Introduction and MTB shooting advice

[Fillmoe Slim]

Hello everyone. Thanks to Photo-John for making me aware of this site via the MTBR forums.

I just jumped to still photography from video in June with the purchase of a Canon 30D. I've always been wanting to get great action shots as well as good artsy shots, but would get quickly frustrated with P&S cameras that I have owned in the past. The main problem with P&S was the shutter lag which is probably why I was more into video. So since i've gotten my camera i've been doing lots of reading about photography and am also taking a photography class at the local JC. While i'm comfortable being behind a lens in general due to my video experience, still photography is a tough but welcome learning experience.

What i'd like to ask is if anyone has any advice, tricks, tips and techniques for shooting Mountian bike photography with the equipment I currently have or equipment that may be worth the investment. One thing that I find challenging is the low light but high shutter speed requirements of MTB in Nor Cal because often times it's under tree cover.

My equipment selections currently includes:

Canon 30D
70-200 f4L
50 1.8
18-55 kit
.42x semi fish that can be attched to my kit lens
220EZ flash

What i'd like to add in the near future:

Good replacement for the kit lens. Maybe the 17-40 F4L just don't know if it will be fast enough.
Battery grip
Sigma 8mm fisheye.

Here are a couple of the better shots i've come out with but lots of them don't come out. Again any critique advice would be greatly appreciated.

[Brian001]

hey fillmoe, its good to see yet another mtbr'er here...im free rider

anyway, i think the first picture is great, but the stem is covering his face...its always nice to see facial expressions, also by the position of the trees, looks like the camera was a tad off angle.

the second one is a hair off center, but i believe you can get away with it

[Chrislowshow]

i love how on the second picture you get the air height perseption by the little bit of ground at the bottom, great ancor ;)

[Fillmoe Slim]

Bryan/Freerider - It would have been nice if the stem wasn't covering his face but it is the crispiest shot i've gotten so far. It was on a hip in Pacifica so I was a bit lower than him to start off with and on a slant myself. Funny thing is i've looked at this pic a few times and never occured to me to straighten the image out in PS. The second one was actually centered in the uncropped shot but I usually don't care for overly centered photos. The extra image cropped off the right is just trees and kinda dead space IMO. It also kinda ended up that way cuz my roomate who is in the shot wanted it as a desktop image.

I did use a fill flash on the first shot but still feel a little in the dark on how to setup my camera for the best sync and shutter speeds to get that nice fill. I'm also not sure how the TTL sync stuff works and how far I can effectively get away with fill flash with the particular flash i'm using.