Fast!
Had a great afternoon walking around the lake with my family, as we’ve done plenty of times, but this time my wife’s friend brought her dog Duke which gave me the excuse to bring along the camera :)
So Duke is a balled bundle of energy in Spaniel form. I could tell from the way he was nosing around my house and garden that he had excitement to burn and boy did he!
So, I armed myself with my Canon EOS 5D Mark iv, my L series 100-400mm zoom and set the camera up to focus continually, freeze the action at 1/1000th of a second and take 7 frames per second (or so I thought).
Duke is really well trained, Anna, his owner, said he’d sit and wait for me to get some distance while I positioned myself flat on the floor (slightly higher up than I wanted due to the dad-bod) and began pointing the lens down the leafy pathway. Anna called him.
Now, I’ve been taking shots of my son’s rugby team for the last five years, some of them can run pretty quick, but nothing prepared me for the speed that Duke came belting towards me! I pressed the shutter release button and tried to keep the focus point centered on Dukes face. The camera then took a single frame and then a whole second later took another frame and then a second later another frame. “C#@p, wrong drive setting”.
Duke was about thirty meters away at the start, I caught two out of focus shots and a furry blur before he’d covered the ground and gone past me. “Fast!”
Take 2: AF Servo *ON*; “Check”, Highspeed Drive *ON*; “Check”
Lay back down, make promise to self to get fitter, focus on Duke (mechanically and mentally). GO!
This time I captured a string of frames of Duke in full flow, ears, jowles and tongue flapping away every step. I’ve learned through experience though that when you have captured a fast moving object once capture it again to make sure you have useable frames. So we shot one more run and I was happy with the days work.
I only get one picture on a Squarespace blog but I think the other three final shots are better than this one and can be seen HERE.