first attempt at sports photography tomoro. any advice?

[speedychrissie]

afternoon all.
tomoro will witness me making my first attempt at sports photography with the D70. it is a uni rugby match that only takes place once a year, so i thought i would see if anyone has any advice to give before the event so that i dont miss any oportunities.

equipment:
nikon D70s
nikon 18-70mm 3.5-4.5 lense
sigma 75-300mm 4.5-5.6 lense
jessops tripod.

im guessing that i will make very little use of the small lense, but i was wondering whether there are any "best" settings to put the camera on? i was gonna just put it on manual and see what i can do during warm up.

cheers in advance
chris

[speedychrissie]

thanks for the suggestions.
loads of stuff for me to be trying then!

[speedychrissie]

ok, while we are on the topic of monopods:

is there any real point in getting an expensive monopod over a basic one? other than feeling nice and maybe folding up smaller, i cant see that the expensive ones are worth that much more than a basic one.
opinions?

[speedychrissie]

V6GTO said:

Faces and balls is spot-on,,,have a look at these for inspiration... www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/355710 Martin.

there are quite a few good ones on that forum. cheers.
one thing that someone on there mentioned was getting down low.
how low do people get when shooting at rugby/football etc? i thought i would be wanting to try and shoot from roughly chest height, but some people on there say that they take a small stool to be able to shoot as low as possible.

any thoughts on this?

[speedychrissie]

Scooby_snax said:

Before they get cracking why not use the 18-70 at 18 and lie on the ground and get the guys to scrum over you....tell them to stand still otherwise it maybe painful On 2nd thoughts you will probably need a 6mm to make it work right >> Edited by Scooby_snax on Tuesday 21st February 19:49

good idea, but it is a woman's rugby match, so there may be some possibility for misunderstanding there! plus i am not the official photographer so i dont know whether i will be allowed past the barriers.

[speedychrissie]

ok,

so, i went to the rugby, set myself up in a good position near the try line and then tried to fiddle about with settings to get decent pictures. its impossible!
how do you get any good pictures under flood lights? i found that even with ISO 1600 i was having to use a shutter speed of 1/50 just to get enough light in! it is so difficult to get any good action shots with that shutter speed. i think my lense severly limited things. when fully zoomed in, the widest aperture possible is f6

other problems:
a 300 lense isnt long enough to get you close into the action which means that you can only take reasonable pictures for 25% of the game when the players are close enough.
my hands went numb even before the game started, even though i was wearing 2 pairs of gloves! (i really regretted not having bought some heated gloves a few weeks ago).

in the end i gave up at half time, got a pastie and went to sit in the stand.

these were the best i could really get:




all just resized and "auto-contrasted" in PS.