Second sideline shoot

[SenorNikonMan]

Much to my surprise, I had another chance to photograph a football game from the sidelines last night. Well at least, half a football game. What happened was that I went to our local high school's football game last night to see my daughter play in the high school band for the first time (she's a freshman). I took my Nikon D200 and my MF Tamron 180mm f/2.5 lens with me planning on taking pictures of the game and of the halftime show from the stands and possibly from field level but from outside the fence since I did not have a field pass.

Everything went as planned through halftime, and I was getting some fairly decent shots from the stands, when I decided to go down to the field level to see what kinds of shots I could get from behind the fence. I found a spot right up against the end of the stands behind a 4' fence where I began taking pictures as best I could. All of a sudden a fomer high school classmate of mine comes running up to me from the sidelines with a field pass in his hands. Apparently he had seen me standing there and figured that I would rather be inside the fence than standing behind it. As it turns out, he is the Video Technologies teacher at that very same high school my daugher attends and he takes his students to the games to teach them how to video tape games.

I spent the rest of the game shooting from the sidelines. I even got to take some field level pics of my daughter as the band practiced their halftime show on the field after the game was over.

Here is a link to my favorite shots:

http://leguerra.sharpcast.com/albums.../4_17197086982

Click on the "View Slideshow" link in the upper right hand corner of the page to watch a slideshow of my pics. The first few were taken from the stands, but the rest were all taken from the sidelines. My daughter is the french horn player in the middle of the one shot from the stands and in the other two shots from the sidelines.

Comments and critiques of my work are welcomed. I know that I still have a long way to go and any feedback I get from some of you more experienced sports photographers will go a long way towards helping me improve.

BTW, my friend told me that anytime I want to do it again, all I have to do is to call him and he will give me another field pass. Looks like I'm going to have plenty of practice in preparation for the next time I get to shoot a Texas State game for my son-in-law's magazine.

[JETA]

Looks like you are getting some action in there!

Can you tell me what your camera settings are? Do you use PS? Everything is very yellow.

[SenorNikonMan]

I'm still trying to figure out what WB setting to use in these shoots. As the game progresses and the lighting changes from daylight to stadium lights, I take some test shots of the grass to see which setting gives me the closest to the actual color of the grass. But I have found that when I use whichever WB setting gives me green grass, it gives everything else a bluish cast and makes the other colors duller.

As for everything looking very yellow, I do see a yellow cast to the grass in the shots I took from the field, but to me the other colors all seem bright and accurate. Could it be a difference in our computer monitors? Is anybody else seeing very yellow colors?

As for Preset, I haven't tried that yet. Mostly because I couldn't remember how to do that at the time I needed it. I'll read up on that before the next game I shoot and see how that works out for me.

[SenorNikonMan]

O.K. I did some work on my photos yesterday in an attempt at fixing the color. I have uploaded the new versions to my same online album as before. Now you can do side by side comparisons of the original and the fixed versions. The original versions are first. Let me know what you guys think.

http://leguerra.sharpcast.com/albums.../4_17197088767

[JSPhoto]

You won't get the right WB off grass. What you need is a grey card or in a pinch a plain white piece of paper or uniform and use that to set WB, otherwise you'll be way off. In this case you were too hot, An easy way to remember is red is hot and blue cold so yellow is towards the hot side.

What I do is carry a note pad with all the info on the schools so I can just look up the settings I used before. Keep in mind though that one light being out can change your settings. The note pad has the settings for everything I shoot at that school, football field, soccer field, baseball field, gym, pool and so on. Add a wrestling mat to the gym floor and it can change the WB as the mat color will affect the lighting.

JS

[SenorNikonMan]

Thanks for the advice. I plan on reading up on and then using the Preset setting (shot off a grey card) on my D200 the next time I shoot under the lights. Hopefully that will give me more accurate colors. I will take notes on what I used anyway just to be on the safe side.

[JSPhoto]

no problem. Also keep in mind that as you move around the field or gym the WB will shift one way or another. I don't know how easy it is to afjust on the D200 but you may want to take some test settings from the areas you shoot the most and average them out to get a somewhat happy medium. The same in gyms, we have one with totally different WB settings from one end to the other
Hopefully that will get fixed when they install new lights next summer.

JS