my first sports outing

snapplejacks

went along to the armagh dublin game yesterdays. as i only had film camera i cant show any of my images but mianly i would like to discuss my experience.

ok, i have nikon f65 with sigma 1.4x teleconvertor and sigma f2.8 120-300mm lense...this was my only setup for the whole day (due to expense i have no other lenses except for sigma 28-70mm 2.8-4 which i didnt use as i didnt want to be switching about lenses. i am in process of saving for nikon d300 and another decent lense.)

well got my 2 films produced and as i only went with the hope of achieving 1 or 2 good shots i was quite happy. however about another 10 photographs could've been classed as good also but for certain mistakes...

trying to keep focus as action moved (this was the hardest part which then led to the following)
missed top of head
missed leg
difficulty in getting a good closeup sharp shot....

i enjoyed it v much though and hope to keep on learning and improving, i love sport and i love photography.

Paulw

First time is always an interesting experience. I know my first time at any new sport is a thrill. You are trying to anticipate things. Some images work, and some don't.

The main thing - you learn from your mistakes.

All you can do is keep trying.

Focus is always the hardest part. Some cameras have great tracking systems on AF. Other than that ... get used to it. There's no magic.

The most important thing - keep enjoying it.

Stephen

Might be worth investing in a monopod for shooting field sports. I've recently got a monopod and 70-200/2.8 nikkor that I really want to try some sports with

snapplejacks

i had monopod also.

i was aiming to take shots with aperture of 2.8 but it was too bright so i had to shoot at F11.

my main difficulty i found also was when the action was around the midfield i was looking forward to the ball coming in and reading the play but it was very awkward trying to fill my image with the player without cutting off some part of them...i can hopefully learn to get over this

City-Exile

snapplejacks wrote: »

trying to keep focus as action moved (this was the hardest part which then led to the following)
missed top of head
missed leg
difficulty in getting a good closeup sharp shot....

Try taking off the teleconverter?
It's very hard to learn on film.
I used to rush down to the 1 Hour Photo, just to see what I got, only to see all the mistakes & have at least a week to wait before I could try to correct them.

With digital, you can correct your mistakes during the game.

AnimalRights

Paulw wrote: »

Focus is always the hardest part. Some cameras have great tracking systems on AF.

Noob question probs but I tried to use manual lately as I thought that was the way too progress...
It's the button on the 450D near lens.
Or is this a totally diff type of thing you are ta;lking about.....

DSLR so many concoctions for a newb.

Eirebear

AnimalRights wrote: »

Noob question probs but I tried to use manual lately as I thought that was the way too progress...
It's the button on the 450D near lens.
Or is this a totally diff type of thing you are ta;lking about.....

DSLR so many concoctions for a newb.

Personally i wouldnt reccomend trying to manually focus when shooting sports.
You can be shooting off in bursts of 3-8 shots per second depending on what camera you use, if you can focus manually while doing that then you have a talent!

AnimalRights

Aahh thank you for explaining that for me, I'd never have known.



So when would one tend to use the Manual focus for? Buildings?