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These were taken with the stock lenses that came with my 350d, and no tripod (silly me). While the af was incredibly slow, I'm still surprised with the quality of some of the shots that I got.

Then, at the end of the night, one of the media guys came over with his 1Dmk3 and 400mm f/2.8 and asked 'is that a canon?' I said 'yeah', he took of his 1D body and said 'see if it fits on this!' So I got a little play with a MASSIVE lens. Super fast af. Lovely. But very heavy. Got a great pic of a mates nostril from 15m away.

Anyway, here's a scrum, a maul and some scenery. Camera shake is a problem when your team is up, and they score another try...

click for big







^ I should probably crop the VB thing out of the bottom of this image.

Did you give the 400mm lens back?

sadly, yes.

I would have struggled to smuggle that puppy out of the SFS though. It's not exactly small or light.

Nice set of shots. They look clear and well exposed. Love the last one, great atmosphere.

What kind of settings do you need in these conditions?

actually, the stadium lighting was very helpful!

I think, because I was using a 75-300mm lens with no tri/monopod, I bumped up the ISO to 800, to be able to use a really fast shutter speed. That said, I was still using the railing in front of the front row of seats to balance the camera on. Stupidly I left the aperture set at 5.6, where I could have gone down to 4 or whatever the maximum opening is on that lens, because of the distance away from the players.

The struggles I found are:
* gettting excited when we score a try - cheering while trying to hold the camera steady doesn't quite work!
* knowing which shots to take, and which shots to not bother with. Often I'd be waiting for a player to break the line to get a shot, rather than getting a shot of Kurtley Beale in the motion of passing, or even running. Probably best in those instances when the backs are attacking the line, to just set the camera to rapid fire and shoot away. Often I'd also go for a shot of a maul or something, only to realise that Jerry Collins was standing in the way, obstructing anything of interest in a shot.

The more landscapey shot was taken with the 18-55 from where I was sitting. It was early in the game, so along with the stadium lighting, there was also a bit of ambient light left in the sky - more than the photo seems to show.

well done Matty. I guess its not a bad thing to combine the two - cheering and shooting your team at the same time even if it causes a bit of camera shake (not evident here)

SFS has come up really well- the last one gives a great sense of the event - very atmospheric lighting IMHO.

It was nice of the press guy to lend you his lens - maybe with the D3 around now, we might see a few more Nikon snappers on the sidelines willing to 'share the love'!

I'd love to get my hands on a 300 2.8 or a 400 one day and get amongst the action like that. BTW who won? (sorry AFL down this way!!)

Great stuff - keep the posts coming.

cheers

R2

Tahs won! 20-3. We scored 3 tries + 1 disallowed try right on full time - ref called a forward pass. 'Canes only got one penalty kick, then their attack fell apart.

Thanks for the info