Shots with the rented 100-400 Youth Football

Gringriff

Okay, so I rented the 100-400 for two weeks. So far I have tried a little baseball and soccer. I liked the extra reach for baseball but was not as happy with the results in soccer (DOF increased =bad backgrounds and extra reach was often lost by other players in the way).

Saturday I got to take some shots of youth football with this lens and really see how the extra reach is needed for football. There was pro there a SportsShooter member carrying two 1Ds, one with the same lens and the other with a 400mm f/2.8. Wow what a setup!

It was a cloudy day which helped.

Here are a few of the shots from the 7 an 8 year olds. This is my first REAL attempt at youth football (have tried HS from the stands - no field access) so please feel free to add any comments or suggestions.

1. This kid was strong for an 8 year old and broke a bunch of tackles.



2. I liked this even though I cut off his feet and hand (he was getting closer) because it has the ref signaling the TD n background.



3. Same kid a little later being drug down.



4. 4. Here the defense had him stopped so he decided to hand off to a team mate - It was funny but drew the Yellow Flag!



5. One in landscape mode - The local home team has two teams in each age division, and the blue teams are younger in each group so there were very a lot less Blue highlights.



6. Next three are not actions shots, but I tried to get the linemen too as they (and their parents) may want to see their pictures even if they are not the ball handlers - Do others try to make an effort include this kind of shot?


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Frog Lady

Andy, I think you did a nice job w/ these, especially exposing for the eyes in the helmet.

However, I think you might want to rethink using the 100-400 for soccer. That is my main go to lens in soccer. If you move around the field, you can usually get areas that don't have the opposing side line (but, depending on the field, it can be hard). Also, if you were shooting youngers on a smaller field, that might also bias your judgement. A 70-200 is too short for most of the action on the soccer field unless it's right in front of you (or unless you don't mind loosing lots of pixels to cropping).

cheers,

C.

cr8ingwaves

The parents of the linemen sure do appreciate photos of them. If you can get a couple of them blocking/tackling that is great too.
We make a DVD of the team to show at their banquet and give all of the boys moving up/out of the youth level an enlarged and framed action shot. this puts my focus on all team members and not just the ball carriers.

Our head coach uses my photos to see play development....you just never know.

Your shots look great.

Gringriff

Frog Lady wrote:

Andy, I think you did a nice job w/ these, especially exposing for the eyes in the helmet.

However, I think you might want to rethink using the 100-400 for soccer.

Thanks Colleen for the comments. You are probably right about rethinking the 100-400. I really want a longer lens and also considering the Sigma 100-300 f/4. I have been using the 70-200 with 1.4x which isn't bad for half the field for rec soccer. I did go the the JV and High School games last night to get a little more use from the 100-400 before sending it back. I had to use a high ISO 2500-6400 but stuck with it until midway through first half of varsity game then it was back to the 70-200 without converter and I just had to wait until they came to my side/end. It is very nice having more reach!

Gringriff

cr8ingwaves wrote:

The parents of the linemen sure do appreciate photos of them. If you can get a couple of them blocking/tackling that is great too.
We make a DVD of the team to show at their banquet and give all of the boys moving up/out of the youth level an enlarged and framed action shot. this puts my focus on all team members and not just the ball carriers.

Our head coach uses my photos to see play development....you just never know.

Your shots look great.

Thanks cr8ingwaves

That was my thinking too. It's always tempting to focus on the star players but there are a lot more linemen and linemen parents than RBs and QBs etc. I need to find better angles to get the blockers.

That's cool making those DVDs. I know the kids really enjoy those.

Andy