Hints for Rodeo shoots

[S J Fry]

hi just want info about some difficult photos that i want to get good at , i want to photo rodeos at night, i have a fuji s5 pro with a 80- 200 opens to 2.8, apriceate any info.
kindest regards steve

[Fantasyphoto]

Just hope they turn on a lot of lights, I have only shot one night rodeo and the conditions were basically impossible......1600 ISO.... f/2.8 and 1/8 second

[Fantasyphoto]

Just as an afterthought I have shot the bull riders with flash on a dull day, the first shot usually gets the bull's attention and the next shot is usually of a hind leg aimed straight at you so be careful

[MarkChap]

Yeah, hard game that rodeo at night,

For good rodeo picks you really need to keep your shutter speed high, minimum 1/250 but faster is better, you are not going to achieve that at night.

Have been watching a lot of rodeo here of late, all the photographers use flash at night, although I doubt your on-board flash is going to be much help.

As i said, tough gig that one

[Outlaw]

I took these at Great Western Rodeo at night ...




It is very hard to get a good shot at night ...

[Fantasyphoto]

I took these at Great Western Rodeo at night ......

Not bad, next time try it with off camera flash either with a sync cord or transmitter/receiver. That should get rid of all those "evil" eyes.

[MarkChap]

Yeah pretty good effort,

When were you at the Western ??, did you have access to the ring for those, they look like you did, so jealous if you did

[AndreaB]

I love shooting at the Rodeo, but night ones sure make it challenging. i don't have any fast equipment, or flashes, so I did my best with a high ISO.

[Outlaw]

Yeah pretty good effort,

When were you at the Western ??, did you have access to the ring for those, they look like you did, so jealous if you did

This was last yr... I was at the rails not in the arena ...them their bulls run faster than me...lol

[Johno]

Hi,
I just shoot the Newman rodeo a couple of weeks ago and had to bump the ISO up to 1600 and use my 580EXII flash and they come out alright with the 80-200 found the quality better when you filled the whole frame with the bull so you didn't have to crop so much out later to try and reduce the noise a bit. Will try to get some to put up.

[James T]

I would talk to the organisers and see about rigging up a couple of flashes, high up, either side of the arena using radio to trigger them. You could then move around the arena to effectively change the position of your flashes.

I don't know what the riders / bulls think of flashes going off constantly though.

[Wayne]

I had a media pass to the Isa Rodeo last August, and daytime is fine, fast shutter, bump up ISO if overcast and you can get sharp shots, however night riding was different all together. Even in a first class stadium with fairly good lighting, fast enough shutter speeds to get crisp shots were impossible under ambient light, flash was the only option, the organisers however prohibited the use of flash by media and said flash on P&S by patrons was fine (as it was useless) and we could use our inbuilt flash if we wanted to.
I had the D3 so no lights for me. Basically once it got too dark for the f2.8's to get decent shutter speed, the media area was quickly emptied as we all went home. The organisers were asking for night shots at the end of the event, and they got very little that was of any real quality/use.

I'm again attending this year, and will try to get permission to set up a couple of remote strobes, but I'm not holding much hope.

[OzzieTraveller]

G'day SJ

I've done the Emerald Q rodeo at night some time back and got some great results - tho not as great as in daylight. With "pretty ordinary showground floodlighting" I was using exposures of 1/15 - 1/60sec at f2.8 at ISO-400, metered at -1/3EV to overcome metering errors over the arena. You will get lots of movement and drama in the pics as well

I suggest that you give it a good try, take lots of pics and keep the best 10%

Hope this helps a bit
Regards, Phil