Thursday, May 10, 2012

Greyhounds fly at Gettysburg

On Sunday morning at GIG there were two speed runs held at the Gettysburg Recreational Park's baseball field. The speed runs lets owners run their Greyhounds from one end to the other within an enclosed, fenced area. (I'm guessing it was almost a couple hundred feet in length.) At the far end a person hold a radar gun to measure the Greyhound's speed as it approaches. Speeds measured in the 30-40mph range were common; the highest speed I heard recorded was 41.

I went to the second speed run, and stood about two-thirds of the way from the starting point. At first I had my continuous frame rate set to 3 frames a second, but then decided I switch to the higher, 5fps rate. In doing so I was able to get a number of Greyhounds with all four feet off the ground, with the dog at full extension (which is a characteristic of their double-suspension stride).

It's such an amazing thing to see:

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I used shutter-priority mode for these; the shutter speed was set to 1/2000 second, and the camera set the aperture to f/5.6 at ISO 400. Also, I used one focus area and tried to keep it centered on the dogs' body as much as possible. And I was also zooming out from the dogs got closer to me. I don't have any shots of the Greyhounds as they passed by: using the 70-200mm zoom at the 70mm setting was much too close for me to get the entire dog to fit within the viewfinder.

This is about as close as I'll get to see Greyhounds running full-out, unless I get the chance to go to a dog track, lure course, or NOTRA event.

13 comments:

  1. Those shots are just fantastic! It's so awesome when you can catch them in full flight, but it's hard to do.

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    1. i thought about shooting them in profile but i was too lazy to switch lenses. :P

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  2. These are amazing pictures. It is so hard to get a picture of the dog in full "flight" and you did it! They always look fantastic when you can capture just one moment of the run.

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    1. i always get anxious to see what i'll get. regardless of how long or short a speed run is i enjoy photographing the speed runs.

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  3. Awesome shots. I got the 7D for the 8fps, so I could get the kids running. I also use the single focus point for running shots. They are just so darn fast.

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  4. i have the battery grip which boosts the frame rate to 6fps, but it's more junk than i'm willing to carrying. but i am glad i brought my 70-200 with me: not that the 18-200mm wouldn't worked as well (it does), but i wanted an excuse to bring it since it hardly gets used.

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    1. thank you, but i don't get enough practice shooting them running. it's always a struggle for me to get something i'm happy with.

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  6. Stunning pictures! I knew you'd be there with your camera from reading your blog, but didn't see you. Now I know why - we were at the first run, and left before the second because our dogs were exhausted and by then we all wanted to go home.

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    1. ahhh...then i should have shown up at the first run, too. i would love to meet you and your hounds. next year, perhaps!

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  7. I'm still dreaming of getting a shot like that of Beryl ... but it's good to dream:) Trouble is she's always running directly at me, not in front of me. I suppose that's quite a good thing in a Greyhound:) Except when she crashes into me, lol! Gorgeous photos of happy hounds.

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    1. they have such fun running. and it's fun to see their expressions as they do so.

      i can offer some suggestions to you as to what i did to get these shots, if you're interested. let me know.

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    2. I'm very interested and would really appreciate any tips, thank you:) What I'd really like is for you to take some photos of Beryl running for me, lol!

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