One Game at a Time

The women's game concluded with plenty of sunlight and the men took the field at around 7pm.

We're just about at the point where days are getting noticeably shorter now, but there is still plenty of light around between 7pm and 8pm. Beyond 8pm it starts getting pretty dark and the stadium lighting is needed in order to shoot.

Larry shuffled off to process his photos of the Majestics but I stayed behind to cover the final home game of the Royals. Tonight's match up against the Reading Rage started out well with both teams competing to win their last games of the season. Tough competition makes for good shots, and I was excited to be there for the final game.

When the sun gets really low in the sky you have to shoot with the sun to your back. You simply can't shoot into the sun when it's low in the sun even if you have a lens hood and great glass. There's simply too much light entering the camera directly from the source rather than from bouncing off of your subjects. If you try to shoot towards the sun you will overexpose and your subjects will be completely out of focus.

This makes it challenging when covering late day games and you're trying to specifically target one team. If that particular team isn't shooting against a goal with a favorable lighting position you're screwed. In the case of the Royals this weekend the lighting was favorable and the sun was setting behind the opponents goal during the first half. That means that the Royals were attacking into the sun, which means that their faces are well lit and the colors are vibrant. But, as the sun set and went behind some tall trees part of the field was occluded in shadow.

When part of the field went behind the shadow I moved to the opposite side of the goal and covered the side of the field that was still lit. It wasn't as good as the first position because it was on the "weak" side (the left hand side). But I managed to get a few shots.

During the women's game earlier Larry and I discussed what settings we used on our D200s. Larry pointed me in the direction of the Image Optimizations. I've looked at the Image Optimizations in the past, but have left them on the Auto setting. The other settings are Vivid, More Vivid, Softer, More Soft, Auto, Custom, and None. Larry recommended setting the image optimizations to "Custom" so that you can control the sharpness, saturation, color mode, and a few other settings.

Between the Majestics and Royals game I poked around in the Image Optimizations menu and located the Sharpness setting. Larry had reported good success with "None", but I thought I'd give "More Sharp (+2)" a try. When the sun started setting I increased my ISO from 400 to 800 and took a few test shots.

To my surprise the Image Optimization made a huge difference! My shots didn't appear nearly as soft when I looked at them in the 2.5" LCD on the back of the camera. I was practically jumping up and down with excitement. I couldn't wait to get home and take a look at the pictures under a microscope.

I also took a few shots using "None" as the image optimization for comparison purposes. When I took a look at the shots later on that evening the "More Sharp (+2)" images came out a lot better. I'm very impressed with how sharp the shots came out under low light conditions. I'm also very excited because after shooting 9 games with "soft" results I feel like I'm finally turning a corner. Too bad it took me 9 games!

During this shoot I also learned about how "off" a camera's meter can be. In the past I've used Aperture priority mode, which basically locks the aperture at a certain value and allows the shutter speed to change to whatever the camera's meter determines is an appropriate speed to properly expose the image. The problem with aperture priority mode is that it's not always accurate. Lots of times I move my camera around: I point it down at the ground, or at some players on the bench, or up in the air, or at the grass. If something happens really quickly I've found that the meter doesn't always sample the light source properly and I'll end up with an under or over exposed photo (usually overexposed).

I had a LOT of overexposed shots during tonight's game. I'll have to think about that in the future and maybe use Manual mode more. In manual mode you're explicitly setting the ISO, shutter speed, and aperture size. You're basically removing the metering system from the camera when you use manual mode. From what I hear from other photographers it's not too difficult to use and it results in really consistent exposures. It results in consistent exposures because your light source usually isn't variable! But, when shooting in aperture priority mode your shutter speed is highly variable as the meter calculates what speed it thinks is right for the light setting.

As the sun continued to set I removed my 2X TC and went back to shooting at 200mm with f2.8. It was remarkable how few opportunities I had in comparison to shooting from 140mm-400mm. I felt more like a spectator than a photographer because so much action took place on the other end of the field and I couldn't reach it using my lens.

A big problem you have with short glass on a long field is that the light reflected off of your subjects diffuses into a million different places before it reaches the focal position of your lens. If your subjects are 10 feet away they reflect a lot of light at your lens but when you're standing really far away there isn't a lot of light thrown back your way. As a result, cropping to zoom doesn't work. In low light and on long fields you really need long glass.

