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European Dog Sled Race Championship

Yesterday I spent a beautiful day with my honey, her sister and sister's boyfriend at "European Dog Sled Race Championship". Initially, we planned to be here only few hours and then go ski for the rest of day. But in the end, we spent here all day. What started as a misty and cloudy day turned to a bright sunny afternoon. Because we planned to go ski, I've taken only one camera with me (GX100). Luckily, I was wise enough to get two spare batteries and the additional memory card with me ;) GX100 once again proven to be a great universal camera. It especially shined in the situations where most photographers stuck with their 35mm or even 28mm lenses.

Because of difficult lightning and because of fast moving subjects, I decided to take all shots in full manual mode including manual focus. This was good choice for most of the shots. No matter how fast GX100 autofocus is, it cannot beat the Manual focus with preset distance. But of course, in some case it caused unsharp photos. From some strange reasons, some of the shots taken at maximum zoom (and Infinity focus) produced visibly unfocused photos. I'm planning to investigate this behavior.

Here are some of the first processed images from that day. As always, I have a lot of more to process ;)

I really like this one. It's RAW (as every other my Ricoh photos). But honestly, the JPEG looks more or less the same. There is only a bit less noise and slightly more burned sky in JPEG shot. Otherwise, it's exactly the same. The sky looks as processed with some kind of HDR treatment, but it;s not. It's just the camera ;)


I was so close to some dogs I was even able to smell their breath :D And as you can see, some of the dogs watched me with a great interest (probably as a possible object of dinner)..








There were a lot of guys there with a heavy photo gear (both pro or amateurs). I'm sure, they were able to get a lot of stunning photos with blurred background. But I was able to keep my camera in pocket without carrying a bag full of lenses and other photo equipment ;) I missed only one thing with GX100..fast continuous mode in RAW. Missing RAW continuous mode is probably the biggest disadvantage of cameras like GX100 or GRD. I really wish a reasonable buffer to be implemented in next GX or GRD (capable of at least 3fps and 3-5 shots in a row). This would make the Ricoh cameras a really unique photographic gear, even with small sensor!
 

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Awesome shots! You have done a great job capturing these images in the difficult lighting.

I really like the 2nd,3rd & 4th images.

2nd - this dog sure does look like it's sizing you up for dinner... or maybe he just knows a great camera when he sees one :lol:
3rd - I love the intense & focused look that the grey dog has on it's face.
4th - The lead dog looks so determined with a cold & steely fierceness in it's eyes!

The "Press" photographer looks to have a defeated look to his walk....but I'd agree that it's more like exhaustion from trudging through the snow all day with his heavy kit ;)

Jay
 
wow!...pavel what great shots well done!...the second picture is by far the best in my opinion i love the look in the dogs eyes.....the eyes of the dogs are blue and cold....can i ask why you did'nt use snap mode?....would this be easier?....cool shots buddy!
 
Thanks for comments guys! It was both fun and pain to shot in such variable lightning. Plus add the fast running dogs and you will realize that it was really tricky to shot in such crazy conditions. I really wish there would be at least 2-3fps continuous shooting in RAW. And at least 3 shots in a row. This would make the GX100 a really universal all around camera. I'm curious if Ricoh could allow at least 2 consequent RAW shots in GRDII with its dual buffer?

Mark, as for you question why not Snap mode, as far as I know, Snap mode should be focused to 3 meters? But I was often closer than 3 meters. So I found useful to set the focus manually to 1-2m. Unfortunately, sometimes I forgot to re-adjust the focus and as you can imagine, some of the shots (usually the shots with best composition and subject) ended up as completely soft and useless. I'm still banging my head for this, because I lost some great shots :(
 
i have taken shots in snap mode and the subject was about 1-2 meters away and because of the DoF(i usually set it to 4.1 at 24mm for best pic quality) is deep the subject was in focus....all of my street shots are in snap mode.....here is an example.......sorry if i have posted this pic befor
 

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snap is great if you want to take quick pictures and dont have time to focus on a specific point and recompose.....i just usually end up cropping as i mostly shoot from the hip....so to speak
 
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