Action

A colleague of mine recently asked me to come and shoot a football game. He plays forward in one of the top five teams in town, and wanted me to capture some of the action. I've never done sports before, but was I intrigued by the challenge of shooting a game. Would it work to use my Sigma macro lens? Would there be enough light so that I could do short shutter speed shots without too much grain? If not the Sigma lens, then maybe the Nikon could do the trick, but would I be able to zoom enough to get close to the action? That, and many other things started spinning around in my head.

So today at lunch time, I packed my gear and headed down to the football field. It was quite a challenge to time the shots, and I had to be on the ball (pun intended) all the time, which is a lot of fun for a photographer. Composing was definitely tricky, and it sort of became more like instinct than the way I usually work - carefully thinking things through.

To my surprise, using the Sigma lens worked fine. You see, it has a tendency to be quite sluggish, though previously, I have only used it for macros. However, this time the depth of field was not as crucial and only small adjustments were required, which it handled quite well. To be on the safe side, I switched after a while and shot for a while with my trusty Nikon lens, before switching back and shooting the end with the Sigma. As it turned out, I needn't have bothered - the Nikon might be the most versatile of the two, but the Sigma turned out to have the edge this time. It's zooming capability was just what I needed.

So, I shot 300 shots or so, that way I was bound to get a slam dunk or two, and I'm happy to say that I'm quite satisfied with the result. It was a lot of fun and I'm one experience richer :).

/MrsHjort