Oh man...Have I been there...But not with your setup.
First, I'm assuming that for those of us on the west side of the pond:
Football = Soccer.
I've been shooting a women's recreational team in the Washington D.C. area
for the last two seasons (Fall and Spring) -- probably about 18 games. For
most of that I used a Tokina 150-500 f/5.6 on a monopod. The monopod is an
absolute necessity. Recently I also picked up (from someone now or
previously on the list) a Tokina 100-300 f/4. The 100-300 is a sweet lens.
The cameras are OM-2 and OM-2SP, both with Winder-2s mounted. I use plain
matte screens, since trying to work the microprism or split image means just
one more task to manage.
Almost all of the shooting has been done from the sidelines so that I could
pan and not have to work the focus so much. And the way it works for me is
(1) if there is some kind of action, and (2) I can get it in focus, I shoot.
Forget the big scoring moment -- I just go for interesting action. (The
husband of one of the players -- both are co-workers -- insists that the
team only scores when I'm changing film. He'll look over and say "Larry.
Isn't it about time for you to change film?")
I use the winder just to keep my hands and the camera "at battery" all the
time -- I only shoot it single frame. I try to shoot at f/11 or f/16, but
if it is a cloudy day, that drops my shutter speed down with ISO 400 film.
I agree with you on the length of the 400 especially on small pitches, and
the length of the 85-210. And any zoom that isn't one-touch is a real pain.
If you can find one of the 100-300s, and even the Olympus 1.4x adapter, I
think you'd be pretty happy.
My next journey started a couple of weeks ago when I got a pass and shot a
Washington Freedom (D.C.'s professional women's team) game. The
photographers are only allowed at the end zones, and on either side of the
Keeper's Box. That means players coming right at me -- keeping decent
framing AND focus was a bear.
That was what prompted me to buy an AF camera and an AF Tokina 100-300, plus
the Kenko 1.4x converter. My descent into the flames of modern consumer
photography has begun. However, I'm still keeping the OM and 100-300
active. The recreational team's goalkeeper wants to get into sports
photography (Is there any form of still photography more expensive?) and I'm
letting her use my OM gear. I think she'll learn more about the craft
starting out with manual focus, looking for peak action instead of machine
gunning, etc. Besides that, she's a good keeper, and we want to keep her
happy...Good goalkeepers are VERY hard to find. :-)
I still like shooting with the OMs. And if I stick to the sidelines, I can
still get a lot of decent photos on every roll (several photos from each
game go up on the team's web site after every game and the 4x6 enlargements
are all distributed to the women at the end of the season). But to get
serious about shooting football/soccer, I found that even with my first two
rolls with the new AF setup this past weekend I got a bunch of shots that
that would have been rare before this. (There are also some shots that are
so far out of focus...)
Long story...Interesting adventures...Thanks for listening.
Larry
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> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-olympus@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> [mailto:owner-olympus@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of Sam Shiell
> Sent: Monday, July 22, 2002 12:34 PM
> To: olympus@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: [OM] Football
>
>
> Finally got the pictures back from the 5-a-side football
> tournament at work.
>
> To recap, this was 10 teams playing a knockout tournament on 2
> tennis-court
> size pitches (2 games being played simultaneously)... 15 minutes
> a game a 5
> minutes between. Having no hand-eye co-ordination at all I took the safe
> option and volunteered to do the photos.
>
> I left a friend with his P&S to take the "ancillary" action whilst I
> concentrated on the play. The kit I had was my OM2n with a 400 and the OM1
> with an 85-210. I also kept a 35 in my pocket but only used it
> twice. I had
> my BG2 and T32 but didn't use them until the after-match party as the
> evening was pretty light. It was also the first outing for a
> monopod that I
> got with a magazine subscription.
>
> Well, I couldn't believe what exhausting work this was. The whole evening
> took I guess 3 hours and I was focusing/framing or photographing
> continuously. I bought 4 rolls of Fuji 800 but used them up
> within the first
> hour and a half and had to use the 3 rolls of 400 I took "just in
> case", and
> I could easily have used more.
>
> The main problem I had was the 400 was a tiny bit too powerful and the
> 85-210 too small. This was the first outing for the 400 (in fact
> this event
> was the excuse to buy it!) and I realised that it wasn't really
> possible to
> track the ball all over the place. The technique that worked for
> me was to
> pick a player and follow them until they did something
> interesting. Got (in
> my opinion) quiet a few good shots that way.
>
> The one thing that went wrong was that as it was a light evening I put the
> BG2 and T32 to one side of the pitch out of the way. The light started
> fading just as the winning team was announced and I didn't have
> time to get
> to the flash, so perhaps the most important photos of the evening were
> underexposed..... a lesson there. The other lesson was that even in a nice
> UK summer evening after 3 hours "standing around" it got quite chilly, to
> the extent where it was difficult holding the 400 still through shivering.
> Next time I'll take a jumper.
>
> The other downside was that (apart from the obligatory few who took it
> seriously) everyone was making the most of the free beer/food but I just
> didn't have time to indulge until right at the end of the evening when all
> the beer and most of the food had gone. -
>
> Between my friend and I we took over 9 rolls of pictures (160 UK pounds
> processing, which the company thankfully paid for). I would have
> been happy
> if 100f them were OK but I was delighted that well over half were good.
>
> All in all an extremely enjoyable and educational evening. Can't wait for
> the next event.
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