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Auto-focus Hell - aka River Slalom
We had a whitewater river slalom competition in town today. I've never seen or shot this before and didn't have anything better to do so what the heck.
How do you all approach new sports and venues? This ended up being very challenging!
1. Scouting the day before the competition - iPhone shot
2. At river-level, this is what the AF is up against...single point of focus, of course. Still very difficult to frame and focus shots. But visually interesting to me.
3. A good bit of the action and shooting spots were back-lit
4. Some good action pivoting for the upstream gates
5. The inhospitable conditions didn't bother the participants one bit.
All in all, I didn't quite capture the shots that I wanted to. But it was a really neat event in a great setting.
How do you all approach new sports and venues? This ended up being very challenging!
1. Scouting the day before the competition - iPhone shot
2. At river-level, this is what the AF is up against...single point of focus, of course. Still very difficult to frame and focus shots. But visually interesting to me.
3. A good bit of the action and shooting spots were back-lit
4. Some good action pivoting for the upstream gates
5. The inhospitable conditions didn't bother the participants one bit.
All in all, I didn't quite capture the shots that I wanted to. But it was a really neat event in a great setting.
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Comments
One of the very best whitewater photographers in the world is Darin McQuoid: http://darinmcquoid.com/ . Although this is not slalom, he does have some wonderful tutorials on how to shoot river shots.
I used to race slalom quite seriously years ago, before getting into photography, so I know the sport but confess to not having done a lot of photography in this area. However, there are two generally good points to shoot from: Upstream gates, and telephoto shoots looking up the river. The former allows you some nice closeups of faces, photogenic paddle strokes, and fairly predictable action. You can choose a spot with good light, and get some good shots with fairly standard cameras and lenses. The latter angle will display the gradient of the river, and make the rapids look interesting.
As far as autofocusing, mark off the centerpoint using servo mode (or whatever continuous tracking mode is called on your camera) and try to keep the AF point on the body or face of the paddler. The slalom gates will cause problems, so just time your shots accordingly. I also focus manually if it is at all possible, such as a set part of the rapid--maybe the hardest part, that looks exciting--so that your camera does not accidentally lock on to a splash or a pole.
Hope this helps!
John