Aldbourne is a little village on the outskirts of Swindon, Wiltshire that this year was celebrating its 100th anniversary of the carnival. It’s s pretty big deal for the village.
The doggy day was about raising money for the carnival, but also for raising funds for the charity SNDogs, a Swindon charity dedicated to re-homing dogs. It was a day of Great Danes, Labradors, pugs, the occasional grumpy jack Russell. There were so many dogs, I think I would be here for months just typing all the breeds out.
I was asked if I would create a video to promote the day and showcase the dogs. Of course I said yes, can’t resist a day to do some filming.
I knew I would need to be mobile so I took a minimal amount of gear. Listed below:
Canon 6D with Tamron 70-300 f4-5.6 VC
Canon 7D Mark II with Tamron 24-70 f2.8 VC
Manfrotto 504 tripod
GoPro Hero 3
Sony CLM V55 monitor
That was it.
My 6D was on stills duty while I used my 7D Mark II for video. An odd way round you may think. Surely the autofocus of the 7D Mark II would make it ideal for tracking fast moving dogs. You’re right it would, but this was my first real world test of the 7D Mark II and I wanted to see what it was capable of. Also there was a hell of a lot of bunting and lines and crosses everywhere, which meant that Moire on the 6D would have been atrocious. With the 7D Mark II, I only came across one shot with Moire, and it’s only because I was pixel peeping that I saw it.
The GoPro came in very handy when the heavens opened just after lunchtime. As weather sealed as the 7D Mark II and my 24-70 are, they weren’t going to put up with that level of downpour.
I managed to get a few shots of what was happening, including chasing the rabbit on a wire – which produced a wonderful shot of me flying over backwards as I was knocked out of the way by two lightening fast lurchers.
Check out the video below.