First Football Frenzy of 2006...

A few offerings from my first football shoot of the New Year:

Some midfield dabblings...

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always so bright......How!

Supurb Gavin as always. Just incredible. I have a couple of questions for you. I was reading the other day your question and answer thread, and you said that you take a reading with your light meter before shooting. OK........here's the question (since I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed). When you take a reading with your light meter.....the light meter will tell you what shutter and aperture to set your camera at?
Or do you have to adjust it after you take the reading, take a couple shots to see where your at? And then do you continually take meter readings throughout the match/event your shooting? And does the light meter work for indoor readings as well as out......i.e. pretty much anything that you are shooting? Sorry to be such a novice.

All good. #3 has lots of raw energy!

Hi Gavin ,

I know I have asked this before , but just as a matter of interest what focus points point did you shoot these with . Oh and one other do you use the * to activate auto focus . Is the 300mm redundant now .On screen there doesn't seem a lot in it , between the 300 + 1.4 and the 400 but I am sure there must be .

These are just spot on

Happy New year by the way

Roy

Only one word can describe these pics.....Awsumstupendi​ous! NEW word I invented meang the VERY best.

Rick

Wonderful Gavin. Thanks again for more great photos.

You always amaze me gmen... If you look close on picutre #8, you can see the heat vapors from the heads of the players. Pretty neat

magical compadre... simply magical. 3 and 7 are a notch above in my book... cheers.

we call it soccer

The best advice is to get the exposure right in the camera - that seems to help optimise the 'pop' potential of the pic.

---- Gavin

Thanks very much Quasi! Yep, the meter will give an aperture and shutter speed combination for a chosen ISO. Therefore it's a simple job to extrapolate from that reading to give you the required aperture and shutter speed combination for the job at hand. For example, at a football match my preferred working exposure set is 1/1000s at f/2.8... the ISO is my variable and I'll simply change the ISO to give me that combo.

I will take a test shot or two just to see how the meter reading is working for bright highlight detail. Under some lighting conditions, I may need to tweak the exposure by a small amount, maybe 1/3 or 2/3 of a stop. I will also take several incident readings in different directions so that I can see how the exposure changes depending on shooting direction. I'll then tweak the exposure on the fly if need be. If I'm changing exposure on the fly then I'll generally use the shutter speed as my variable as that's quicker and easier to change than the ISO.

If the light is varying then I'll relate the meter reading to the camera's exposure reading from an area in the scene. Shooting sports this often means that I'll use the grass as a kind of grey card - I can then use the grass as my quick reference if I need to change exposure. If time allows I'll pull the meter out from time to time just to see how things are going.

If the light is changing rapidly - for example, a windy day with the sun in and out of the clouds - then I will sometimes take the camera out of manual mode and resort to Av. I'll still be thinking about the exposure though and dialling in a little bit of exposure compensation as and when it's needed. In these circumstances, I'll often try to shoot into the sun as this will enable me to stay in manual exposure mode... when you're shooting into the sun, the exposure when the sun is behind clouds can be very similar to the exposure when the sun is out.

The meter is ideal for indoor readings as the lighting will generally be constant across the playing area. One or two readings and you're ready to go. Obviously the meter is also ideal for metering manual flash as well - great if you're shooting hoops with flash for example and don't want to rely on the unpredictable ETTL metering system... and, of course, it's vital for metering when using studio flash.

I hope that's helpful.

---- Gavin

Hi Roy! Happy New Year!

Since the lighting was pretty good, I actually allowed the camera to use all the focus points for a lot of the pics. I also registered the centre focus point and switched to that as and when I needed to. If there hadn't been enough contrast for this to work successfully, I would have switched to the centre point only for all the shots - this is often the case for low-light shooting.

I don't often use the * button to focus as I simply don't find it a comfortable way to work. However, I do use the * button as the 'focus lock' via CF 4-2 - this enables me to switch betwen AI-Servo focus and One-Shot focus in a similar way to using CF 4-1 or 4-3.

I'll also use the focus preset facility on the 300mm or 400mm lens to enable me to rapidly switch focus to the goalmouth for example.

Strangely I often use CF 4-3 for cricket... it just seems to suit the sport and I find it to be a comfortable way to work in those circumstances.

EDIT: With regards to the 400mm over the 300mm + 1.4x combo... the 400m gives slightly faster and more accurate AF, allows me to work at a lower ISO (working at f/2.8 against f/4) and also gives a shallower DOF for the same distance which can help to give the images a bit more 'pop'... However, the 300mm will still get a fair amount of use. The 400mm is possibly too long for speedway (whern shooting from the centre green) for example and the 300mm is handholdable which makes it great for panning and for general shooting on a second body.

---- Gavin

Wow, Gavin. Your football images are always amazing. Was it an overcast day?

Your timing on these shots is amazing.

WOW.....Thanks so much Gavin, that helps tremendously!!! I'm sorry if you had covered all that in a previous post somewhere. I appreciate you taking the time to explain it all again to me. Your always an inspiration.