Rugby Union: Leicester vs Bath

Well done Tigers on beating Bath in the Guiness Premiership semi-final at the Walkers Stadium yesterday. Roll on Northern Irish in the final.

I took my 450D + 70-210mm lens along yesterday and tried my hand at shooting rugby for the first time. I'm fairly pleased with the outcome, although I'd have liked a 70-200 2.8 IS!

Feedback v welcome, here's some of my shots:

Can't complain about the quality. Your position in the stands doesn't really lend itself to some good angles. You should have kept it at about f/4 and f/5 for faster shutter speeds to eliminate the motion blur.

Thanks for the feedback Glenn. I'd noted the action could have been frozen a little better too and yeah, the seating position wasn't the best.

I was wary of opening the aperture too much as, whilst it's a good lens, it does suffer from purple fringing wide open. As such I decided on TV mode and set my shutter speed to 1/320 to minimise camera shake. With hindsight I should have pushed the ISO a bit more to allow a slightly quicker shutter without opening the aperture fully.

All part of the learning curve!

If you crop your images down they'll be much better - there's too much wasted space around them. You also need to keep your horizons level and if the opportunity ever presents itself, try and shoot from nearer the field (for the lower angle of view rather than the obvious better reach of your lens).

ALWAYS shoot wide-open for sport. 'Shutter priority' is a mistake many make using cameras for sports photography. Shoot wide-open, and adjust your ISO to manipulate your shutter speed until it's high enough - MINIMUM 1/640th, preferably faster.

Thanks Dan, but as posted above, shooting fully wide open would cause me a serious headache.

The 70-210 f3.5-4.5 develops blue/purple fringing at high contrast edges. It can be removed fairly readily in PS by desaturating blue/magenta on a Hue/Sat adjustment layer mask if it's an edge between, say, green or red and white but would be exceedingly tedious to do properly on a blue/white edge like Bath's strip.

I'll definitely try a faster shutter speed next time and try to compensate with ISO to keep the aperture wide but not fully open.