My First Soccer shots (Macedonia - Poland U19)

[ertay]

Yesterday my friend called me to tell me that there is a friendly match between my country and Poland in my city. I managed to get there 30 mins before the final whistle. I had to shoot behind a fence so it was hard to capture all the action. The weather was also very cloudy so I had trouble with finding the right settings. All pictures are shot with Nikon D300 + 70-300 VR .

Comments and Critiques are welcome.

1.

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2. Filip Bednarek the Polish Goalkeeper

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3.

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4.

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5. Filip Bednarek

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6. Filip Bednarek again.

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[raygun]

Great start Ertay! The last shot shows why you can never have enough speed to shoot high-end sports. You notice that the ball, left hand, and head is blurring, and the depth of focus covers about 6 - 10 feet of grass. This says that the lens is not open enough and the shutter speed is too slow... two things that go hand in hand. If using the 70-300 on a shady day, you may only be able to get an aperture of 5.6 or smaller, or it may be that you can get a large enough aperture, but you have the shutter speed set too slow?

If you can get your hands on a used 80-200 lens or 70-200 VR lens, you'll see a huge jump in what you can capture.

I'm just going through the last 5 years of sports shots, when I started with a D50 and 55-200 lens. It has been an expensive trip to where I am today, but your camera body takes you half way there! You may even want to look for an f/4 300mm Nikon lens, though the 80-200 focus speed is, I believe, faster.

See what you can do to tweak your current equipment before you buy anything new, as a brighter day may give you the shutter speed you need as well. And, keep shooting!

 

[ertay]

Thanks for the reply mate. I was shooting at 5.6 and the shutter speeds were 1/250 to 1/320 , anything faster was too dark. I'm quite low on cash right now, and I am not shooting for money , just for my own pleasure . But yeah, a 70-200 would be awesome .

I'm going to Spain for the Spanish Grand Prix (Formula 1), any advice on shooting F1 cars? I would be very grateful if you could share some tips . Cheers

 

[keith5523]

Ertay...if you don't get a response about shooting the F1 cars, make a new post with the question.

Several here should have some good pointers about GOOD motion blur on fast cars.

Me? I got nothing.....:biggrin:

 

[ertay]

Ertay...if you don't get a response about shooting the F1 cars, make a new post with the question.

Several here should have some good pointers about GOOD motion blur on fast cars.

Me? I got nothing.....:biggrin:

Will do Keith, thanks!

 

[cooldad]

Not a bad start, but as mentioned, you need to get the shutter speed up. Your d300 can handle a good bit of higher iso; turn it up until you get unacceptable noise then back it off a bit. Also, it looks like you tend to do what I do - list to the left a little. I get really bad toward the end of a long day. Very simple to fix the horizon in LR or if you don't have that, Google's Picasa (free) has a straightening tool.
Also, on cloudy days, if you overexpose a little the pictures will come out brighter and look a little nicer.

 

[ertay]

Thanks for you comments mate.

Yeah, I do that most of the time -.- , thanks for the tips