Sniper Photo, LLC has been a Cincinnati Event Photographer for the past 15 years. We have been providing event and commercial photography to Belterra Park since they opened.

Today we photographed various events surrounding Belterra Park’s first day of live horse racing for the 2019 season. It rained for hours before the first race, yielding a sloppy track. For those of you not familiar with horse racing, “Sloppy” is a technical term! Minutes before the first race, the sun came out and the rain stopped. The day alternated between cloudy and full sun minute to minute. Photographing horses is always fun. A muddy track always looks better in photos in my opinion. Snapping photos with the mud flying always looks great.

Photo Nerd Notes:

For those of you following along, the photos below were all taken with the new Panasonic Lumix S1. I used the 50mm F1.4, 24-105 F4 and 70-200 F4 lenses.

Autofocus did far better than I was expecting after reading online reviews. The camera and lenses focused perfectly for my needs. If I photographed ONLY sports and wildlife, I might stick with my Sony gear. Shooting mostly portraits, events and commercial I am seriously thinking about switching to the new Lumix system. The colors are simply amazing. Skin tones are perfect. Autofocus of fast moving race horses yielded a 90% hit rate. I used the autofocus mode that only focused on a horizontal set of focus points. Shooting in the padock and stable areas, I used the fancy AI autofocus with great success. The eye autofocus nailed the shots of jockeys covered in mud.

I have no complaints about the autofocus system so far. Currently, my only issue with the system is lens selection. I can’t wait to get my hands on some constant F2.8 zoom lenses!

Click here to read my ongoing review of the new Panasonic Lumix S1 camera