Here's one from the weekend. Man I need to move to outdoor events only. Next weekend I'm in an even darker venue

I think it looks pretty good considering that it was shot at ISO 1600 and cropped to about 10 percent of the frame. The only really objectionable noise was on the red stripe along the bottom of the wall. A little bit inside the tunnel too, but not so bad. One pass of Noise Ninja on "auto pilot" was good enough for me.

It won't make a 30x40 canvass, but its fine for what the agility folks buy.

I got a little sloppy with the sharpening, but that's what I get for working on pictures so late.

With the faster dogs, 1/350 wasn't enough so I ended up at ISO 6400 for most of the weekend. Those turned out OK too.



Camera Make: NIKON CORPORATION

Camera Model: NIKON D3

Image Date: 2009:05:09 07:11:15

Flash Used: No

Focal Length: 85.0mm (35mm equivalent: 85mm)

Exposure Time: 0.0029 s (1/350)

Aperture: f/1.4

ISO equiv: 1600

White Balance: Auto

Metering Mode: Center Weight

Exposure: Manual

Exposure Mode: Manual

Comment: (C)JIM_POOR

Jim,
that's a nice shot. I think that shooting fast-action sports like dog Agility indoors, available light, with high ISO and wide-open apertures is the most difficult thing you can do for not enough money! It's just so hard to get enough in focus for a sellable image.

What are the Agility folks paying these days for a typical image?

Jim

Thanks Jim,

Day one of this event was enough to make me consider foregoing all indoor events for the future! Then, once I started looking at the images, it wasn't as bad as I thought.

Still, I'd rather book the outdoor stuff. I'm down from right at 16k for the two days to just under 7k now. That will probably get cut in half again as I go through each class and post the galleries if the first few classes are any indication. The culling and sorting goes much faster for an outdoor event for me.

Someone mentioned flyball tournaments to me which are all indoors. The only way I'll do those is if they let me use some sort of light on the turn box.

My prices for dog sports are a little higher than many local photographers but not quite as high as some. One fairly well known shooter charges twice as much as I do for a 4x6, but the same for an 8x10.

Since most of the agility folks seem to stay in the 4x6 and 5x7 range, I may raise my prices on the smaller sizes once I'm a little more established.

Right now, I am charging $9 for a 4x6, $12 for a 5x7 and $20 for an 8x10. The exception is this event, where I have $10 for a 5x7. Not sure how it slipped by me when I made the list, but folks have ordered already and that means I'm pretty much stuck there.

If 10% of the exhibitors would buy just one 5x7 from this event, I'd be tickled.

This is the largest event I've done so far (potentially bigger one coming up next weekend) so I don't know if it will hold, but I've been running around 20% of exhibitors placing at least a small order.

The real trick is to get the on-site sales going. I'm working on that from two different directions but it is slow going.

Does that include shipping? Is there a minimum order amount?

Will they let you set up any monolights with long throw reflectors around the ring?

You can't use flash on agility courses

Hi Preston,

No, that does not include shipping. I give a break on shipping to people that order in advance at a portrait event, but I don't think I'll be able to do that for dog sports.

I've talked to several judges and trial chairs about light sources.

The darkest facility I shoot at (so far) has agreed to let me put up construction lights since they are always on rather than flash, but we'll have to do a test run and clear it with the judge(s) for each event.

I may throw them in the car for next weekend and see if the opportunity to use them presents itself.

Flash of any sort is pretty much not going to happen. The one possible exception may be flyball where things are so chaotic that the dogs aren't going to notice anyway. Still there are a lot of folks deeply rooted in "the way things have always been done," so even that might be a stretch.

Honestly, I think I'd rather have a decent always on light source for this type of event. No worrying about recycle times that way.

I flinch every time I see flash pop during one of these events thinking I'll get the blame. Once it happened right over my shoulder and I just knew I would get blamed for it, so I made it very clear who did what at that point.

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You can't use flash on agility courses

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OMG that is so funny! I cannot get the cat agility visual out of my head. Think I should set up a course now!