Monday, March 3, 2008
Back to baseball... Kinda where this all started a year ago. After wrapping up women's basketball year I found myself looking for sports to shoot and baseball was really my first venture into the sports photography realm outside of the Comcast Center and women's hoops. I had some fun with it last year but I only had my 70-200mm f/2.8 lens along with a 2x teleconverter by the end of the season.
This year I'm back with a 400mm f/2.8 prime lens and I was looking forward to seeing how well it performed. I'm also strutting my stuff with a D2H. I was quite jaded and disappointed with the D2H and it's performance in low light situations like night time field hockey, soccer, and basketball. But outdoors it's a fantastic camera. I used it on the 70-200mm today and had great results. You can hardly tell the difference between it's shots and the shots from my newer D200.
My shots on the 400mm lens were very sharp. I was very pleased about that. I love day time games and the sharp a prime lens will get you.
It was pretty blustery and cold for today's March 1st game and I bumped into Greg at Shipley. Both of us were in our winter coats along with gloves and hats. He commented to me "you must be incredibly dedicated or incredibly stupid." I laughed and said it was the latter.
I had a good time shooting the first game but the real fun was in the second game when the sun got lower in the sky. It really put that wonderful light on the field that I enjoy working with so much. During midday games the sun is directly overhead and that creates shadows under the hats of the players. When the sun is lower in the sky you can see under their hats more and can catch their eyes if you are low enough.
Maryland took it to Hofstra in Game 2 and 3 with big-run innings, and ended up winning the series 3-1. Of course you can view my photos over at our DC Sports Box website.
