Calling all Equine Photographers. Help Please?

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Shrek-Eventing-SW

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Not sure where to post, but I gathered that as all of you in here are lovely, then I would be bound to get an answer! ;)

I am currently doing A level photography at 6th form, and for our next project we can photograph whatever we want! :D

Obviously I have chosen to photograph horses, but I don't feel my camera is good enough.

I am looking for a camera that I can adjust the Shutter Speed and aperture so that I can achieve the perfect shot.

Also, I am desperate to find a camera that takes the picture quickly without lagging. So when I take a picture of a horse jumping, I want the picture to take as soon as I press the button, with no extra wurring and clicking before the picture is taken and you have then taken a picture of a horses bum!
Preferably to have a continuous mode, so that you can have several continous shots.
Also needs to have good zoom, flash and be fairly cheap!

So is there anybody out there who has any ideas as to which camera would be best? Thank you very much :)
 
Hi What sort of price range were you thinking of? Maybe go to your local camera shop jessops etc and get the feel of the cameras and go from there sorry to be a bit vague but there are loads and loads out there:)
 
Hi the price range for a digital slr starts around £300 approx, maybe someone could lend you one till you find the right one, also check amazon for prices as you can good deals but certainly try before you buy good luck:)
 
Hi there is usually big debates whether to get a canon or nikon mostly because they seem to have more lenses available, so its difficult to say which one is best. Go to the photographers forums google and you can read some of the topics about various cameras etc :) hope this helps
 
You want a lens that is at least slightly telephoto - 70mm or more - otherwise horses can look distorted (too big heads, or bum) at certain angles. A telephoto will also help you put a potentially distracting background out of focus. My ideal horse photo lens would be a 70-200mm zoom, if I had to choose one.
 
i do equine photography part time (as im at uni studying something totally different)!

i have a website if you want to see (pm me)


i use a nikon d5000 and its fab for what i want.... not a cheap camera at all but very good :)
 
We haven't really done anything about digital cameras yet, we have only used manual cameras so far. (With dark room processing as well!)

So I have gathered that I need an SLR.

About the lenses, what does it mean by "70-200mm zoom".

You can tell I am very amateur! :)
 
without getting technical there are prob better qualified people out there but the bigger the mm the closer you can zoom in for example wildlife etc you woud need a 300mm zoom lens at least to get close up shots, Im passing the buck here but I would speak to you tutor and they will explain it much better than I could;)
 
A zoom lens lets you make the subject appear closer/bigger or further away/smaller without moving yourself. Lenses with higher mm numbers are useful when the subject is far away, or you want to photograph e.g. the horse's eye without getting really close. Lenses with lower mm number include more of the scene in the shot so that far away things look even smaller. A 50mm lens is meant to be equivalent to the human eye. That means lenses more than 50mm are zoomed in (telephoto, like binoculars), and lenses less than 50mm are wide angle.

ETA: Here's an example...

focal_pop.jpg


But there is also a difference in perspective if you photograph a subject close up with a small mm lens compared with the same subject further away with a large mm lens, as here...

perspective-composition-600x513.png


You may notice that the young woman's face in the photo taken with the 16mm lens looks different from the one taken with the 200mm lens - less natural or 'accurate'. That's because the face perspective is more 'bulgy', big-nosed. The effect is quite small with human faces, but with horses, who have long noses anyway, the 'bulgy' effect is very obvious. Sometimes that might be an effect that you want, but not for a 'nice' portrait shot.
 
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I started with a Nikon D70 with a Sigma 70-300mm telephoto lens which I bought second hand from someone at work for £250. Its a good camera from someone starting out and I found the auto focus invaluable until I knew what I was doing with changing the setting manually. I would highly recommend it - here are some examples of a few photos I have taken with the D70 - a few have had the benefit of Photoshop, another handy tool - you can download a 30 day free trial from the website if you want to play around with it

BlairCastle2010081.jpg

Website5.jpg

Website12.jpg
 
If you really want to get decent shots you'd be best getting an slr. I swaer by canons, but then i've never tried another brand so i'm pretty biased.

Ebay is a really good place to look, you can get them for so much cheaper - I got the body (without any lenses, secondhand but perfect condition), for £180 and then purchased a telephoto (which you really need to get good closeups and a decent background blur) for £130 also from ebay. If i'd bought it all new it would have cost about £600, so it's a big saving.

I have a canon 350D (which I highly recommend, although they're not manufactured anymore so hard to find) and a 55-250mm telephoto.

these are some of the photos i've taken with them
http://picasaweb.google.com/104215715792694617936/DropBox?authkey=Gv1sRgCPSN98qDtb-K-AE#
 
Here's an example of what I mentioned above. In both photos, the distance between the horses' eyes is roughly the same, but the first was taken with a telephoto lens and looks natural, whereas the second was taken with a wide-angled lens and looks, well, comical.

imper.jpg


2284234538_32608c13d8.jpg
 
Replying to Shrek-Eventing-SW...

Yup, that's right.

It's one of the reasons that some ad photos - like you see in H&H mag - don't show the horse's conformation in a favourable light. Unfortunately, although the cheaper digital cameras are great for party shots of people, they're really not up to taking good horse photos - unless a) they have a zoom lens and b) it's actually zoomed!
 
The other thing that the bigger lenses that go on SLR cameras can do that the tiny lenses on compact digital cameras aren't good at is reduce the depth of focus to just the parts of the subject you want to show clearly while making everything else - especially a 'busy' background - nicely out of focus. That really helps to make the subject stand out.

e.g.

Proc118.JPG


(The colour balance is off in this one because it was taken years ago using 35mm film and the printers didn't get it quite right.)
 
Thats what I want to achieve, for the horse to stand out and the background to be blurred.

Kao, what is the picture quality like? Also what is it like when you press the button, does it take the picture quickly?

Thank you
 
Yiu definately need a DSLR to start with and if this is seriously something you wish to get into then start saving as the kit you need for the top shots isnt cheap ;)

Personally i use a Canon but an entry level nikon or sony would do you just as well as a startup camera.

The lens you get as part of the kit usually only opens up to f5.6 and for blurring backgrounds and capturing fast movement you need a fast shutter speed - one way of doing this is with a fast lens - my main equine lens is the 70-200mm f2.8 but again, this is something to aim for and save for (think £1k plus !)

Zoom lens always gives a better perspective than a wide angle for horse portraits, however the wides come in handy when in the showjumping ring.

Feel free to PM me xx

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Toffee_monster said:
The lens you get as part of the kit usually only opens up to f5.6 and for blurring backgrounds and capturing fast movement you need a fast shutter speed - one way of doing this is with a fast lens - my main equine lens is the 70-200mm f2.8 but again, this is something to aim for and save for (think £1k plus !)
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Your're dead right about getting the best lens you can afford. I would go so far as to say that you should be aiming to spend more on the lens than on the camera body. Having said that, I took the photo above using what I could afford at the time (as a student) - which was a secondhand Sigma 70-200mm zoom lens on a secondhand manual Pentax body. I have bought a couple of digital cameras since then - one compact with a Leica zoom lens and one 'prosumer' with a built-in zoom - and although they are great for general subjects and the images are extremely sharp and detail, I still think my old SLR kit is superior optically.
 
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