Lens: 21.0mm, 1/160s, f/2.8, ISO: 800
This image is the best individual full-on action shot that I managed to get at the tournament (in my opinion). And, I have to admit, it was a complete fluke. I didn't realise I had it "in the can" until looking at the images a minute or so afterward. Chris Broughton in the foreground and Mike Hoy flying through the background. He get's so high! Technically the photograph is pretty rubbish - only Chris is sharp(ish) and Mike's foot is almost out of the frame plus he's right out of the field of focus. You can see the area of focus by looking at the in-focus detail on the mats. However, it looks cool which counts for a lot!
Lens: 85.0mm, 1/160s, f/1.8, ISO: 250
I love this image of Mark Trotter performing a high twisting kick in Moon Moo. There's a few nice things that make this image work well in my opinion. His body angle to the camera is nice, Mark is looking up, I caught the kick near it's highest point, and the red/black line across the bottom right of the image matches his kick angle and adds symmetry and contrast.
In many of the images I took from the balcony above on Sunday, I've now realised that the camera's auto-focus has snapped onto the joins in the mat meaning that when I blow this up you can see the veins in Mark's right foot (his toe nails are clean) but his upper-body is out of focus. The Canon's auto-focus looks for high contrast items in the image focus area and uses them to assist focusing and the Canon processor just loved the detail in the mats from this angle. :-( So in future I need to manually override the auto-focus in images such as this... I wonder if I'll ever remember that in the heat of the moment.
Hint: I often use the detail in mats when manually focusing, eg when taking a photo of someone doing a high kick coming directly towards me I'll turn off auto-focus and manually focus on the mats at the point where I'll take the image of the jumper.
