I’d like to see what wisdom there is out there for successful colour
photography in hockey arenas.
My wife’s nephew and god son is old enough (6 years) to play
“competitive” hockey! Everyone in the family knows that I have been
acquiring photo equipment, which to them looks awfully like
“professional” stuff. They now expect “professional” photos - whatever
that may mean.
Last weekend I took along my OM-1 (the OM-2 needs new light seals),
Tamron 180, reasonably powerful flash, new monopod and Kodak 400ASA film
to try the lot out. This was uncharted territory, and luckily the little
tikes only used one-half of the rink. I got the photos back and they
were not bad (and not as bad as I had feared).
What are the issues?
- With flash, I spent the whole time at 1/60, so it’s a good job the
little ones don’t skate fast.
- In small municipal arenas, you are stuck behind the “glass”, or at
least part of the glass, and there are no "look down" shots.
- A reasonably powerful flash (good to approx 70 ft in telephoto setup)
doesn’t do much at all (I suspect the "glass" cuts down on light
transmission).
- As long as the skaters were pretty much still the photos were quite
sharp (as expected given the shutter speed).
- the ice was not “white” - had a grey/green “mottled” tinge, indicating
artificial light, though the other colours (uniforms, adverts etc) were
pretty reasonable.
For next time, I think I will leave the flash at home (apparently at
professional games they are banned anyway) and run with 800 ASA (Fuji is
easily available) and a faster shutter speed. I wonder if I should be
directly behind the "glass", rather that a couple of rows up in the
seats. Using daylight film, I presume that I will have to adjust colour
balance (which I can do in Photoshop Elements) to get white things white.
So, any help/advice would be welcome.
Martin
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