Re: [Leica] Ted vs "lag time"

[Ted Grant <tedgrant@shaw.ca>]

Herbert Kanner said:
> Back to the topic of shutter lag, human reaction lag, and sports
> photography.  Ted really has a point.  For years, I would try to get
> pictures of show jumping with the horse positioned at the top of the
> jump, and always managed to get the horse on the way down.<<<

Hi Herbert,
Equestrian events, one of my all time favourite sport to cover. In our
Olympic photog crew nobody wanted to do the "horses" so I got to shoot lots
of them. :-) My good fortune. :-) However, if I did a good job then the next
equestrian competition I was targeted for it before we even got to the
Games.

It's a major anticipation thing to hit it right on the mark, as the horse
and rider clear the jump, not on the way up and certainly not on the way
down.:-) And lots of  good shutter tripping reflexes. :-)

I like to shoot them coming straight into the camera as they come over the
jump. Which is more difficult because you really have to hit it right at the
top as they clear, compared to a right angle where one can lead them to the
jump.

What determines which angle I choose is by the angle of the sunlight on the
jump, then I select my position, straight on or right angle. Obviously not
on the course. ;-) But with a 400mm 2.8 or the 400 2.8 with a 2X or 1.4
extender whichever fills the frame top to bottom. One doesn't want to be
overly tight or cut off body parts occurs. And that's worse than a short
lens where you end up with a spec of an image.

Shooting straight on, I focus on the bar they jump, then I change to an
imaginary focus point infront of the bar allowing for the depth of field, as
slight as it is, to give me sharpness from the tip of the horses nose back
to the rider. After that it drops away and doesn't make any difference
anyway as you want them to separate cleanly from the back ground.

Then all you do is wait for the horse and rider and go click! ;-) Just as
the horse has all four hooves tucked tightly under it's belly clearing the
bar cleanly and the rider has a slight turn of the head towards the next
jump.
See how easy that was. Piece of cake. ;-) Trust me there's always a lot of
luck no matter how well prepared one is.

>>So, one very clever riding instructor had us counting
> backwards "3, 2, 1, 0," going forwards on "zero."  The idea was that
> we had to estimate from the get go how many strides the horse was
> from the jump.  And, of course, doing this out loud, if one missed,
> one's embarrassment was audible to the rest of the class.
>
> The point to all this belabored story was that after I learned how to
> estimate how many strides the horse was from a jump, I used this
> technique on the ground to photograph jumping horses and it really
> worked.<<<

Now that's a cool idea and obviously effective. Do you have any problem if I
use that in one of my "shooting sports" lectures? Hey I'll give you credit
for the idea. :-) As one should never take credit as though it were their
own idea, when it's the idea of a colleague . Please let me know private or
list. Thank you.

ted









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