As much as I am struggling with the paper, I am still managing to get the job done, even enjoy it occasionally.
The Longford Show is one of those successful country shows that has managed to stay relevant and vibrant in an environment increasingly apathetic to “old fashioned” events.
“Get me a front” said Hamish, or editor for the day. Not music to my ears, but part of the job and I get that.
Walking in the gate, the journalist assigned and I were met with an equestrian event in action on the main oval within the first minute. The backdrop was “sideshow alley”, which to me encompassed the show entire. I said to Declan, “If she comes this way and jumps over those two jumps, I may have my shot”. She did and I did.
Job done within one minute of getting there?
Probably, but it is never that simple.
The journalist was looking for something else also and found it in the form of “flying dogs”, a team of mostly Border Collies trained to run a series of obstacles, grab a ball, then return as fast as possible.
This is River, a veteran champ.
The other end of the process.
Dodging an annoying light rain, we managed to get several dogs going through the motions. Hard to stop them actually.
Finn, in a late image taken after the main shoot as they warmed up, was so fast, I missed focus on most of the shots, something I am not used to happening these days.
After this I shot a lot of Basketball with an unusually high hit ratio, proving maybe that a holiday can make a difference?
The bulk of these were taken with the Sigma 30mm f1.4, usually at f1.8-f2 on an EM1x or EM1 Mk2, and it performed well, but I will not use it again for the following reasons.
Wider open in this light, the lens exhibited odd colour and contrast, so odd in fact I thought the EM1x had something unusual set like an ND filter or false EVF setting, maybe even an “art” effect applied. Focus was mostly good, with the odd series of misses, which it tended to hold tenaciously, but incorrectly.
Also its hood kept falling off. The hood is a piece of crap really, flimsy and loose fitting and a little bigger than needed, so that has to go.
The images processed very sharply and had decent contrast, but were inconsistent and processed a bit like jpegs. On top of that, the lens was a little long for my needs.
I used the 75 for one end of the court, the 30 for the near end, but the 25 f1.8 (closer to a 22mm in reality) would have been better, focus more predictably and not exhibit the colour oddness.
Finally, I unsuccessfully visited the local school athletics competition, arriving right at the wrong time, with little time to hang around between basketball games.
These were not even submitted as they were southern state girls and only two competitors in one event do not make a story.
Seems like everyone had their feet off the ground today.