I know I haven't posted to my blog lately, but that doesn't I haven't been out photographing. Hopefully, I'll get some blog post done about my recent shoots. I've been busy photographing and post processing. The never ending job of post processing.... I post a lot of images on my Facebbok page before I get all the images done and posted to my website.
Anyway, a while back my neighbor, Shannon, asked me if I would be interested in photographing her daughters soccer game. Sam (#3), Shannon's daughter, plays on the Champlin Park Varsity girls soccer team. Shannon sent me their schedule and there were only two more days left to photograph it if I was gong to do it... 09-30-13 and 10-03-13.
On Monday, 09-30-13 I let Shannon know I would be able to do it, so she let the appropriate people know that I would be coming.
Although I never have photographed a soccer game I knew what my camera settings would be because I do photograph other sports...boxing, kickboxing and MMA events.
My concern was that I didn't have the proper lens...I would like to have the Nikkor 300mm 2.8 lens because it would give me a little more reach to cover the field while giving me the widest aperture. This was an evening game so it would get dark...in my other sports I shoot with at least a shutter speed of 1/1000 so I will often need to raise my ISO to 10,000. If I thought I would be photographing more sports on a field where I would need the additional reach, I would seriously consider getting the 300mm 2.8 lens.
One of my lenses is the Nikkor 70-200 mm 2.8. I shoot with this lens alot. I also have a 1.4 teleconverter that will give me 280mm but I lose a stop of light...f/4.0.
Since this was my first game I thought I should experiment with using the teleconverter with my long lens.
I usually shoot action photography with two cameras. My Nikon D4 is my primary camera and depending on what I'm shooting will either have my 70-200mm or my 24-70mm 2.8 lens. My second camera is a Nikon D700 that will have the other lens thats not on the D4. Since I will be shooting at a distance I will have the 70-200mm on the D4.
During the first half of the game I shot mostly with the teleconverter with the 70-200mm. I felt like the focusing was very slow and eventually I needed to raise my ISO up to 10,000 to get the proper shutter speed. During the second half I took off the teleconverter and just shot with the 70-200mm by itself. I was able to drop my ISO down to 6400 to maintain my shutter speed of 1/1000.
Well, here are a couple images, but there are many more posted to my website. I don't know how many times the girls have been photographed on the field so that's one reason I posted so many images. I'm sure the players would appreciate seeing themselves playing...
I also photographed the girls playing on Thursday, 10-03-13, but I haven't finished post processing those images.
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| Sam |
Champlin Park vs Minneapolis South
