Bailey Fetching

[rpcrowe]

Bailey is an 11-month old Goldendoodle whom we are fostering. She will play fetch until either my arm or her legs wear out.

I love the way my 7D nails focus. ISO 400, 70-200mm f/4L IS at 200mm. Shutter Priority, 1/1,000 second @ f/4, AI Servo, low-speed burst...







Oh yes... Little dogs can fetch too! Ju-Jube is a year-old Maltese rescue...

[jeeperman]

Great action shots Richard. Very nicely done.

[Donald]

Not only great fun to view, but high quality images in their own right.

It's always a matter of skill, with a dose of luck, to get a dog in motion when the legs don't somehow look 'wrong'. These are all superb quality.

[rpcrowe]

Thanks gentlemen. It is a lot easier to shoot dogs who like to fetch like these two pups do. Holly, my 4-year old Goldendoodle, will fetch once or twice half-heartedly and then quit on me. It is either nail the shots than or forget about it. These two young dogs give me plenty of opportunities - as long as my throwng arm holds out.

Actually, I was playing around to practice action shots for next weekend when I go to the Rodeo to shoot with my camera group.

Today, I will be working with my 300mm f/4L IS lens. I hope the pups are as cooperative.

I am also going to play with my high speed burst mode.

[Flurry]

Thanks for the post Richard and great shots. I now have an idea of what I have been doing wrong when trying to capture my "retrievers" in action. I am inspired to try again this weekend!

[rpcrowe]

Ginny,
I don't know what camera you are shooting with but, I shot these using the eye-level viewfinder. I could not have made these captures using live view because:
1. Live view shooting is simply not fast enough
2. It is easier for me to follow action when the camera is against my face than when it is a foot or so in front of my face.

Additionally, I think that it is easier to follow acton when it is coming towards or going directly away from the camera than when it is traveling across the camera's field of view.

Here are a couple more shots of Bailey playing. She was not traveling for first two of these shots...

[Dave Humphries]

Hi Richard,

Another good series from you as we have come to expect

If I had been cropping these, on the first and last (of first batch), I would have left a little more space in front and less behind (maybe 5%), but I'm being very nit-picky (although I prefer to think of it as constructive criticism/query), they are still great shots.

Cheers,

[Flurry]

[QUOTE=rpcrowe;204453]Ginny,
I don't know what camera you are shooting with but, I shot these using the eye-level viewfinder. I could not have made these captures using live view because:
1. Live view shooting is simply not fast enough
2. It is easier for me to follow action when the camera is against my face than when it is a foot or so in front of my face.

Additionally, I think that it is easier to follow acton when it is coming towards or going directly away from the camera than when it is traveling across the camera's field of view.
QUOTE]

Richard, Here is an example of my disaster. I really wanted to catch Yardley in action. He is soooo fast. All I got was blur. I am going to try again being more in front of him. I did not use live view, but I was trying to take rapid fire shots. I did not waste any time with post processing because the shot was so bad. B-T-W, I found Yardley on Petfinders!

[rpcrowe]

Hi Ginny,

What a great looking rescue dog. Congratulations for rescuing. I'll bet that you get as much love from this beautiful dog as you give to him!

Maybe you could describe your setup for this shot. Unfortunately, for some reason I can't extract EXIF data any more.

The fact that you entire image is in focus from the closest to the furthest away leads me to believe that you were shooting with a fairly small f/stop (larger f/number for those folks unfamiliar with apertures). That and the fact that Yardly is somewhat blurred means that you were shooting at a shutter speed to slow to stop him.

Maybe you might try to get a shutter speed of around 1/1,000 of a second. If your lens only opens to f/5.6 at its longest focal length, you would need to increase the ISO until you get 1/1,000 of a second with the lens wide open (ISO 400 or 800 would work on a bright sunny day and most cameras can produce a decent image at this ISO). It also seems that the light was not exceptonally bright at the time your were shooting. The only solution to that would be to boost the ISO or wait for a brighter day. I would not worry about noise. I'd rather have a noisy image that is sharp than a blurred image without noise. Anyway, noise can be fixed to a great degree in PP.

As far as I know, most cameras have a mode like the Canon AI Servo mode which is designed for following moving subects. Use center point focus and pick up Yardly early, depressing the shutter button half way (some cameras have other methods which you can use to activate the auto focus but, the half press will work on all of them AFAIK). http://www.learn.usa.canon.com/resou....shtml#showAll

When Yardly gets to a point you want to shoot, depress the shutter button all the way (you are on burst mode) and shoot as many shots as you wish or which the buffer of your camera will allow.

I left the lens with the image stabilization on because I forgot to turn it off. Apparently it did not hurt the sharpness.

There is another point to consider. Not all cameras will shoot at their maximum burst rate when in different modes. Sometimes the exposure or focus mode will slow down the burst rate somewhat. Since I don't have a way to measure how many shots per second at which I am shooting, I just use the modes that I like using and shoot as fast as the camera will shoot. However, in this case, I had the camera in the slower of the two burst modes at which the 7D can shoot.

If I have the energy over the next couple of days, I may try shooting with diferent cameras (I have several DSLR's) and with the IS on the lens turned on and turned off. I could also use several different lenses. My son-in-law has a 28-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS lens which I might include in the testing.

[Flurry]

Hi Ginny,

What a great looking rescue dog. Congratulations for rescuing. I'll bet that you get as much love from this beautiful dog as you give to him!

Maybe you could describe your setup for this shot. Unfortunately, for some reason I can't extract EXIF data any more.

He is a terrific little dog! He was actually a feral dog in a high kill shelter with one day to go. He had broken off all of his canine teeth trying to chew through the bars. I had never tackled this type of rescue before, but I have a pack of dogs that showed him the ropes in no time. He is proof that no matter a dogs past, they can make wonderful pets.

It was a cloudy day. So next time I will wait for better light and will take the shots in my front yard where I still have grass for greater contrast. I used the kit lens with my Canon T3i at f/4.5, 1/500 and ISO 500, so from reading your post I can see that I did almost eberything wrong Thank you for the detailed suggestions. Once again, you have been a blessing.