sensitive rider looking for someone to blame for a poor test !
 
incidentally all of my shots are single presses of the shutter and not burst..

[/show off]

:p

but seriously as trevor says, and im sure you know, horses can and will spook at shutter noise and large lenses being waved about.. plus burst vs single is just a preference thing.

or at least thats where the blame from the rider is directed.. i had a lady a couple weeks back ask me if i "could just go away", which i did and then at the other end of the arena the horse proceeded to spook at the practice mirrors and throw her off..
 
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oh one other thing i forgot to mention was AF tracking.. personally id say you always want AI SERVO and move your focus activation to the * or AF ON button on the back of the camera. this way when you half press the shutter to activate focus on a standard setup you wont lock in the exposure so if the light changes you wont end up with a duff exposure.

obviously AF performance will be down to the body and lens.. ideally a HSM lens will be your friend here.
 
Thank you very much chaps there's much to chew over there. TBH I wasn't expecting great things off the bat and all ideas for improvement - either now (technique) or in the future (equipment) are much appreciated. I arrived late at the session so only had 15 mins or so to play, and spent a good bit of that shooting some video.

The first pic was taken at F7.1, 1/100s, Iso 400 and, the 2nd at F5.6, 1/60s, Iso 400. It was in program but pretty much auto as I think the iso was all I set.

I tried some others set at 1/250s (F5.6) but forgot to raise the iso speed so with predictably gloomy results. I then raised the iso to 800 for a couple and managed a bit less blur when he was cantering (camera chose 1/400 and F/4) so that seems to be the right direction - judging by your comments I need to go a lot further though!

TBH composition barely entered my mind at this stage. As to picking the right point in the stride to shoot I'd never even considered that so thanks for the tip!
 
to be honest your first shot isnt bad in a technical sense, you look like you have a nice sharp head on the horse but then again youve got the blur on the legs..

i would be inclinded to go high on the ISO, like you say you had better results at 800 as the camera selected a wider aperture and faster shutter to compensate which "should" see better results..

like i say i dont know the 500D and its ISO handling but out of interest next time youre at the indoor school/arena try a couple of ISO 800 and 1600 test shots and see how they come out on your computer screen.. if the noise is acceptable at 1600 id say go for it..

the only other problem i can think of with your current method of shooting is with P mode. obviously you have some control as youve seen altering the ISO will get you differnt results but you dont really have that much control over the shutter speed for example. what i mean is that even with a high ISO set your camera can still decide that it wants to put in a shutter speed that blurs everything up. id have a play around with AV and TV modes, probably more so AV so that you can set a wide aperture and get in more light and blur that background out.

hopefully thats all making sense, its still a bit early for me.. lol
 
Well according to reviews high ISO performance is not the 500D's forte but I'll certainly experiment and see how it looks.

Thanks again everyone.
 
Oh and I'm thinking the 50mm F1.8 I'm hopefully acquiring soon will be a big help with respect to light, although not reach obviously. This will allow some usefully faster shutter speeds, yes?
 
i wouldnt let it go down as far as 1.8 otherwise youll have a very narrow depth of field but if you can use it at 2.8 then yes you should see better results albeit with limited reach. providing the AF on the 50mm is fast enough..
 
neil_g said:
very narrow depth of field... AF fast enough...
Click to expand...

OK yes I see, good points. Snapping horses wasn't the reason for getting the 50mm, but I'll give it a try with those caveats in mind.
 
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