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A beautiful day with the sun shining and actually feeling warm meant I packed light and went up on my motorbike with everything in a smallish backpack. This is definitely the way to travel to any decent-sized sporting event - you can leave late and know you're going to get there on time, and then park straight outside the venue.
The good light meant that I went for my 300mm 2.8 with the 1.4x extender on giving a 420mm F4. Whilst 300mm is an excellent range, you do miss quite a bit of action around halfway when sitting at the end. However, if shooting from the side the 300 is excellent.
Another interesting challenge was that the strong sunlight brought big shadows (which I planned to use to my advantage as the afternoon wore on). However, going from 1/5000th in the sun to 1/500th in the shade meant I was happy to put it in Av mode and let the camera sort things out. I'd positioned my stool early, a bit like the Germans and their towels, to have a minimum of potential of players in shadow and the stand behind in bright sun with all the exposure issues that results in.
#1 Obligatory manager shots for stock archive
#2
#3 I'm sure they send these on to distract all the photographers
#4 Andy Gomarsall had an excellent game as usual. I was shooting tethered to my laptop for all the in-game action which lets me scan the shots full-screen when the action is down the other end, pick the best ones, then crop, adjust etc before sending them off. I use Canon Utilities for the tethering, and the pics are auto-imported straight into Lightroom with keywording, IPTC data etc, and then I use the Lightroom FTP export plugin to zap the pics off. The import function includes addition of a tadge of clarity & contrast during the import which saves me doing it manually, leaving a simple crop and player identification as the only manual tasks. Very clean and simple workflow that is fast & efficient.
#5 Eye there Jim lad. Strange expressions are great.
#6 Gloucester have to be one of the most agressive & physical sides I've seen this season.
#7 I'm always on the look-out for interesting stock shots of players. The late sun was shining in a rather cool shaft across the pitch so whenever a player walked into it I'd dial down -2 exposure comp and take their picture. You end up with shots like this which are very cool.
#8 Harlequins scored a try with 5 mins to go to win the game. I'd removed the extender by this time so had the right reach for the close stuff.
#9 After the try I packed up and moved to the sidelines to get some pics of the managers. I wanted to have both of them in shot. A bit still to learn here as I'd left the aperture on 2.8 when it really should have been 5.6 or smaller. Still, Dean Richards is so recognisable in profile it still (just) works. Another lesson learnt.
Cheers
Tobers
The good light meant that I went for my 300mm 2.8 with the 1.4x extender on giving a 420mm F4. Whilst 300mm is an excellent range, you do miss quite a bit of action around halfway when sitting at the end. However, if shooting from the side the 300 is excellent.
Another interesting challenge was that the strong sunlight brought big shadows (which I planned to use to my advantage as the afternoon wore on). However, going from 1/5000th in the sun to 1/500th in the shade meant I was happy to put it in Av mode and let the camera sort things out. I'd positioned my stool early, a bit like the Germans and their towels, to have a minimum of potential of players in shadow and the stand behind in bright sun with all the exposure issues that results in.
#1 Obligatory manager shots for stock archive
#2
#3 I'm sure they send these on to distract all the photographers
#4 Andy Gomarsall had an excellent game as usual. I was shooting tethered to my laptop for all the in-game action which lets me scan the shots full-screen when the action is down the other end, pick the best ones, then crop, adjust etc before sending them off. I use Canon Utilities for the tethering, and the pics are auto-imported straight into Lightroom with keywording, IPTC data etc, and then I use the Lightroom FTP export plugin to zap the pics off. The import function includes addition of a tadge of clarity & contrast during the import which saves me doing it manually, leaving a simple crop and player identification as the only manual tasks. Very clean and simple workflow that is fast & efficient.
#5 Eye there Jim lad. Strange expressions are great.
#6 Gloucester have to be one of the most agressive & physical sides I've seen this season.
#7 I'm always on the look-out for interesting stock shots of players. The late sun was shining in a rather cool shaft across the pitch so whenever a player walked into it I'd dial down -2 exposure comp and take their picture. You end up with shots like this which are very cool.
#8 Harlequins scored a try with 5 mins to go to win the game. I'd removed the extender by this time so had the right reach for the close stuff.
#9 After the try I packed up and moved to the sidelines to get some pics of the managers. I wanted to have both of them in shot. A bit still to learn here as I'd left the aperture on 2.8 when it really should have been 5.6 or smaller. Still, Dean Richards is so recognisable in profile it still (just) works. Another lesson learnt.
Cheers
Tobers
