Photographing a Moving Target

Good Morning, AIPOD World! This past weekend I had the privilege to document the first annual retreat for a non-profit organization called Girls with Guts. These girls really do have a lot of guts to deal triumphantly with the physical ordeals they live with on a day-in and day-out basis.

One of the activities they participated in was a zip-line over a deep ravine. I stood down below in the ravine and tried to photograph each of them as they traversed it in a 16-second trip. Using my 300mm lens with my file size on Camera Raw so I got the max amount of digital file, I focused on them at the starting point, and tried to follow them across, turning as they passed overhead. It sounds much easier than it was. They started in the woods, up a stairway in the trees. This photographed best at ISO 1250 at f/19 at 1/125 sec. By the time they were overhead the camera was metering f/19 at 1/750 sec. Then they went back into wooded area and the metering changed back to f/19 at 1/125 sec.

photos by Connie Rohne

So how do you manage your camera in a situation like that. Believe me I was desperate enough to try “P” for “program” but those results were not pretty. What were the main problems? First, my camera could not decipher where to focus quickly enough, when I was set on auto focus. So that meant I had to be able to manually focus-quickly. Second moving from dark treed areas to clear sky overhead was an extremely drastic light change. I would have loved to change my ISO from 1250 to 100 when overhead, but that was impossible in an 4 second time frame, and then changing back again for the other side.

I tried the AV (aperture priority) mode, thinking I could keep my shutter speed consistent and change my aperture to control the light getting in. Setting my aperture at 4.0 was, however, a great recipe for out of focus images with subjects moving so quickly over me. The lighting concept was right, but there was too much variation in light. Also I needed the higher ISO to get more detail in the dark areas in the trees. Overhead the aperture setting wouldn't allow for enough change to control the light getting in at that ISO.

So back to M, manual, my mainstay.  I could focus with one hand, and dial my shutter speed with the other.  My subjects were traveling about 500 feet in 16 seconds, or just over 31 feet per second. Setting my aperture to f/19 gave me a good depth of field to catch them in focus. I really needed a high shutter speed to freeze their movement. I found the 1/125 sec gave me a nice crisp image. That took care of both ends of the zip line in the wooded area. When they passed over my head 1/125 second was totally blown out, you could barely see the shape of a person in the brightness. Dialing my shutter speed up as they came out into the skylight to 1/500 or 1/750 gave me beautiful blue skies and still enough details in the shadows on my subjects to capture great expressions.

This was a new challenge for me. Actually this was a week of new challenges for me. I hope to share some more of them with you next week.

Have a great day. Go out and try something new and challenging!