Shock The World Week 5

Shock The World Week 5 brought us to Douglass High School as they took on Cushing for their homecoming. This week I was blessed with some GREAT borrowed equipment. Canon was kind enough to send me one of their flagship sports cameras that captures approx 8 frames per second. Talk about machine gun shooting. It was bezerk. As I have stated before, I don't have the necessary equipment to effectively shoot football. The camera I own is catered more towards portraits and events and only shoots about 2.5 frames per second although it feels a lot less than that. I often use the "one shot" setting on my camera which means that every shot that you have previously seen in the blog were simply the result of a well timed shot. The advantage that professional sports shooters have is indeed their equipment. At ten frames per second, it is easier to get a useable image from a sequence of shots. I am by no means saying that their equipment makes it EASY.. it just makes it EASIER at times. Makes sense?

I attacked the game a little different this game. I tried to say closer to the endzone instead of the sidelines. My goal was to catch those isolation shots of running backs and wide receivers running down the field. For the most part, my images came out pretty decent. I still had some of the same headaches that I'm sure most sports photographers have. The usual "refass syndrome" and the many blurry shots seem to be the norm. I was lucky enough to capture some of the isolation shots that I was looking for. A few wide receivers and running backs were streaking in my direction and I have to admit that I was nervous. It was kinda like a fast break layup in a pick up game and all I had to do was jump and lay the ball in. Kinda crazy but true. I was able to burst shot after shot after shot. What I found to be extremely crazy was that even in burst mode, half of my shots would be perfectly in focus and sharp and the other half were blurry. I then realized the reasons WHY sports shooters use MONOPODS! haha... No wonder... Although my camera gets heavy only after a few minutes, I always thought I could just hand hold my camera/lens. Enough of the slanguage... lol... This week proved to be a better week and I was pleased with my images overall. Still have a LONG way to go but as long as I get there I will be fine. CHEA! As always, comments are welcome!!!

ENJOY!!!