Celia Loc: Pine Canyon, Utah

I have a Nikon D7000. I plan to use a 18 to 200 mm and 150 to 500 mm lens. Would you shoot the rodeo action in auto, sports, or manual mode. Settings? I have a D5000 as a back up camera.

ace-mt Loc: Montana

Is the rodeo you are shooting inside or outside? If you are sitting in the stands, you will be able to use the 150-500, but if you are down by the fence it may be too much. I cant say much about camera settings without knowing how bright the arena will be, but I will say that the faster your shutter speed, the better. Good luck, and have fun.

CaptainC Loc: Colorado, south of Denver

C'mon man! How can we answer until we know outside/inside, time of day, what is the light like. Where are you going to shoot from? I Just completed a daytime rodeo with a D7000, but those settings won't help for an indoor or outdoor evening.

Help us out.

Onquest Loc: Just Wandering

If the rodeo is outside and you can get fairly close I'd use the short lens for the bull riding (those fellas don't move too far). In fact, I'd use the shorter lens for everything and wait for the action to come to me. Put the longer lens on the other camera and switch back and forth if necessary, but I wouldn't like to do too much lens changing as rodeos can be very dusty. If you're high up in the stands use the long lens obviously. If it is at night - well, high iso and the fastest lens you have. Oh, and aim for the slowest cowboy, lol.

Celia Loc: Pine Canyon, Utah

The rodeo starts at 6:30 PM. A lot of the events will be before it gets dark. Barrel racing and bulls will probably be dust to dark. I can stand where ever, as long as I'm out of the way.

Armadillo Loc: Ventura, CA

So, you plan to be the Clown in the barrel with a camera?

Good luck. :lol: :lol:

Celia Loc: Pine Canyon, Utah

That sounds like more fun than being outside the fence.

CaptainC Loc: Colorado, south of Denver

OK- thanks - that helps.

I would take both bodies with those lenses. Whoever said the bulls don't get far from the chute is correct. They come out and seldom get 50 feet away. Often, the best shots are from a position that uses the gate as the background - this is far less busy than having the crowd as the background and usually the crew and cowboys watching from that point add to the image.

That D7000 does pretty well at the high ISO and you will need it as the sun sets. If the arena has decent lighting, that will help, but you will want to keep that shutter speed at 1/500 or faster for the most part. Although some intentional blurring can be really cool if you get it right. I have some shot around 1/250 and those came out pretty well.

I generally shoot around f2.8-f4 and let the shutter go where it wants. For this you are far enough away that even 2.8 is not going to give you a critically short DOF and it tends to soften the BG a bit.

For barrel racing, I think the closer you can get to shooting when the horse and rider are at the halfway around the barrel point, the more lean there is to the horse and those are cool images.