Canon 20D Equipment Question
 

OK, I went to the camera store to get a canon 20d instead of trying to order from nutcases over the net.
I got the 20d with the 18-55 lense and a Ultrasonic 28-135mm lense.

This is my question, I am wanting to get some good pics of horses at the stallion show in holland, I will be in darkend seats, arena will be lighted (where the horses are). How far away from the arena floor is not yet known.

Anyone think I will need a different lense from what I already have?
also, any starting places for camera settings in this type of setting?
the show is for several days, so if they are not perfect the first day I can take more shots other days.

thanks
V

If they use thoose Metal Halide lights in the arena your gonna have to use a pretty high iso 1600 or 3200. Thoose lights and cameras dont play well with each other. :)

If possible invest in a faster zoom lens (f/2.8). They are pretty pricey $$

you will need more zoom at least 300mm maybe a 600mm, anything over that you would need a very steady hand or tripod

i'd suggest buying a decent 300mm zoom lens and a doubler

this is the arena the show will be in and this is an example of a pic I dont want to end up with :)
http://www.blacksterlingfriesians.co...n_show_033.jpg

Yeah thoose are the Metal Halide lights.

Here is a photo that I took with my 20D at the baseball game. The stadium uses the same type of lights.

http://www.profoundmedia.com/gallery/d/21-2/MG_3306.jpg

I wanted to use a fast shutter to shop the action 1/1000. I had to use iso 3200

Lens used was Canon 70-200mm 4L

well you might "get by" with what you have. that camera is ok for low light and you have a focal length magnifier of 1.6 i think which would put your longest zoom out at 1.6x 135 = 216mm which is plenty long for trying to handhold.

you will need fast shutter speed so you will have to bump the iso to whatever you can live with (1000, 1200 etc) and i would say shoot at nothing slower than 1/250th or faster if horses are moving.

what you really need is lots of battery life and storage (microdrives, big CF, or portable offload HD) because you will be shooting rapid fire when the animals are moving.

don't worry, i think you'll get some nice shots.

thanks, I will go look for that lense.
Again, thanks for the tips

I bought an extra battery and a couple of 4 gig microdrives and I have several 1 gig CF cards .... I think I am all set for storage....and I will download them each night to my laptop.

i think you're all set. shoot like crazy, you'll get some great shots. if you have that much storage i would shoot in raw mode, it will be easier to batch correct the WB. if you have a grey chart, or standard color chart take it with you and shoot it under that light, that's the only tricky issue you'll face.

might be difficult but try to move around if you can, event photography is difficult, lots of things happening at once.

there is a good commercial market to sell pix to horse owners, usually they do not have good pix of their animals in competition, and if they do they are usually low quality. some guys do this for a living, speculation event photography, and they use a selling system to make fast galleries.

breezebrowser is very good for this, and is setup for canon, and there is a custom shopping cart system plug-in for the galleries it makes.

good luck.