I’ve been lazy (and too busy with other stuff) these last few weeks, but here I am with a report from the Grant’s Tomb Criterium (fancy word for bicycle race) that happened this past Saturday in the Upper West Side, here in New York.
The event was organized by Columbia Cycling, and despite the awful weather, a lot of racers showed up. The circuit was set up to circle the Grant’s Tomb National Memorial (click the image for the Google Maps page), and was about 0.9 miles long.
As I said before, the weather forecast was really bad – heavy rain, and gusty winds. I decided to go nonetheless, equipped with a rain poncho, op/tech rain sleeve, and Tamrac rain cover for my backpack. This worked well for 2-3 hours, until the rain got really really strong, and my limbs got soaked.
My gear selection consisted of my canon 7D (which again proved it has a decent weather sealing) and a canon 70-200mm 2.8 IS. I chose this lens because it is a zoom, and it is weather sealed. Despite the weather sealing, I still used the rain sleeve – better safe than sorry. However, the rain sleeve has a drawback – yes, it shields your equipment from the elements, but it is prone to condensation. My hands have the habit of staying warm even when it’s freezing outside, as long as they are not hit by the wind directly. When using the camera, my hands would warm up the interior of the rain sleeve, and condensation would form. This is annoying, as I was unable to properly chimp at the pictures I took, I mostly “flew” blind.
This was my first sports event, so I didn’t really know what settings to use. When I got at the race track, I first went with TV (shutter priority) and 1/250 – but that wasn’t good enough, as I had no control over the aperture, and the 70-200 at 2.8 tends to be very soft. I decided to go into M (manual) mode and set the shutter speed at 1/250 or 1/320 and the aperture at f/4 or f/5.6 (in case I miss the focus, the aperture setting would increase the depth of field enough to mitigate that issue). I decided to leave the ISO on Auto (yes, I do trust my camera that much). The race I was shooting in the beginning was not very fast, so I though those settings would work – but I didn’t keep any of those pics, as they came out too soft and blurry.
I also tried some panning shots, and couple of them came out alright at 1/60 shutter speed and f/4. I must say though, that finding the right shutter speed/panning speed combination is a total pain. The picture below is shot at 1/60, f/4, ISO 100 and 165mm focal length – the racer just came out of the turn, and he was just picking up speed.
After the first set, I’ve decided to go with a faster shutter speed – 1/500, and this worked better for me. Here is an image taken at 1/500, f5/6, ISO 2000, and 155mm.
This race was supposed to be a meeting for the NYC folks on POTN, but only couple of guys showed up, and we took a short break from the elements and went inside the Tomb to warm up and dry a bit. This gave me a chance to mount the 8mm Peleng fisheye lens, and fool around with it.
After the short recess, we went back outside in the rain, for one of the more interesting races. Based on the discussions we had during the break, I went with 1/500 – 1/1250 shutter speeds and aperture between f/4 and f/5.6. The pictures came out better than the previous ones at 1/250 – 1/500.
Here is a comparison of two panning shots, one done at 1/125, and one done at 1/1000, same focal length, some f/stop (click for bigger). Please do tell me which one you like more, and why.
The weather made the race very painful for the participants – I believe this picture says it all (1/1250, f/5, ISO 3200, 200mm).
This one was one of the last pictures of the day – before deciding I had enough, and being more soaked then a pickle is not something I want to try again…
All in all, I look at this as a very good experience, and even if I ended up keeping about 40 pics out of the almost 500 I took, I learned I need better rain protection gear (for me, the camera was fine), shutter speeds need to be close to 1/1000 or faster. Using a f/4 or f/5.6 aperture helped with depth of field, just as I intended, and the lack of sharpness in some pictures was due to too-slow shutter speed.
Converting the RAW files with DxO really did make a big difference, since the 7D + 70-200 2.8 IS combo is fully supported, the images came out better than with DPP (or ACR).
As usual, the rest of the pictures are in my Picasa gallery – please feel free to comment on this post, or on the pictures.
