Bike Jumps

[armando_m]

Kids playing on the hill near my house, took the dog for a walk and carried my camera hoping to find them

1.


2.


3.


4.


5.

[Grandpaw]

Armando, I like the color, detail and the composition of these. Great job. Jeff

[armando_m]

Thank you Jeff

Composition was achieved through some cropping, I used the center AF point
I tried 3d tracking a couple of times but the busy background was confusing it, and to be fair I didn't really had a chance to follow the bikes, I shots through small clearings in the trees.

I used the 70-300 Vr stopped to F/8, and to achieve a 1/1000 shutter I had to use iso 2500, I can see why a fast zoom would be needed! if the day is cloudy, I'll be using to high an ISO

The kids would like me to shoot them again, I'm going to try some remote flash (high speed FP) the next time around, or maybe some panning at 1/250 rear curtain sync ...

[Photo-John]

Very nice, Armando! I bet the kids were really excited to see you show up with your camera. I like the second photo the most and the last one, with the city below, has promise. The tree between the rider and the city in that one sort of spoils it for me. Maybe you can find an angle that's not quite so cluttered. Overall though, this is a great set - especially considering this is new to you.

It sounds like you've figured out the focus technique. That's probably one of the most important aspects of action photography like this. I always use one focus point and depending on the camera, lens and situation, I either pre-focus or use continuous auto focus. I never use subject tracking. It just doesn't work well enough for really fast subjects. Single point continuous with a good camera works very well these days, though. And cropping to fine-tune your exposure is pretty standard, too. I think it's very difficult to get the composition perfect for action photos - especially with continuous AF. So I shoot a little wide and then crop after the fact. Or - pre-focus and recompose. Either way, you can't frame perfectly in the camera for sports. At least I can't

[armando_m]

One of the kids had a smaller nikon, which looked like a d3200 , d5100, with I think a 55-200 zoom

I saw his shots on FB , a nice sharp background with a blurry and dark bike in the frame.

If I see him again I'll try to pass him some tips, it would help him a lot more to go in the morning, when the sun would be moslty on the back of the camera, rather than being in front of the camera

[Photo-John]

One of the kids had a smaller nikon, which looked like a d3200 , d5100, with I think a 55-200 zoom

I saw his shots on FB , a nice sharp background with a blurry and dark bike in the frame.

Give him a link to this forum and encourage him to share here! We can always use more action photographers. You can also tell him this site is associated with Mtbr.com. It's the site that started all of our review sites and it's the largest mountain bike resource on the planet

[mattb]

I like them but agreee the backgrounds are a bit on the busy side. I think some fill flash will really make the riders pop more. Overall very nice.
You'll need to cut down that tree blocking the city view and then you'll have a real money shot! ;)

I like the second to last one and think with fill flash lighting up the rider it would be a great image.