Sunday, November 13, 2011

PAW 45

Soccer Game 7

Soccer season is over for the five year olds and the kids got to run through the “tunnel” one last time.  I’m pretty sure that running through the tunnel is their favorite part of the game.  Interestingly, I don’t recall any of the kids asking whether their team won or lost the game.

Shooting the kids soccer game has been a learning experience for me.  My best approach seems to be with the 7D, 15-85mm lens, ISO 800, JPEG only, daylight white balance, AI focus using 9 center focus points, and rapid fire in manual exposure mode at f8 and (usually) about 1/640 second.  I simply follow the ball and shoot in bursts.  The result is not exactly sports journalism quality but produces decent snapshots.

I decided to shot in JPEG (“Faithful”) for the soccer games because my plan was to make a slide show as a gift for the coaches and parents (and my granddaughter).  I wanted the photos to have a consistent appearance without my having to process hundreds of shots from RAW.  This approach worked out fairly well and the slide show was appreciated.

I was standing on the sidelines of the small (these are five year olds) soccer field for all the games.  For portions of a few games, I used my 70-200 lens at f2.8 to get head shots during the action.  Most of the time, the 200mm was too long.  Something along the lines of 24-135, f4 would have been great.

Wait ‘til next year!

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