One Game at a Time

Work has sucked lately.

I left early this afternoon and decided to watch the Maryland Softball game. It was a double header with Penn State and was nationally televised on CSTV. Jonathan Coachmen (from the WWF) called play-by-play. Unfortunately the Terps lost both games.

There were some great opportunities for pictures because there was plenty of light. The first game started at 4pm and the second game ended around 7:15pm. I was able to shoot f2.8 at about 1/250th towards the end. I attached my TC and that slowed me down to f5.6 but I could still shoot pretty reliably.

Unfortunately most of the batters for Maryland are right handed and the sun sets over their back. That makes it difficult to get face shots while they swing. Too bad they don't play early-morning games. However, the sunset does through great light onto the infield.

While driving home I noticed the lights were on at the baseball stadium. I thought about stopping by but I noticed it was only the 3rd inning and I was pretty hungry. So I kept driving and I noticed the lights were also on at Ludwig (the soccer field). I stopped and to my surprise it was a women's lacrosse game. I grabbed my bag and headed inside.

I walked out onto the field and started taking pictures. Fortunately nobody asked me what I was doing there (probably because I had similar equipment as the other photographers). I sat down and took a few shots. Shooting at night under the lights is really difficult. I still haven't figured out how the professionals do it - all of my shots come out grainy.

Anyhow, here are a few of my shots. I hope you enjoy them.

If you have some suggestions on taking less grainy pictures at night under the lights I'd like to hear them. I'm shooting north of 1600 ISO with a 200mm f2.8 lens with VR in active mode. I'm using aperture priority mode and my shutter speed is usually around 1/100 or 1/120.