Another try at hockey

[schent1]

My 7D showed up a few days ago so I headed out for the local Rink to catch a hockey game to see what I could get. I used my 70-200 2.8 and brought along the 1.4 teleconverter.

#1 & 2 were shot at IS0 3200 with the teleconverter.

[schent1]

#3, 4 & 5 were the straight 70-200.

Comments are greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Tom

[waoldrifleman]

I like the last three the best, especially number five! I remember that feeling (some good, some pain!). Coming from a total newbe I hope you won't mind this question, where did you focus on the first couple? It seems to be at the jersey center, I wonder if the eyes is not a better place, as that is what I look at first. Not a critisim, but a question for those who actually know what they are doing from someone who dosn't.

[schent1]

Waoldrifleman,

Don’t worry about a possible criticism, when I post a picture those are the kinds of things I am hoping to get so I know where to improve. I am certainly not an expect, but I can tell you what I have learned regarding the focus. For sports you want to shot in Al Servo mode and use a single focus point. The challenge with the single point is keeping on the person’s body while they are moving. It can be very easy to slip under an arm and focus on the back ground. With the 7D I was using you can select a center zone which give a larger area to hold on the person’s body. I suspect part of blurring in my images could have been improved by a faster shutter speed.

Tom

[waoldrifleman]

Originally Posted by schent1

Waoldrifleman,

Don’t worry about a possible criticism, when I post a picture those are the kinds of things I am hoping to get so I know where to improve. I am certainly not an expect, but I can tell you what I have learned regarding the focus. For sports you want to shot in Al Servo mode and use a single focus point. The challenge with the single point is keeping on the person’s body while they are moving. It can be very easy to slip under an arm and focus on the back ground. With the 7D I was using you can select a center zone which give a larger area to hold on the person’s body. I suspect part of blurring in my images could have been improved by a faster shutter speed.

Tom

Thanks for the lesson! I am reading and will trying my hand at this soon. I can now understand the issue with hitting a moving target! Still they are great!

[unklscrufy]

Nice pictures! One question with the 7D that I think I already know the answer to, but it has to do with high-speed continuous shooting. Do you use it when you're shooting hockey? I use it with my 50D, which is nice for getting just the right shot, but I end up shooting a crapload of pictures that I have to go through after a game. If I try to adjust the exposure compensation before shooting, the 50D goes into a three-frame burst mode and I can't do continuous shooting. Is that the same on the 7D? I'd rather not do so much post-production tweaking and should probably try adjusting the exposure and working with the three-frame burst mode, but I like to get faces and pucks in as many shots as possible and I wonder (probably needlessly) if I'll miss a lot of shots with only three frames per burst.

Anyway, nice pictures!

[schent1]

I shoot bursts in high speed mode and do get a lot of images that get dumped; it is tough in a sport like hockey never knowing for sure which way the play will go. It does help to have a general flow of the game however.

As has been suggested here in other post I shoot in manual mode. I get to the game early for warm-ups and experiment until I get a setting that looks good. I have seen a suggestion to set exposure compensation but have never tried that. The only time I get the three frame burst is if I set an exposure bracket (which is different than the exposure compensation) where you shoot an over and under exposed image which is good for landscape but bad in sports.

[JohnG]

Originally Posted by unklscrufy

I use it with my 50D, which is nice for getting just the right shot, but I end up shooting a crapload of pictures that I have to go through after a game. If I try to adjust the exposure compensation before shooting, the 50D goes into a three-frame burst mode and I can't do continuous shooting.

Exposure compensation should not affect burst. Now, what you describe sounds like exposure BRACKETING - completely different. But shooting in AV mode with positive EC should still give you full burst capabilities. If you are indeed using EC and not exposure bracketing and you're in AV (or even TV mode) and your camera only allows 3 shot bursts then you've got a problem. It shouldn't operate like that.

As mentioned though, I'd recommend manual exposures - that way jerseys or background aren't impacting your exposures. Lighting may be poor but it's usually consistantly poor.

[KevinLF]

The pros can correct me, but I've read that pro sports photographers may keep 5% or less of the shots they take. Shooting lots and lots is the only way to get a decent number of keepers. Now matter how great a shot you are about to get, an arm, head or ref will get in the way just as you hit the shutter button. Many of the rest will just miss on focus as you try to track the player.

So be prepared to dump alot of pics. It's way better than having very few you want to keep. I use stoppage in play or moments when the play is on the far away from me to try to delete some of the most recent obviously bad shots. I generally plan on one hour of deleting for every hour of shooting after a game.

Having said all that, don't rely on rapid fire bursts alone to get the good shot. Depending on the sport, it is still a good exercise to try to take your shot at the right time. 8 shots/second are almost enough to ensure you'll get your shot, certainly in basketball and football, but some sports such as volleyball or a baseball batter you can still miss the moment when the ball is where you want it. I do find that the rapid fire does seem to help getting shots 2 and on in the best focus so still take an early shot or two. Not sure if that's really true or if I'm just limiting camera movement by the subsequent shots.

Kevin