Hockey is hard
I had a chance to give the D2H and 70-200/2.8 their first sporting workout. Man is that camera fast! It was nice culling through the photos and eliminating based on bad lighting or composition rather than not in focus. I did my best to channel the great Winger, but the results were mediocre at best. The shots were noisy, and I knew WB and ice color in general would be a problem. For a first go, it went alright and I learned some good things about my new gear.
Keep 'em small to medium, and they look good. :lol3
Keep 'em small to medium, and they look good. :lol3
Since 2004...
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Erik,
VERY Sharp.
Are you using manual or shutter priority to shoot? Yours seems brighter, more crisp. Practice practice practice....!
here are a couple of my hockey shots....
Greg
All three taken with flash.
Erik, are you using a custom white balance? I know I need a lot of tweaking, but it sure is fun learning....
Greg
I experimented a bit - shot shutter at 1/250 (I've read this is optimal for mediocre rink lighting balanced with capturing motion) and upped the ISO until I got a decent exposure. Had to go up to ISO 800 until f/2.8 @ 1/250 was enough to get it right. This seemed to be going ok, but I too noticed the light wasn't perfectly consistent across the rink, so I switched to aperture f/2.8 and stayed at ISO 800. This gave me a range of 1/200 to 1/320. Seemed to work out a bit better.
WB - I was shooting all RAW, so rather than get crazy with a custom WB, I just set it to flourescent light, so I'd at least have the same setting on all the photos to batch process later based on one middle of the road shot. When it was said and done, I got the best results with 3750 to 3800 K with all shots - Flourescent was 3950 K, so pretty close actually.
I wouldn't call my shots all that sharp, but thanks! For a first go, i guess it was OK.
Most of your shots look like they were done through the rink glass (I shot up on the stands, down onto the rink, to avoid this). So please tell me, how on earth did you not light up all the scratches in the glass? Obviously the flash will 99% bounce off the glass before ever reaching the players. Not only will you not help your lighting of the players, but you'll cause all sorts of weird reflections from the less than perfect glass.
Even without glass in the way, I doubt a single onboard flash could reach that far. Someone correct me if I'm wrong here.
Erik,I was in the penalty box!. No glass in front of me. Used my 70-200mm f/2.8 IS Canon lens. I wasn't attempting to light up the whole area, just attempting to get more consistant lighting. I was experimenting with the flash (580ex). I think I'll try aperature priority next time and set it for 2.8 and allow the camera to adjust for the inconsistant lighting. I was also using ISO 800. Someday I'll get this right and my boys will be out of hockey!!!
I'm still using jpg for my pictures. I haven't gone the RAW route yet. Seems like a lot of extra work to me. I shoot around 500-700 pictures per game.
As for WB I've heard of people using custom WB for hockey pictures. Anyone have recommendations on how to best do this? I've read somewhere about using a coffee filter!!!???... Couldn't I just take a picture of a white jersey and then use that for my custom WB??
Thanks
Greg
And yes, Winger told me a few times that custom WB off the white jersey is the way to go on ice.
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and no yellow ice
Steve
yeah yeah yellow ice...........
once I get a chance to breath I SWEAR I am going to learn how to fix that.
you would need to come show me how to process it.
You have that kind of time.
or do i have that kind of time.
guess what I am doing on Friday, flying to San Diego, guess what I am doing Friday night, flying back....holy cow!
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I know you are totally on my "to do list"
shhhhh dont tell people that.
Signs of insanity. I am shooting no hockey this weekend
Hey, we're all insane and Doc is our leader
Did you go to the link Andy provided? It's got your pics and it's all about how to get the yellow out...
Steve
Yeah but I dont understand how to get to the layers thing.........
ITs the kind of thing I either need to be shown or talked through, which Andy so graciously offered, I just would have to call like at 2am or some other weird time.
And for the most part the off white ice doenst bother me. The photograhper for umass uses strobes, and the ice is way white, the colors are hot (and not the good hot, they are just really bright and dont look real) and sometimes the brigtness of the white jersey and the ice are difficult to really differniate from.
So I am more doing it for my customers. But I guess the players are wondering where the heck all the games are from Xmas on, because I havent posted many of them (except lowell, which the ice seemed to be ok)
You can imagine how thrilled I was to see this:
I shot it last year, I haven't made it to a game yet this year. ISO was 3200 I think, and it was shot THROUGH the glass! 20D and 70-200 2.8 non IS.
Keep at it, and I like the look from ice level rather then above.
Perfect Pix