Horses at the gallop?

[Valvebounce]

Hi Folks.
Well I ended up at Ascot for the racing quite unexpectedly as a guest on Saturday, I had my camera with me and tried to take panning shots of the horses at the gallop, I got motion blur alright, out of about 30 shots of the horses I have one that is acceptable though not great, all but one horse is a blur, all the others have terrible blur, I never realised how much movement there is with a running horse, head bobbing, jockey bouncing etc. I wanted blurred legs but had clearly misunderstood horses!
Is it possible to pan with horses or do you crank the shutter speed up and freeze the movement? I used the 70-200 f2.8 II ISO 100 1/80th (I think) and f7 ish as needed to suit the other settings.
I will post a shot when I can find it from the blurred ones.
This was my first try shooting horses other than stood still in a field!
Any one got any tips in case I get to go back?
Also don't bet on any horse I bet on, one of them even came last without the jockey! ;D

Cheers, Graham.

 

[NancyP]

Even for horse shows and dressage, 1/80 is too slow - you have motion in more than one axis. I seem to remember pushing shutter to 1/250 to 1/1000 (top speed of my SLR) when shooting horse shows in my youth. Panning is also helpful, I wouldn't pan under 1/200. I used Tri-X and pushed to ASA 1600.

 

[FEBS]

Hi Graham,

Indeed, a horse in gallop creates movement in different directions simultaneously. I regular shoot horses during dressge, eventing,.. But I did stop to try to get a decent panning shot. If you really want a panning shot it is really a case of having the right shutterspeed at the right moment. Even in gallop, they use three different types of gallop as far as I know, and they all differ as also the horizontal speed is different every time.

As Nancy mentioned, I also would use higher shutterspeeds. I prefer also 1/250 or faster.

 

[Valvebounce]

Hi Nancy.
Will panning at 1/200 freeze enough motion of the horse and jockey to give a sharp image with the exception of the legs and also give the background some motion blur?

Hi FEBS.
Yes, having bounced around on a horse a few times, I should have realised, I guess motor racing techniques don't transfer readily to horse racing!
Looks like I might be going back again, I will have to experiment with shutter speeds.

Thanks to you both for your input.

Cheers, Graham.

Even for horse shows and dressage, 1/80 is too slow - you have motion in more than one axis. I seem to remember pushing shutter to 1/250 to 1/1000 (top speed of my SLR) when shooting horse shows in my youth. Panning is also helpful, I wouldn't pan under 1/200. I used Tri-X and pushed to ASA 1600.

 

[scotia]

In the notebook I carry with me in my camera bag I have written that for panning racing horses the suggested shutter speed is about 1/300 s to get everything except legs and hands (I guess I meant horses legs and riders hands) sharp. Unfortunately I cannot remember where I picked up this piece of information. I have tried slower shutter speeds for cross country at 3-day event meetings and had zero success (a bit like trying to motion blur whitewater kayakers - that experiment confirmed that there is way too much bounce for simple panning to give sharp images at shutter speeds I would use for flat water kayaking).

 

[Marsu42]

I never realised how much movement there is with a running horse, head bobbing, jockey bouncing etc.

You only realize how fast they are if they're running straight towards you :->

But shooting horses regularly all the time, I can answer that one. It simply depends on how much resolution you want to get w/o motion blur. If you want a frozen horse at pixel level, I use at *least* 1/1500s and if it's running fast like a race horse or speeding foal crank it up to 1/2500+.

This way, you get high iso values (that's why action shooting with crop can be a problem), but better iso noise that you can reduce in post than trying to de-blur motion blur with PS.

Panning might be possible with a very low keeper rate for any decent output resolution. You get a nice motion-blurred background, just like with a few clicks in PS . But you better select a deeper dof to at least minimize being out of focus for this reason.

 

[lw]

When I went to Ascot, I chose to simply freeze the action with a high shutter speed

Even 1/1000s isn't fast enough to freeze the leg movement.


Ascot Races-13 by lozwilkes, on Flickr

1/1600s is better

Ascot Races-21 by lozwilkes, on Flickr

but some of my images were 1/2000s

 

[mackguyver]

Panning can be done - I didn't have much time to play with this at my event this year, but here's one that was moving quickly, but not at full gallop with the 1D X & 70-200 f/2.8 IS II @ 1/15s, f/18, ISO 100:

I wasn't happy with the background, but was happy to get the rider sharp while keeping the legs and such blurred. Panning is hard, though, and this was the only shot out of about 10-15 that came out with the rider sharp. At full gallop, I think I'd try for 1/100s for a single rider or 1/250s-1/500s for a group to get some slight blurring. You'll need 1/2000s+ to freeze it 100%.

 

[Sporgon]

Panning can be done - I didn't have much time to play with this at my event this year, but here's one that was moving quickly, but not at full gallop with the 1D X & 70-200 f/2.8 IS II @ 1/15s, f/18, ISO 100:

I wasn't happy with the background, but was happy to get the rider sharp while keeping the legs and such blurred. Panning is hard, though, and this was the only shot out of about 10-15 that came out with the rider sharp. At full gallop, I think I'd try for 1/100s for a single rider or 1/250s-1/500s for a group to get some slight blurring. You'll need 1/2000s+ to freeze it 100%.

