Limassol Carnival 2023, part 1

The annual local carnival hadn't took place for the last two years due to Covid restrictions, so this year everyone was really excited about it and the amount of participants was much higher than usual. For me it was a first carnival I've ever been to, and a chance to do some casual event photography after a long time.

The atmosphere was fantastic, it was like a huge party where everyone is having fun. People were happy to be photographed and I enjoyed communicating with them, asking for a picture or just giving them a thumbs up. All of this while the music is pumping and people are shooting confetti, serpentines, foam and whatnot.

I got carried away with my last post (trip to Belgrade) and probably posted too many photos at once, so this time I'm going to split the pictures between two or three posts.

I brought my 18-55 and it worked perfectly for this kind of occasion. I had a 50-230 in the backpack but didn't found a use for it.

Something I learned is that my usual setting of auto shutter speed was not a great idea and setting it to at least 400/500 of a second would have worked much better to freeze the action. I could have also shot with a wider aperture for more separation but a combo of X-E3 and 18-55 didn't fill me with confidence in terms of AF. I mostly used zone + continuous but it obviously missed some shots. A single point should have helped but with everything moving so fast (and some heads of spectators in front of the subjects) I'm not sure it would have worked better. Any advice regarding which settings would you use for something like this? Any other feedback would be welcome as well.

A pirate selling his treasures

Preparations

Just look at these happy smiles!

This guy looked really cool

One of the cases of slightly missed AF, which focused on the jacket instead of the face. However, when I zoom in the photo on the camera to check the focus point it zooms to her face

'such fun'

Some of my favourite looks I saw that day

Great idea for a costume if you are really late for the event!