College Football: Portland State University

[RadioControlGuy]

Portland State University ...versus Eastern Washington last night.

You can see more here:
http://www.robspics.com/gallery.html

[vIZnquest]

All the captures of the action are great and with the colors of the teams it looks like they came out well and accurate.

The contrast seems a bit high due to the "white" in some pics look like there are a bit "blown".

What set-up did you use for this shoot?

[RadioControlGuy]

Thanks. I used a Canon 20D with a 70-200 2.8 lens. My settings were:

ISO: 1600
SS: 1/500
Aperture: 2.8
Auto White Balance

I am still trying to figute out the correct white balance for that location...usually I just use AWB though.


vIZnquest wrote:

All the captures of the action are great and with the colors of the teams it looks like they came out well and accurate.

The contrast seems a bit high due to the "white" in some pics look like there are a bit "blown".

What set-up did you use for this shoot?

[canuck bear]

Hi RCG. I just recently bought a new digital slr because every year a couple of friends andI go down to watch a NFL game on Sunday and then the Monday night game. I specifically bought this camera to take pictures of those games. I was just wondering if you were at field level or did you crop your pictures or what else did you do to them because they look great and I hope to get similar results. Your pictures are actually getting me excited and I cant wait to go down and the superbowl just ended lol. I hope to hear back from you. Once again great pictures.

[RadioControlGuy]

canuck bear wrote:

Hi RCG. I just recently bought a new digital slr because every year a couple of friends andI go down to watch a NFL game on Sunday and then the Monday night game. I specifically bought this camera to take pictures of those games. I was just wondering if you were at field level or did you crop your pictures or what else did you do to them because they look great and I hope to get similar results. Your pictures are actually getting me excited and I cant wait to go down and the superbowl just ended lol. I hope to hear back from you. Once again great pictures.

Thanks for the compliments. Much appreciated

Yes, I was on field level for all the football pics. Some of the pics are cropped...but most are not cropped. But like I said, all were taken from field level

Do you have field access? If not, you should try contacting media relations for a field pass. Thats what I did. But of course, the higher level of competition, the harder it is to get a pass

[JohnG]

RadioControlGuy wrote:

Do you have field access? If not, you should try contacting media relations for a field pass. Thats what I did. But of course, the higher level of competition, the harder it is to get a pass

I'm guessing NFL media relations doesn't hand out field passes to joe fan:G

style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #000000"Canuck,

style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #000000"You may have made a very costly investment with very little gain for2 main reasons:

style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #000000"1. Depending on where your seats are you probably won't be close enough to take pictures. You'd need a 400mm lens on your DSLR to shoot from the stands - and even then you only have about 50 yards of coverage - you think - oh that's half the field - well don't forget to factor in your distance TO the field - you may only have a 10-20 yard range then. And, for that Monday night game, that 400mm lens better be f4 or f2.8. You can pick one of those up for a few grand.

style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #000000"2. Even if you do have a great lens, the stadium might not let you bring it in. Every venue has their own rules - some places are fairly relaxed and others won't allow a lens over 6"and still others won"t allow a dslr at all.

style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #000000"Out of curiosity what camera did you buy and what lens were you planning on using to get your NFL game shots with?

style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #000000"

[canuck bear]

Thanks RCG. I do not have a field pass but will look into it. Thanks again.

[canuck bear]

Hi John. The camera I just bought was a Nikon D70s which came with the 18-70mm f/3.5-4.5 IF ED DX Nikor lense but I also purchased the 80-400 f/4.5-5.6 ED VR Nikor lense. I know I probably will not be able to get a field pass but getting there early you can take some great close ups of the players warming up. The seats that we do get are usually around the 35 yard line and 25 to 30 rows up so not bad but when game time starts I would like to get pictures where you can also see the crowd so I think I will be fine.

Once we found out which stadiums we were going to I did check to see if I can bring my camera in and this year I was lucky enough to do so but I will check again for the next two stadiums as well. Thanks again for all the advice.

[inneyeseakay]

RadioControlGuy wrote:

Do you have field access? If not, you should try contacting media relations for a field pass. Thats what I did. But of course, the higher level of competition, the harder it is to get a pass

How do you get in touch with Media Relations... Do you have to be on a crew? What requirements are there? How hard is it to get a pass at a regular season college, low-profile (not rivals, etc) game?

[RadioControlGuy]

inneyeseakay wrote:

RadioControlGuy wrote:

How do you get in touch with Media Relations... Do you have to be on a crew? What requirements are there? How hard is it to get a pass at a regular season college, low-profile (not rivals, etc) game?

Well it really depends on the team or school. Some are very strict, while others are not. I can't speak for everyone's experience, but only my own.

What I did was simply email the media director and asked him for a field pass. He was hesitant at first, but after a second email he granted me a pass. After the game I emailed him some of the pics I took. Ever since then he has given me a pass to every game.

It helps very much if you are shooting for a newspaper or other organization. If you are just starting out, you can go to your small local paper, and offer to shoot a game for free and submit it to the paper. If they agree, then you can go to the media director and tell him you want field access to shoot pics for the paper