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Well haven't posted many photos for a long time. Here's a few from the weekend before last... Australia's oldest ski race, the Balmain Cup









D300 with 70-200 VR

These are equisite exposures ignoring the great timing and composition.

I assume that the fill ight is produced by the snow>?

.....and don't they just fly by.......
Nice captures.

Simon,

These are very good.

What wb setting did you have on the camera?

Very nice!

Surenj,

All natural light

Gary,

WB was set to auto....usually worked out at 5700-5750. That looked a little cold (mild pun intended) so I cranked it up to 6000 plus in post. I didn't pick any specific number, just what looked OK on the monitor.

#1 6150
#2 6050
#3 6300
#4 6200


Thanks for the comments!

shakey wrote:That looked a little cold (mild pun intended) so I cranked it up to 6000 plus in post.

It normally does, for shots made in the snow, but these ones didn't, hence my question. In this thread, Andrew raises some questions about AWB, and your images piqued my curiosity in terms of how they were shot, and whether they fell within the realm of what Andrew was looking at.

Your answer suggests that the D300's awb may not have chosen optimal settings (in your opinion) for these images. This doesn't discount Andrew's thoughts in any way, but helps to add to our knowledge in these matters.

Thanks.

Not take too off topic,

Would you not set them all to the same value given that they were taken in similar and a background?

These are great, such great control on the exposure, did you have many that you had to ditch?

The last two are standouts from my end, the inclusion of that bit of blue sky is great, they have almost a surreal/HDR look to them, top stuff...

surenj wrote:Not take too off topic,

Would you not set them all to the same value given that they were taken in similar and a background?

Lighting conditions did vary a bit over the course of the competition..which was over about 4 hours...mostly sunny, but sometimes the blue sky was completely clouded over. Take a look through the Balmain Cup 2009 gallery on the smugmug website to see how it could change. Since I shoot in RAW I'm not too fussed about setting the WB before I shoot. In PP a uniformly set WB would work for most of the shots, but not all of them given how the lighting can change. In Adobe RAW you can change the WB to what looks good to you in a couple of seconds per shot, so that's what I did.

There are certainly situations where accurate and consistent WB is important but I didn't regard this as one of those situations.

biggerry wrote:These are great, such great control on the exposure, did you have many that you had to ditch?

The last two are standouts from my end, the inclusion of that bit of blue sky is great, they have almost a surreal/HDR look to them, top stuff...

There were 343 shots taken during the comp. Of these about 172 made it onto the smugmug photo site, and these 4 were selected from those.

I guess I should tell you the nitty gritty as well...I was going to spend the day just taking photos...however my ski club needed gate marshalls to help with the comp...a gate marshall's job is to make sure competitors go round the correct side of the assigned gates ( normally 2-3 gates per marshall)...so I said ...if you don't get enough volunteers..I'll help out. Well as it turned out the club had 2 volunteers...myself and another guy...so he was going to do 2 races and I was going to do the other one..which would have allowed me plenty of time to take photos during the races he was marshalling.

Come the morning of the race, he falls A over T on the ice as he walks out of the club, does something serious to his back, and is out of action for the day. So I end up being the gate marshall for all 3 races..

So there was this crazy gate marshall trying to take photos as well as doing his assigned job...

Of the 170 or so shots on the smugmug site there are some very ordinary ones, but I've tried to have at least one shot of each competitor because the different clubs in the competition may want to use them for their club newsletters or what not. I don't think there were any other photographers at the competition....hnmmmm...thinks next year...DSLRusers minimeet at the snow....


Oops...a little add..I think you asked whether I had to ditch any for exposure reasons...the answer is that none were ditched for this reason. The ditched shots were either out of focus, poor composition, or not dynamic enough. Any exposure issues were easily corrected in PP

343 shots taken during the comp. Of these about 172 made it onto the smugmug photo site

I think you asked whether I had to ditch any for exposure reasons...the answer is that none were ditched for this reason. The ditched shots were either out of focus, poor composition, or not dynamic enough

tidy strike rate

he falls A over T on the ice as he walks out of the club

ouch, did that once...but was as pi$$ed as a parrot so i had an excuse..

thinks next year...DSLRusers minimeet at the snow

yeah sounds good - my only gripe would be shelling out for a lift pass just for photography and not going on the board...or is this a more accessible location?

They really are excellent snow images. Your panning technique must be very sound to get results this good.