Our first race of the season

[mattbikeboy]

I'd like to say that it's spring time in the southwest -- however, it's 20 degrees colder than it was two weeks ago. Oh well, at least well have some pretty hot racing at Bootleg Canyon this weekend. Today I went out and walked the entire DH course and found a couple of good locations for Sunday's race. I also started playing with 3D focus tracking, I'm not sure how well it'll work up there. The terrain is so rough and treacherous that my D700 liked to focus on the rocks around and behind to racers.

Here are a couple of shots from my pre-run.







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[ianjenn]

I LIKE the last shot the most. The gradient in the first image at the top is a little distracting?

[brmill26]

Excellent work as always, Matt. I love the whip in the first photo (or do you bike guys call that a cross up? I can't remember...).

[mattbikeboy]

Day 2...

We had dual slalom and a Super D. The dual slalom was a lot of fun (except the timers taking an hour and a half to seed the riders).







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[mattbikeboy]

Sunday's Downhill Race:

After two days of shooting -- I decided to start going for motion blur type shots. My keeper rate went down considerably -- but I got a few really cool shots. I found 1/60 sec was the best and with a fill flash I got a few shots that really almost looked like studio lighting. Some looked like they were staged -- man I love that D700.







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[twolfe9586]

First image is my favorite. Aside from the gradient, its a phenomenal shot. Color, DOF, its incredibly sharp and in focus.

Brilliant.

[mattbikeboy]

First image is my favorite. Aside from the gradient, its a phenomenal shot. Color, DOF, its incredibly sharp and in focus.

Brilliant.

Thanks, I like that one too. The gradient was me playing around with Lightroom 2 -- and getting a bit carried away. :blush2:



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Edit: I adjusted the gradient back a bit.

[Photo-John]

Nice photos, Matt. I agree that the Royal kit rider photo is the best. And I think your second treatment of it is better, too. It needed some saturation and contrast to make it snap better.

RIP Brent Thompson. This was right before Brent passed, right? None of that would have been possible without Brent.

[ciddog91]

Congrats on the POTW !!!!

[baceball6]

wow, those are great to me, vivid and catches the action

[Lori11]

Awesome shots! I love the second one of the first shot (good lord, does that make sense?)

[blazing fire]

Is it me or do you find the first shot in the #4 post blur/hazy?

[mattbikeboy]

Is it me or do you find the first shot in the #4 post blur/hazy?

It is a bit. The guy on the left is passably sharp though. It was my first outdoor test of the D700 and it's 3D focus tracking system -- which ended up not being very good for shooting high speed mountain bikers in really rough terrain. It kept jumping off the rider and trying to catch the rocks, brush and canyon walls behind. By the end of the third day out there I was really tweeking the camera settings (slow shutter panning -- with some cool results and lots and lots of blurry almost bike looking things).

This weekend I'll be shooting a road race -- I'll see if the 3D focus tracking works better in the more open environment.

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