Equine photography help needed

chloenophoto · August 7, 2014

Hi,
So im new to photography and I want to become better in equine photography. But I dont know what lens to get which is suitable at taking high quality photos.
I currently have a Canon EOS 1000D with a 18-55mm lens and its good at taking pictures but no good with zoom and action shots.
Please help me :rofl

puzzledpaul · August 7, 2014

Somebody from my neck o' the woods, for a change

I've no idea about how good the Servo AF capabilities of your cam body will be for action shots, but it's only half the battle to get a decent lens that has fast,accurate AF capabilities ... the body has to be up to the task too.

More details of the type of shots you're after will help others, but I'd have thought something like a 70 - 200 or 50 - 150 (Sigma) could be the sort of focal length range you need.

If you know anyone with lenses you could try, that'd probably be worth a go ... before you spend money?

pp

ian408 · August 7, 2014

Something in the 70-200 range is probably a lot more useful than the 18-55.

With your camera, it might also be more helpful to shoot manually to overcome the slower autofocus. Especially in darker environments.

Brett1000 · August 12, 2014

chloenophoto wrote: »

Hi,
So im new to photography and I want to become better in equine photography. But I dont know what lens to get which is suitable at taking high quality photos.
I currently have a Canon EOS 1000D with a 18-55mm lens and its good at taking pictures but no good with zoom and action shots.
Please help me

depends on the budget and distance to the horse
the 70-200 zooms might work (f4 or f2.8)
or maybe the 70-300 or 55-250IS

Phyxius · August 13, 2014

Hi Chloe,

I started with an old Canon film camera (circa the 70s, it was my dad's before I "borrowed" it). In 2000 I bought my first point and shoot digital camera and quickly found that auto focus was not my friend, it was super slow and lacked tracking. When I was asked to start with a website I shelled out the money for my first dSLR the Nikon D50 with the 18-55 kit lens. At the time the body and lens was priced at $899 which was a big deal for recently-out-of-college kid. I knew I needed a zoom lens so I went with the 70-300 f/4-5.6 which was another couple hundred. It zoomed sure but it was slow and had some pretty crappy chromatic aberration issues (that blue/purple halo). The reason I mention this is that if the sun wasn't perfect the lens wasn't fast enough to allow an adequate shutter speed. Finally I upgraded to the Nikon 70-200 f2.8 VR (Canon makes the "same" lens, the 70-200 f2.8 IS). From the first shot it was a HUGE improvement and definitely worth the cost.

I have since upgraded bodies twice and tried out the Bigma, the Sigma 50-500, which I quickly traded for a wide angle lens instead. Almost all of my shooting is done with the 70-200 f2.8 and as a rider as well as photographer I see it used very often by other photographers as well.

With the 70-200 on the D50 (which is a $150 camera, now):

With the D300 -

And it handles difficult lighting conditions well:

Glort · August 13, 2014

Are you going to be shooting a specific dicipline or a whole range of Equine material?
Also where can you/ are you able to position yourself?

Some SJ events I did I had to use long lenses from outside the fence. Other events I could go and stand right in the middle of the ring so a 24-105 was perfect. If you are doing dressage you need to be able to get in fairly close for most of the ring and chances are you'll want to stand at the end.
Eventing can be in close or further out same as Hacking.

Over all I went for the longer stuff. Favourite was 100-400. Next best was 35-350 and of course the 70-200 usualy with a 1.4 was also used. I also used a 17-whatever for shots where I put the camera on a low stand just behind a jump and fired it remote control. Those were very popular pic because they made even the little kids going over 30 cm jumps look like they were leaping tall buildings.

I liked the 100-400 because it allowed me to get good shots pretty much on any part of the ring. With the field events like eventing, it was also good to be able to cover plenty of the course from one position.

If all you have is an 18-55 to start with, then you need to pick your shots carefully. where you can get out in the middle of the rings and get near the action. You are going to be real limited with Dressage as they probably won't even let you close enough to the ring to get a good shot let alone the other side or end.

70-200's are probably going to be the easiest to come by so you can always get one of those then when you have a better iodea of what you like to do evaluate it from there.

puzzledpaul · August 13, 2014

I'm just over 30ml away and have a 70 -200 f4 non is and you'd be more than welcome to give it a try with your cam if you want.
No nags where I normally shoot, but if the combo copes with flying / moving birds, it should also be able to deal with a lump of pre-dogfood

PM or email (see contact page of site) for other details if interested.

pp

Brett1000 · August 18, 2014

Glort wrote: »

Are you going to be shooting a specific dicipline or a whole range of Equine material?
Also where can you/ are you able to position yourself?

Some SJ events I did I had to use long lenses from outside the fence. Other events I could go and stand right in the middle of the ring so a 24-105 was perfect. If you are doing dressage you need to be able to get in fairly close for most of the ring and chances are you'll want to stand at the end.
Eventing can be in close or further out same as Hacking.

Over all I went for the longer stuff. Favourite was 100-400. Next best was 35-350 and of course the 70-200 usualy with a 1.4 was also used. I also used a 17-whatever for shots where I put the camera on a low stand just behind a jump and fired it remote control. Those were very popular pic because they made even the little kids going over 30 cm jumps look like they were leaping tall buildings.

I liked the 100-400 because it allowed me to get good shots pretty much on any part of the ring. With the field events like eventing, it was also good to be able to cover plenty of the course from one position.

If all you have is an 18-55 to start with, then you need to pick your shots carefully. where you can get out in the middle of the rings and get near the action. You are going to be real limited with Dressage as they probably won't even let you close enough to the ring to get a good shot let alone the other side or end.

70-200's are probably going to be the easiest to come by so you can always get one of those then when you have a better iodea of what you like to do evaluate it from there.

the 100-400 would certainly work well in good light, otherwise if the OP is close enough a 70-200 might be a better choice

Equine photography help needed

Comments