The Perils of Light

The non-photographers can stop reading now.

In that it's been a while since I've had to do these kind of shots — and I always run into a new photographer that has questions — this is what you have to deal with at rodeo arenas.  They are required by law to have poor lighting.  This must be the truth, otherwise they wouldn't all have it.  It's either that or good lights are expensive.  One of the other.

Whenever you walk into an arena, look up.  Are all the lights the same color?  If they are, you're in luck.  Are they bright enough?  My rule is that 1/320th of a second is the minimum shutter speed I need to have an acceptable number of pictures remain sharp.  (Your rule might be different.)  In this arena, in order to get 1/320th, I had to set the aperture wide open (F2.8) and crank the ISO all the way up to 10,000.  I hate it when I have to go above 4,000.  (Insert snarky comments from birders.)  And as we should all know, the higher the ISO, the "muddier" pictures get and the more grain there is.

So you wind up with images like this, where the rider and the horse are (semi) sharp but the barrel is not.  Whether that's due to motion (shutter speed too low) or depth-of-field (wide aperture makes it narrow), I don't know.  I suspect both but it doesn't really matter.

As in much of life, money would solve all these problems.  Enough for better lighting or enough for the latest-greatest camera (I swear the new ones can see in the dark) and lens. Add Photoshop and Topaz and the computer you'll need to handle all that data.  Oh, and the time to post-process all the images you'd like to use.

Me?  I'm just having fun.  I shoot JPEGs on refurbished equipment from Nikon.  And except for cropping, this one is straight out of the camera.  And instead of stressing about whether they're good enough to sell, I know they're good enough to give away.

Nikon D7200 — Nikon 80-200mm F2.8

125mm

F2.8@1/320th

ISO 10,000

White Balance on Flash

Cropped

ROD_1655.JPG

©Don Brown 2024