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.
Sam
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