It was overly apparent to me that if I'm going to cover soccer and other field sports this fall I need to either accept that I'm going to have to shoot during the day and use my TC or I'm going to have to invest in a 300mm lens. Trying to use 70-200 to cover an entire soccer field is really limiting.

So after covering 9 games for the Royals and Majestics I'm walking away from USL for the season happy having met a lot of players and learning a lot about my camera and how it performs on the soccer field. I've take a lot of different photos of the teams and have been happy with my results, and I'm hoping that next year they'll invite me back to cover some more games. I'll also be compiling a CD that contains all of the pictures I've taken during the year and I'll be sending that to Mo Sheta (the GM for the Royals and Majestics). I've asked him to make copies of it and share it with the players so that they have access to their photos.

You never know which one of them might go pro and end up calling me up in the future and ask me to cover a game. Ok, maybe that's a bit of a stretch..

Friday evening's shoot at Kettler was a lot of fun because it was a completely new environment and there were a lot of other media outlets present to cover the event. But, it was indoors and crowded. During the event I was thinking about how nice it is to cover outdoor field event where there is plenty of space to move around and the backgrounds are often very far away.

I decided to attend the Royals and Majestics game on Saturday night even though they took place south of Manassas and I live way up in College Park MD. It was easily 60 miles from my house to the soccer complex, and it took a long time to get there. But Julie came with me and so I had company during the car ride. It was also a very nice drive through Virginia with lots of backroads. Having satellite radio also helps.

The Royals game and the Majestics game occurred simultaneously on side-by-side fields, and that was really nice from a photography standpoint. In previous matches the Majestics play first and then the Royals play afterwards. Watching 180 minutes of soccer (plus 30 minutes of half time, plus 15-30 minutes of in-between-games time) can be quite grueling, especially when it comes at the end of a day that was filled with covering other events. As a result I was pleased that both games were running concurrently and right next to each other so that I could float between the two games.

I wanted to focus on the Royals because in prior shoots they play after the Majestics in poor lighting conditions. My experience covering men's soccer is less than women's soccer, so I wanted to spend most of my time in front of the Royals for practice and also so that I had a wider variety of photos to post. I've also had a few email conversations with Mo (the general manager of the Royals), and he's expressed a lot of interest in the photos. On the other hand I haven't heard any word from the Majestics GM (not even sure who he/she is). Accordingly I wanted to have a lot of photos to send to the guy who's showing an interest in me covering their games.

Lighting for the event was good, but not great. There were some high cirrus clouds that didn't make it perfectly sunny but also didn't make it perfectly cloudy. I thought about playing around with the white balance but decided not to and to just use the sun preset.

I also shot the game at 100 ISO. I'm going to adjust this at a subsequent game because I received a comment from Al that my photos look "soft". I've noticed this as well. When I adjust the image enhancement in my D200 to "More Vivid" it doesn't seem to make things much better. I wonder if going up to 640 ISO or even 800 would make the pictures sharper.

This is where shooting alongside another photographer would really help me out. Just knowing what settings they used and then being able to compare my shots to theirs afterwards would be immensely valuable. I miss that from covering Maryland events. I used to be alongside a lot of photographers who would share what settings they're using. Hopefully I'll be able to tag along with Al on some events and get some ideas of some new settings to use.

I also made some adjustments to my AF system during the shoot. In previous shoots I've been using either spot or CW with 11 focal points on continuous mode, and I've had mixed results. In spot mode even tho I set the focal point to be highest possible focal point a lot of times it appears as tho the camera locks on the blades of grass on the field. This doesn't make much sense to me why the camera would do that but that seems to be whats happening. Lots of times faces are out of focus while the soccer ball (with all it's highly-contrasting lines) is in focus.

I changed my CW AF options to use 8 focal points rather than 11 and that seemed to help things a bit. I noticed that I had noticeably fewer out of focus shots. It wasn't a dramatic improvement but it was a little better. I'm going to do some reading about "closest subject" and the AF system to see what I can find out about better settings.

I moved around on the field quite a lot during the shoot and got a bunch of shots from various spots on the field. It was difficult to find spots where there wasn't an offensive tent in the background or some other annoyance. There was one spot tho that was pretty decent and most of my best-of shots came from this spot. It was located to the left of the Royals goalie looking up the field (rather than from the side). It's more difficult to focus from this position, but there's also a lot more action (most players kick using their right leg) and there was a better background (just trees).

There are only 2 more Royals that I will be able to attend this summer. It's been fun covering their games and my shots have improved since I started shooting them back in May.