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Manual focus for MTB photography?

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Manual focus for MTB photography?

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flag Oscarider
Posted: May 18, 2016 at 9:31 Quote
Thinking of buying some fast vintage primes for bike photography, but there will obviously be no AF. Does anybody shoot with out it or any tips?
flag k-p-v
Posted: May 27, 2016 at 15:56 Quote
Just started using a manual focus 85mm Samyang prime on my Sony a6000 and it's not that hard to get decent results even if the depth of field is really narrow.

The best tip is to pre focus on the spot where you think the best shot will be, and once you have a good feel for the focusing action you should be able to chase the action a little and focus as they move, I'm still working on that one though.

If your camera can do it, I'd suggest turning on focus peaking, it will highlight the in focus areas of the image and really helps.

In terms of other settings, I tend to use full manual mode with a shutter speed of 1/1200 ish and auto ISO limited to 6800 or whatever you can get away with.

I uploaded a few pics to my profile yesterday, all the telephoto ones in my latest album were shot this way.
flag Oscarider
Posted: May 28, 2016 at 1:19 Quote
Was that all the borderline dh round 2 in llangolen, if so, nice photos mate! Ive got an a6000 as well, and I was thinking of using my minolta 50 1.7 and setting up the shot beforehand and setting the focus for where I'd like to get the sharp shot, then just using the 11fps to make sure that one of the frames is in the in-focus area. I'm not sure how effective the tracking will be so I'll experiment.

Were ALL the 'telephoto' photos in that album with the 85mm because some of them seem a lot tighter in, or were they cropped? I say this because I just bought a vintage 135mm 2.8 thinking that it would be a good tele focal length after crop factor, but looking at some of those 130mm equivalent (after 1.5x crop factor) looks plenty tight for my needs.

Cheers for the info
flag k-p-v
Posted: Jun 1, 2016 at 12:27 Quote
Sorry, been a bit too busy riding to reply - weather was just too nice Big Grin

I've only got the kit lens and the 85mm (127mm on a6000) so yeah all the telephoto ones were with that lens. It's actually quite a comfortable distance for most tracks as they are generally taped really wide at the interesting parts these days, so you'll be 3-4m back to start with. As a rough indication - to get a rider to fill the frame with that lens you'll be the best part of 8-10m away from them.

Some of the shots were cropped a little - nothing too extreme though, just a wee bit of trimming here and there to remove the odd spectator or piece of litter.

I'd imagine that with a 50mm and a 135mm you'll have something to cover most spots that you choose, the only problem I find sometimes is when you are stood a way back from the track in order to get the whole rider in and spectators start walking in front of you Madder

edit: don't be afraid of pushing the ISO right up too, I've had good results even at ISO 12,800 !!!
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