Shooting horses in action

[PoloBob]

I have a beginner's DSLR Canon T3i with 3 Canon lenses: EF-S 18-55mm kit lens, EF-S 55-250mm kit lens, and EF 50mm 1:1.8 prime. I also have a budget tripod.

I will be going to a polo match next week at 2PM and want to take action photos just for fun, not for publication and not for huge enlargements. The horses run fast and the players move fast. Assuming that the weather forecast is correct (hah!), it will be overcast with possible showers. The polo field is huge: 100 yards x 300 yards, and I'll be fixed in one place on the sidelines, under a tarp. I expect that I'll need to enlarge/crop after shooting. That's the least of my worries.

Is someone here willing to advise me on how to setup, what to use for settings, and anything else you can think of that might give me a better chance at getting one or two good shots? Please assume that I'm clueless and really appreciate lots of detail. If you want to direct me to a webpage with advice I can follow, that would also be great.

Thank you!!!

 

[wfooshee]

Forget everything except the 55-250. Shoot the fastest shutter and highest ISO you can get away with (although the T3i is a fairly old camera and not great at high ISO,) and shoot shutter-priority. Forget the tripod, too; you won't be able to keep subjects in the frame trying to move the camera around as much as you'll need to. Overcast means as much as three stops loss of light. You might add auto-ISO, but I don't use auto-ISO, I rather despise it, probably because I grew up on film and can't change how I "think." I'd forget auto-ISO on that camera, anyway.

If it's overcast, try to shoot faster than 1/200, but even then you're going to get motion blur at maximum zoom. For the sharpest shots, try to shoot when the subjects are closer.

I went to a horse-jumping show some years ago and shot these. The first was mostly sunny, 1/1600 at ISO 400, aperture ended up at f:7.1. The second was during rain, 1/100 at ISO 800 (as high as I was willing to go on my camera at the time, a Nikon D7000,) and the aperture came to f:4.8. In both cases I was about 60 feet away. It's pretty obvious that the rainy picture is not as sharp due to the much slower shutter speed.