Although my wife and I have not had time to do much bicycling this season, we did get a chance to be spectators at one day of this year’s Chris Thater Bike Race in Binghamton N.Y. on August 29th. Since Binghamton is only about an hour’s ride from our house this was not much out of the way - a day of needed shopping had been planned anyway.
I had packed camera gear for the race hoping to test the focus accuracy of my D300 on the fast moving racers. My intent was to photograph them with shallow depth of field for subject isolation, so fast accurate focus was a requirement.
It was raining at first, and not very bright out when the races started. Since the D300’s high sensitivity settings are somewhat superior to those of my D200 I was also hoping to take advantage of this.
Imaging my frustration when I pull my D200 out of my camera bag instead. Since I had not packed both camera bodies I was “stuck” with my old technology camera.
I did go ahead and photograph riders in three different races, but thinking that my images might be at least somewhat compromised due to the focus system on the camera I had brought.
When I went home and perused my images I was happily surprised that “old technology” still performs! Here an image of a rider who zoomed past me at over 30 mph. No disappointments here!
Racer taken with Nikon D200, 70-200 VR at 200 mm f/2.8, ISO 100
I will not post a 100% crop here, but can say that this image is very, very sharp. No compromises in image quality here. This shot would make a poster sized print.
Hopefully my wife and I can get some biking in this fall. We did ride to work one day last week, but some late summer colds have kept us from doing much more this week, as has our obligation to our work helping troubled teens.
I hope to post some ride photos and maps in “Places” on this blog over the next few weeks. Fall rides in the Delaware Valley are amazing!
{ 1 trackback }
{ 0 comments… add one now }