Life is full of little small choices, and then there are the big decisions. Namely, 70-200mm f2.8 on a 1.3x crop or 400mm f2.8 on a 1.5x?
I recently had the opportunity to shoot a couple of football games for the paper I work at, The Daily Californian. It was my first time shooting football game, and as someone who’s generally not been very good at sports photography, I was definitely a bit nervous.
Both games I shot were in pretty good light – the UC Berkeley/California vs. Michigan State game started at 5pm, so it played from daylight through to just about dusk in the 4th quarter. The Washington State game began at 3pm, so it was pretty much daylight except for a bit of (rather nice) sunset light at the end.
Sunset at halftime at Memorial Stadium, UC Berkeley
Equipment analysis – Week 1 vs. Michigan State
The biggest difficulty with football with regards to equipment is covering action that happens over a vast expanse (over 5000 m2 of field area) that can be traversed by speedy athletes in a matter of seconds. So while you might be sitting nice and cozy with a 300mm lens that perfectly covers the action mid-way across the field, all of a sudden the quarterback can fire off a deep pass or the running back finds a hole and flies off, and you’re stuck without the ability to get the shot.
