[Dan 1038]

I've been shooting FRC for two years with a Canon Digital Rebal (v1.0, 6.3MP) and cheap Canon lenses (an 18-55 f/3.5-5.6 and a 70-300 f/4-5.6) with decent results. My pics from this year's Midwest Regional are at www.frcpics.com. I have been shooting at mostly 1600 ISO in RAW format, when I shrink down the resulting jpegs the noise from the high ISO is vastly reduced. I like action shots of the robots and the drive teams, so the shutter speed is the key element for what I am trying to do, I shoot for at least 1/200 to help stop the action. Concerning white balance, I find the regional fields work best under the incandescent setting, while the Georgia Dome is a lot brighter and likes the cloudy setting. The beauty of RAW is the ability to easily adjust the white balance and exposure in Photoshop prior to publishing.

I just stepped up to the new Canon D40 with a pair of lenses I hope will make this easier, a Canon 28-135 f/3.5-5.6 IS (Image Stabilized) for general shooting an a Sigma 50-150 f/2.8 for the action shots. Stay tuned for pics!