A Night at Ice Hockey

bradkb · 6 Apr 2008

Wow, how hard? I knew it would be a wannabee togs nightmare taking pics at indoor events, but ice hockey, lighting is pants!

Thought I would try the 24-70 L that I hired from Stewart and my new 40D, but think I might have to invest in an 85 1.8? What do you think?

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Mr Bing · 6 Apr 2008

Mr Bing · 6 Apr 2008

i go and watch the mos all the time nice shots mate

bradkb · 6 Apr 2008

My brother-in-law bugged me to go for ages, but I didnt have a lens fast enough, thought I would give this one a try, overall was a good evening.

NorthernNikon · 7 Apr 2008

bradkb said:
think I might have to invest in an 85 1.8? What do you think?

I think a 70-200 2.8 would be by far a better sports lens. It's obviously not as fast as the 1.8 but the zoom will allow you to frame more easily and if it's not fast enough just crank the ISO up.

You're right though, Ice Hockey is very hard to shoot well, especially at smaller rinks where the lighting's poorer and the plexi-glass is filthy.

Mr Bing · 7 Apr 2008

that will be gillingham rink then filthy lol

bradkb · 7 Apr 2008

Yeah, could not believe how mucky the screens were... tried cleaning for all the good it did...!

dellipher · 7 Apr 2008

I went to ice hockey training sessions to take pics. I was always shooting handheld at around ISO 800/1600 - the lighting is shocking, even *** they're on a great big reflector!!!! LOL
I was using my k10d at the time, and a 70-300

Mr Bing · 8 Apr 2008

there toger is up the left hand corner and he goes on before and cleans the glass

tigerimages · 8 Apr 2008

NorthernNikon said:
I think a 70-200 2.8 would be by far a better sports lens. It's obviously not as fast as the 1.8 but the zoom will allow you to frame more easily and if it's not fast enough just crank the ISO up.

And I think it would allow you to reach the more central, better lit parts of the rink. These photos up against the boards are just too dark because they're starved of any light

Tiesse · 15 Feb 2009

I use my 30d with a Sigma 70-200 f2.8 lens at Milton Keynes.

My personal preference is to use an ISO of 1250, a white balance temperature of 3500k, with manual settings of 1/500 & f2.8. I always shoot RAW as whilst my settings are ok most of the time, occasionaly you get the lights recycling & there can be moments darker than others (this happens with the lights, but you cannot see it with the human eye!). RAW rescues this for me!

Once I am home from a game, I use Lightroom to preview & delete any poor images, only leaving the ones I want to keep. I then go onto Photoshop CS4, using a plug in noise filter (I have a few, but have settled with Noise Ninja).

I can then achieve acceptable shots as below (apologies for the watermark, it is a pre-requesite oif the team).