The horse here cantering in the water and probably approaching a fence will be travelling in the region of 350 meters per minute, so that's about 13 mph. There's so much bs talked about horse speeds now, ever since the film 'Pharlap' where they drove along a racehorse galloping at a steady '45 mph'. Top racehorses can reach about 45 mph, but they certainly can't maintain that speed for very long, and you'd never win a race if you set out from the stalls and moved straight up to 45 !

However as has been shown, the legs are moving very, very fast, and the heads and neck can move up and down pretty damn quick too. In order to get a balance between something in focus and a sense of movement against the background when panning I would agree with the guy who said about 1/300th.

 

[FEBS]

Panning can be done - I didn't have much time to play with this at my event this year, but here's one that was moving quickly, but not at full gallop with the 1D X & 70-200 f/2.8 IS II @ 1/15s, f/18, ISO 100:

I wasn't happy with the background, but was happy to get the rider sharp while keeping the legs and such blurred. Panning is hard, though, and this was the only shot out of about 10-15 that came out with the rider sharp. At full gallop, I think I'd try for 1/100s for a single rider or 1/250s-1/500s for a group to get some slight blurring. You'll need 1/2000s+ to freeze it 100%.

Hi Macguyver,

The horse in your photo is already slowing down a lot, mainly because of the water as horses can hardly keep on gallop in a water pole. The behind legs still show gallop, but the front legs are switched to trot. Your panning is done very well. But as speed is slowing down, the up and down movements are much lower and that helped you to get the rider that sharp.

Francois

 

[Valvebounce]

Hi Folks.
Thank you all for your input, I am going to process and post my effort later, you can all have a look at what naivety gets you! Macguyver, I think your shot is very good, but have to agree with others that your subject would be slowing in the water, still doesn't take away from the achievement at 1/15th second.
I shall try the settings suggested here when I go back.

Cheers, Graham.

 

[NancyP]

I don't have experience shooting racehorses at full gallop. Horse show canters can be handled well at 1/250 or faster, the faster the better, and panning helps. Show jumping can be shot at 1/250 or even less at the the top of the jump (horse has all legs off ground, photographer panning) but needs to be shot as fast as available at the takeoff and landing to get the legs sharp. Macguyver's panning at 1/15 is challenging to say the least, but does give a nice background.

 

[mackguyver]

I'm not sure what happened to my follow up post, but it looks like it was deleted ???

Anyways, I won't re-post it all, but thanks for the nice comments on the photo. I have some other pans I tried on a fast downhill stretch, but don't have access to the photos right now. I'll check the settings and update the post once I do that. I have some shots at 1/1000s showing all feet off the ground and frozen on a galloping cross country horse, so I would think that 1/2000s would be a good setting to freeze race horses.

Also, last time I was at Ascot (many, many years ago) I won a nice pot of money with a successful £10 trifecta bet ;D

 

[Valvebounce]

Hi Folks.
Here is one of mine, looks ok small, falls apart at full size.
I have others, but flickr could not have screwed up worse for those of us trying to post the BB code from an iPad. Really hacked off at spending 20 mins to only achieve one picture added

IMG_4387_DxO by Graham Stretch, on Flickr

Cheers, Graham.

 

[Marsu42]

Here is one of mine, looks ok small, falls apart at full size.

Yeah, that would be the problem - I experimented with panning and for me everything beyond web size always ended up very blurry and/or out of focus. I probably depends on the taste, but unless I come up with a reliable technique other than swinging the lens 'round I gave up trying. Shooting a driving car from another car beside it seems to work better for this effect...

 

[mackguyver]

Here is one of mine, looks ok small, falls apart at full size.

Yeah, that would be the problem - I experimented with panning and for me everything beyond web size always ended up very blurry and/or out of focus. I probably depends on the taste, but unless I come up with a reliable technique other than swinging the lens 'round I gave up trying. Shooting a driving car from another car beside it seems to work better for this effect...

I have used a pano head (RRS pano clamp on my head) to do panning shots - it works quite well and is how I captured that photo above. You can get a Nodal Ninja or similar head for a pretty reasonable price.

 

[Marsu42]

I have used a pano head (RRS pano clamp on my head) to do panning shots - it works quite well and is how I captured that photo above.

Thanks, though this wouldn't work for me - I don't know up front where the horses I shoot will be. But you do seem to agree that just handholding-panning is doomed to 99% failure as you recommend using a tripod.

 

[Valvebounce]

Hi Macguyver, Marsu.
My shot was hand held, definitely no tripods in Ascot without you have exemption under paragraph d sub section 3 or was it.... you get my drift. ;D Reading the rules it was uncertain I was even allowed a camera unless it was on my phone!

Cheers, Graham.