Tandem Bicycling Photographs

I waited seven years for digital camera technology to improve to the point that I would purchase our first digital camera.  I was a 35mm SLR fan since I was 13 years old, so point-and-shoot cameras were simply not an option for me.  We bought the 10D six months before the tandem rally, and I spent much time shooting with the camera and learning its many features.  That included reading and re-reading the owner’s manual!

The 10D is a more robust version of the digital Rebel, and is the predecessor to the 20D.  Its CMOS sensor is 6 megapixels, and lenses are interchangeable.  The removable lens is important to me because I also use the camera for astrophotography with my 12” LX200 telescope.

Canon EOS 10D SLR and equipment

The Camera

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The Digital Camera

Meet Greg & Judy through their OLD Web pages from the last century!

Three other pieces of equipment were pressed into service on the day these rally photos were taken.  The fill illumination was provided by a Canon 550EX strobe using E-TTL, sitting on the hot shoe.  High speed sync was selected and flash exposure compensation was +1/2.

Image storage is the job of the Lexar 512 Mb compact flash card.  Shooting at the highest quality JPEG format, I have the capacity to shoot 190—200 shots before inserting the spare card and the spare lithium-ion battery.  In between tandems, I would review my work to check my exposure settings and make any corrections.  Any bad photos would be deleted on the spot, so I never got close to filling up the card.

My lens of choice is the Canon EF 28-135 IS zoom.  It is image stabilized, but that feature was turned off for the moving tandems.  By reviewing the EXIF data for the individual tandem shots, I see that I was varying the zoom on the lens between 50mm and 80mm.  On the 10D camera, the conversion factor for the CMOS chip is 1.6, so my equivalent focal length comes out to be 80 — 128mm.

On this day, I was shooting shutter-priority, 1/500 second, with the ISO set to 200.  Partial metering gave me apertures from 8.0 to 4.5.  Autofocus was AI Servo.  As a last note, internal parameter settings adjusted the contrast to +2.