I realize I haven't posted anything lately. I have a set 98% done but I've been busy with things. I'll try to have that up tomorrow. Just want to write up about shooting breakdance competitions and whatnot.
I just got back from
Circles 9 an hour or so ago. It's basically (as far as I know) the largest competition in the Maryland-Virginia region... although there are a number of people who come from Boston and New York as well. Lots and lots of talent. As a note though, shooting bboys is very, very tough in case anyone reading plans on shooting a competition.
The event was situated in the gym, so there was poor lighting. I ended up shooting with my 50mm f/1.4 on shutter priority between 1/640 to 1/1000, so I ended up being either f/1.4 and f/1.6. ISO was 1600. I also didn't use flash since... I don't have an external flash and I was unable to borrow one. Would be a little rough to do that anyway since I was shooting burst. Using the 50 prime was a little rough because my crop body essentially makes my lens 80mm (XT's have a 1.6 crop factor)... so I had to be as far as possible on the outer rim of the circle but on the inner most part so I wouldn't have anyone's heads in my shots. My focus mode was set to AI Servo ("Continuous Servo AF" in Nikons) so I could follow movement easily, since some people paced or moved around a lot. There are two problems with this. If someones doing a freeze, you can't focus lock and re-frame since it will refocus on wherever you move the camera. Also, it is very easy to miss and end up focusing on the background. Which is very, very irritating because I've missed a number of otherwise good shots because of that.
Essentially, it's like sports photography except tougher because you don't know what will happen next. Also, that moves change orientation a lot means you'll probably want to be actively rotating your camera as you shoot or else a lot of the body gets cut out. I would suggest spending some time watching clear videos of battles since sometimes you can guess what they'll do next so you can reorient the camera.
In any case, I shot 900+ photos at Circles 9. I will process them as soon as I can and post some photos in a few different posts, but I think I'll end up creating a flash gallery.
Continue reading 080427 - New York Comic Con 2008 - Part I.
