anglefire:I did an indoor event last year - it was pretty badly lit so I used a 85mm f1.8 lens on my 5D - and ISO1600 to get the shutter speed up to around 1/800 - 1/1250 @f2. I could also get pretty close, so a long lens wasn't needed - but you might find it different.
If you are outside, then a longer slower lens will be fine as long as the weather is half decent!
Totally agree. One of the hardest things is to photograph a dark horse in an indoor school. It may seem quite bright but pretty much 99 times out of 100 it's not bright enough.
Just make sure you don't spot meter on a dark horse.
The way I usually do it is the cheats way. I crank up the iso quite high 1000-2000 ish and take a few shots using overall metering. When I'm happy with one of the shots I look at the exif data and set my camera to manual with those settings.
Outdoors is a piece of cake comared to indoors but watch for distracting things/people in the background ruining your shot. Even in overcast conditions, the light should be bright enough to get a decent shot.
Having a horse-mad horse-owning wife means that I have to go to events and things on quite a regular basis (being dragged to Blair Atholl 3 day event later this year) and one of the things that I'm always told is that there are certain shot's which the riders/magazines want to see.
When jumping they want to see the horse between leaving the ground and midway over the jump. They don't like the shot's where the horse is on the way down or has landed with the front feet down. (unless you catch an amazing expression or something). The other ones they like is when the horse is moving and all 4 legs are off the ground.
Anyway..... have fun with it.
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