I finally went to a rodeo!  Never before had I been to one and I gotta say, those things are pretty exciting!  Eileen and I along with our good friends Valerie, Theresa and Ellen went to Forth Worth to watch the weekly Stockyards Rodeo over the weekend and it was a blast!  I've seen rodeos on TV, but nothing beats watching them in person.  And, seeing guys like this one holding on for dear life while a pissed off horse tries to throw him off is a thrill!  Those animals are so powerful that I think it takes an extra special amount of crazy to do this.

This shot is one I took with the Fuji X-T1 and 50-230 lens.  That camera and lens combo isn't really suited for low light indoor action shots, but I bumped the ISO way up to 6400, kept the aperture all the way opened and set the shutter speed to 1/500 to help freeze the action a bit. I would've preferred 1/1000 shutter speed, but that made the resulting image really dark.  I would've had to bump the ISO even higher to 12,800 and with the Fuji camera, it won't allow for raw at that ISO setting, only jpg.  It worked pretty well at ISO 6400 even though it is a bit noisy.  But the expression on this guy's face is fantastic so I can deal with the noise.

Can't wait to go to another one and then I can say, "This ain't my first...!" :-)

Oh and thanks for being a great host once again, Ellen!

 
Exif data:

Camera - Fujifilm X-T1
Lens - Fujinon XC50-230mmF4.5-6.7 OIS
Focal Length - 107mm
Aperture - f5.6
Exposure - 1/500
Exposure program - Manual
ISO speed - 6400
Exposure bias -0 EV
Tripod - No
HDR - No
# of brackets - NA