Pretty Good Night for a kit Lens

[mattbikeboy]

Last night was the Cross Vegas cyclo-cross race tied in with Interbike. I figured I'd go up and fill a memory card or two. I have a several observations from shooting at that kind of event.
1) It was a hoot. The weather was perfect and the racing was fun to be part of.
2) Not being a pro (and having to pay for pro equipment) gives me opportunity to play with things and be a little more creative in my shooting.
3) When not shooting with nice f2.8 telephoto lenses it is good to find a relatively well lit spot with the action going as slow as possible and start messing with flash and ISO settings.
4) Amazing (at least to me) things can come from the 400 or so captures!

mbb

[mattbikeboy]

Cyclo-Cross night was fun so I took my daughter to the National Final Crit race the next evening. We took some pictures -- but this time the speeds were much, much, much faster and the lighting was much, much worse. I think I finally found a method that worked for the last two laps in the third race of the evening.

My daughter on the other hand wasn't exactly excited about hanging out at the bike races until the last race of the night. The Pro Men were so much faster than the women and the industry race that it got her attention. She'd run the the barriers on each lap to feel the wind they made as they went by.

Overall, it was another successful photo outing. I toyed with slow sync flash, normal, slow shutter, high and low ISO and anything I could think of to get some cool shots. My favorite was the pre-focus and switch to manual focus then hold camera on the ground below the barrier and shoot up at the riders blasting by at 35 mph in the dark. It worked pretty good and I got some of my favorite images.

I also happened to sell a few to VeloNews magazine Friday morning!
http://www.velonews.com/race/dom/articles/13406.0.html

I had messed up the deal for some photos from the Cyclo-cross race the day before by trying to send over 10 megs of files in one e-mail to the VN editor. I was so excited that I didn't really think about how big the files where. I might have ended up with 6 image sales instead of just three. Oh well, My shots from the cross race where much better quality -- but it is awesome getting my first photo sale.

mbb

PS, Maybe now my wife will let me buy that spiffy little 80-200mm f2.8 Nikon lens I've been drooling on.