DSLR Photography Forum

Last saturday I had my first chance to photograph a youth's hockey game. I had some great advice going in, including a great deal from this forum, so I'm generally happy with how the exposure and colour balance turned out, but the shooting conditions and my equipment handling left a lot to be desired.

The game consisted of three ten-minute periods, with the team switching ends for each period, and no breaks in the action. I was there as a friend of the family for one of the players, so I was primarily looking for good photos of him instead of documenting the full game. In total I took about 300 photos during the game, and probably missed half of the opportunities that I should have taken. The stands are lit with regular fluorescent tubes, making my grey card useless for setting a custom white balance. I left the camera in Auto WB mode, deciding that I can always fix it in post and it might be able to deal with the weird visibly orange shift at the ends of the arena. All of these photos have been cropped and had Lightroom's auto-tone run on them, but are otherwise unedited.



The arena itself if quite small, with four or five rows of bleachers on one side of the ice. These are protected by glass and netting. I shot the first period from the visitor's-side blue line at the back of the stands, shooting through the netting. I started with the 35-100 and switched to the 50-200 (100-400mm-e) for these shots:





The netting was giving me fits. Half of the time the camera would focus on it, and it was too fine to aim the AF sensor through it to pre-focus. (I'm not tough enough to MF a hockey game.) The advantage was that at least I knew when the camera missed -- something I would have liked for the second and third period when I decided to shoot through the glass in the corner.







Finally! A photo where something's actually in focus! Shooting through smudged glass sucks. There were a couple of relatively clean spots that I was trying to shoot through, but I couldn't always see the smudges in the viewfinder, and trying to track focus was nearly impossible. Combine that with high-iso noise, too-low shutter speeds and just generally bad focusing, and I have almost no shots that have anything at all sharp.







That final photo is a favourite of the player I was there for -- he's the one getting squished. It's also something of a worst-case combination of every possible setting. At iso2000 it's noisy enough to obscure detail, 1/160s isn't fast enough to stop motion, and f/3.0 @ 112mm focal length tells me that I was shooting with my longest and slowest lens wide open in AV mode. If I had moved to iso3200 with my fastest lens I would have gained two stops of speed at the expense of a little more noise, or I could have had less noise at iso1600 and still shot at 1/250s. The middle-of-the-road approach I used was a compromise that satisfied no requirements. Next time I'm going to stick with my f/2 zoom, let my auto-iso range all the way to iso3200, shoot in shutter-priority mode, and remember to put my IS into "panning" mode. And carry some Windex.

But it's not all bad news. I did get the exposure right in the vast majority of shots. I found that centre-weighted metering with a +2/3 setting was just about right. (It helped that both teams had such dark uniforms.) The auto-WB also performed very well, even with the odd orange tint at the far end of the ice. Batch processing the photos to get them "close" has been fairly easy.

And most importantly, #5 loved the photos, and picked out ten of his favourites that I'm going to tweak and send to him.
Any post-processing suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

A bad workman blames his tools. A bad photographer blames the smudge on his glass. (In my case my spectacle glass.)

Well done Matthew. It is all practise anyway and good fun.
You have some good shots there.

I was waiting for seeing your pictures Matt... To be the first time you take pictures in such difficult conditions you did it great!

I like very much #5, I like a lot your composition and the pose of both players. In this picture you also got better whites, in some others it looks a bit warm?
#7 is also a picture I like a lot. Great action photo!

Congratulations!

It is fantastic you will have the chance to take pictures again....

I have been waiting to see what you shot at the hockey match . That lighting looks very tough , i think that is going to be your biggest issue . Here is what i would do , now mind you i shoot a 20d and i dont have the flexibility with my iso . I would shoot @ iso 3200 f 2.8 + 2-3 exposure ( maybe even 1 stop ) .Also i shoot in AV mode not TV, i think youll notice a difference , your shutter speed will bounce a bit but thats never been a problem with me . Also i expose for the player not the ice . With the dark jerseys and the white ice there isnt much in the middle ground IMO . This will also help with the " orange " , i found that when i " over expossed " a little that my colors were better . Although the lighting that i shoot in is much better than this is , and thanks for showing the lights that helps a bunch. I wouldnt worry too much about noise , there are so many good noiseware programs out there , you shouldnt have a problem at all getting rid of the noise .
Now after you get your camera set up " right " here are a few " tips " that i do when shooting sports . Dont be afraid of shooting " portrait " instead of " landscape " . You can isolate your subject better that way . Also i try not to shoot , note i said try , unless i see players with the puck ( or ball , or whatever ) , there are exceptions like checks . or whatever . As long as its showing " the game " . Also remember if you see the shot in your veiw finder , you missed the shot . You will have to learn to shoot just before it happens , intisipation is the hardest thing to get .This might sound strange but i also dont like to burst, i try to shoot once or maybe 2 times . I also like to shoot from the right/left side of the goalie , basically the length on the ice if its possible. Although you will have to wait for the action to come to you this way , it seems that i like the shots better but thats just me LOL .
I think you did a nice job for your first time , and i hope that i dont come across like i know it all , i am still learning and everytime i shoot hockey i learn more . Although i havent been there in a couple of weeks ( long story LOL ) .
If i can help any other way let me know ....... Shawn

This reminds me that shooting weddings is not so hard Fast action in low light, through smudgy glass - great effort Matt. 5 and 7 stand out to me and also seem to have a better WB than the others.

Thanks for the replies, everyone, and I apologize for taking a while to get back to this thread. Life got a little busy for a moment there.

NT, I know exactly where the blame lies. It is true that even with perfect technique I'd still have struggled with that glass, but I'm a long way away from having that as my biggest problem. It was a learning experience. The good news is that next time I'll go for a "Home" game in what's said to be a much better arena. At least there's no net above the glass, so I'll have a "plan B".

Irma, yes, I had a couple of problems with white balance. The ones that I shot from the stands are hopeless -- the E-3 has the same external WB sensor design as the E-1, so I knew that it was going to be confused by the different light sources. Once I got nearer to the rink the problem mostly went away, but I can still tell where the players were on the ice by the amount of orange tint to the photos. Fortunately LR's auto white balance does a really good job of cleaning them up.

BD, thanks for the coaching. Those are some great tips, and you're absolutely right about timing the action. I have to confess that despite my Canadian passport, I don't watch hockey, and haven't played ice hockey since I was eight years old. (But I have played air hockey, street hockey, floor hockey, penny hockey...) I did find out what position my young friend plays (left wing, same as me except that I stunk) so that I knew where he'd be on the ice, but I was completely unprepared for the intensity of the players and the fast pace of the game. I filled my CF card during the last period, and if I had stopped to change it, the game would have been over before I lifted the camera again. Cards in a case in a bag are useless! Fortunately I was able to switch to my onboard "spare tire" xD card on the fly and finish off the game with it.

Before the game, I did download Stompin' Tom's "Hockey Song" to my iPod. That's essential. I also found Jughead's hockey song on-line: the lyrics and a "play song" link are here: http://www.jughead.tv/lyrics_hockey.html It's something I heard once on CBC years ago, and I was still able to find it quickly. I love the internet.

WS, at least hockey games meet one of my three criteria for a good subject -- they don't talk. Wedding photography moves and talks, so I'll stick to sports.

Matthew.
My first comment was a poor joke, I would not have noticed any faults on your shots.
I mean OOF can be attributed to the fast speed of the skaters and low light and not enough ISO.
I keep forgetting ISO when I am shooting, and if I do remember, then I forget to turn it back again for the next trip.