First Try At Hockey

Hi Everyone -

Here are a couple of shots of my son playing hockey. Shooting hockey is hard!!!! Please C&C!!! These were taken with my Sigma 70-300. I've found that some rinks are much better to work in than others and that the Sigma lens really likes a lot of light. Any pointers would be very appreciated!

Thanks!
George

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Good job especially for a first try at hockey. The lighting really makes hockey tough. There is plenty of posts on ice hockey in the forum with tons of info. I prefer your second two shots as they depict action and are more exciting to me. It appears that you are shooting through the glass which is my prefered method but it also makes the light situatuin even more difficult. The exposure is by far the best in the first shot. The last shot has a pretty good red tinge to the ice but this can be corrected in the future by setting a custom white balance.

Looks like a decent start to me. I'd say work on capturing the action a little. 2 & 3 are good in that regard. Aside from the missed focus on 3, it's a good shot. 2 is my favorite of the three. Good action and the focus is on. I was going to recommend you try your 50 1.8, but looking at the EXIF data, you did just that on 2 & 3. A faster lens is a big plus in the lighting available with most rinks. I have had good luck recently with the 70-200 2.8, but before I picked up the L version of that lens (with the wonderful USM focus), I used the 50 1.8 and 85 1.8 in my kit a lot. You may get other (and much better) advice on this issue, but I find AWB works well in a rink. I tried using custom WB, but the results weren’t very consistent. Maybe I need more practice! The other thing is to shoot in Shutter Priority. I saw you were using Aperture Priority according to the EXIF data. I tried that shooting gymnastics this passed weekend on a recommendation I read here. I opened the lens wide and just let the cam select the best shutter. It was fine for the most part, but there were a few times the shutter dipped too low. I guess it's six of one, half dozen of the other on what will work there. In my mind, you can PP a pic that was a little under exposed and still make it useful, but it's is pretty hard to PP out motion blur caused by a slow shutter. I'll stick to Tv or M for the fast action stuff. YMMV!

#2 is really good. caught action and caught faces.

#1 shows the limits of your gear. at f5, ISO 800 your shutter speed (1/80) is too slow to capture movement, and your shot is of stationary skaters. I agree with Lacks_ that a 70-200 f2.8 would help you a lot. As your kid gets older (and skates faster) you'll need it.

#3 is focused on the boards behind the skaters. I've had this problem in lots of my shots. Make sure you're in servo focus, center focus point only, and accurately track the skater. Custom function 4-1 helps a lot, but takes practice. A faster focusing lens helps avoid this problem.

White balance -- #3 shows how hard this is in hockey. The rear left & the players are at about the right color but the foreground ice is too pink. The light varies in time & space in the rinks. Lacks_ may be right about AWB; I stick to custom and sometimes have to make adjustments in photoshop. I try to use a long exposure for my WB shot to average out the light cycles. I'm not sure there's any right solution.

great start, hockey is a fun challenge.