First time shooting soccer pics

[royce10]

I was walking through a park on my way to a creekbed to try to shoot some birds, when I came across this soccer game. I thought I would give it a try. Shooting a soccer game with a 400mm lens is a bit much. I had to back up waaaaay behind one of the corners of the field inorder to get full body shots.

canon 20d, canon ef 400mm f5.6, monopod.

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6)




C&C appreciated. Thanks for looking.

- Hung

[JohnG]

Not bad for a first attempt at soccer. Exposure looks good and these are very sharp.

The biggest area for improvement is timing and framing. A number of these have a lot of dead space in them. Most of that comes from having a landscape crop vs. portrait crop. On the framing aspect - shots 1 & 6 have the action at the extreme left with uninteresting space / players in the right half of the frame. Some of the shots could use better timing so you capture action - 1 & 5 in particular

Lastly and most importantly - faces. shots 3 & 4 are less interesting because you can't see faces. You want to see faces to make a shot interesting. It isn't enough that the shots are in-focus and exposed. You want to capture interesting action and be able to see faces.

No doubt you've got the technical aspects down pat as you've got great exposures here and the shots are sharp. Timing and shot selection will only come with practice.

Great first try!!!

[bluesman graham]

Very nice first attempt royce10!, 400mm is used a lot for pro soccer gamesall be itthe 2.8 version!! so i think you did well with it. Pic#6 cropped down to just the two tacklers would look good IMO.Kind regards Graham.

[royce10]

JohnG and Graham - Thanks for the feedback. Much appreciated.

- Hung