Photographing Dogs

[NorthernFocus]

I have just received thank you emails from Australian Customs, Border security and Bio-security thanking me for the tip off regarding your planned visit.
You should get plenty of opportunity to take photographs of drug detecting, plant/food sniffing and explosive sniffing dogs. I am hoping(or is it hopping in Australia) for a big reward.

All the best for your trip.

...... those guys don't wear latex gloves do they?

You must not be familiar with the new metering system that Nikon has come up with. They call it the O Zone for locations with exceptionally bright sunlight

Trace, I absolutely hate shooting agility in clear sunlight. It really limits how you can set up and which obstacles you can shoot. Not normally a problem in Alaska but every event this summer was under clear weather and it was tough. And those darn border collies in the sun

[Colin Southern]

The ozone comment was PURELY technical in the context of how much more light you have down there

Down here we use the Sunny 16 rule - is it true that it's the sunny 5.6 rule in your parts?

[NorthernFocus]

Down here we use the Sunny 16 rule - is it true that it's the sunny 5.6 rule in your parts?

When it is in fact sunny, it's f11. Then we have the shadow rules. Clearly discernible shadow = f8, barely discernible shadow = f5.6, no shadow at all is f4 on down.

[Shadowman]

LOL! Love the way this thread kinda meandered off topic and gave me a good laugh along the way.

Out of curiosity I had a read of the short article. In its defence it is mostly referring to dog's in motion and faster shutter speeds to freeze that motion rather than portraits per se.

But have to agree, light in the middle of the day is harsh. Even for agility and frisbee I much prefer overcast days... not that we see many of those here in the tropics over Winter; 27oC today, blue sky, white puffy clouds, lightest of breezes, no smog or ozone . Tomorrow while I have my camera in hand and dogs in action in front of me I'll be cursing those conditions LOL.

Also, the article mentioned using bright lights or needing lots of light, you can get lots of light directly after sunrise, which is considered an ideal time to shoot. The images used as examples are the only indicators that photography was done during the middle of the day.

[rpcrowe]

This seems to be a very superficial, entry level article probably designed for mostly for Nikon P&S cameras...

Doing a YouTube search with the parameters "Photographing Dogs In Action" will give these results...

http://www.youtube.com/results?searc...be.93IgNotZAZs

Oh, BTW, I like to use fill flash for my pictures of dogs because the flash will contribute catch-lights to make the eyes look "alive". However, when shooting running dogs, especially dogs running towards me, I will shoot in Servo AF and in high-speed burst mode. In this situation I don't use flash because none of my flash units (430EX, 550EX, 420EX or 270EX) will be able to rcycle fast enough to keep up with the approximately 8 FPS at which my 7D shoots...

I honestly don't know of any flash which will recycle fast enough to fire at 8 FPS, even in manual exposure at 1/64 power. If anyone could direct me towards a unit that will accomplish this, I would appreciate it! I wouldn't need the flash to actually contribute any fill light to the dog. Even the lowest manual setting, the flash would produce a catch light...