AFL football

A night at the football - Australian Rules

see also:

Introduction:

Firstly, I am no sports photographer, I bought the Canon 1D Mark III as a complement to my versatile Olympus dSLR kit for its low noise at high ISO, wide 14bit dynamic range, ability to blur backgrounds and its tilt-shift lens.
However, seeing I have bought in and I was going to one of my occasional football games, I thought I would check out its much-touted but seemingly problematic ability to rapidly autofocus in action sports situations.
I also took the opportunity to play with its 10fps shutter and its 6400ISO setting.
In general, I am very impressed, its not perfect, but it did very well.
I took with me my Canon EF 135mm f/2.0L lens with EF 1.4x II tele-extender to give me 189mm focal length, which, with the 1.3x crop of the APS-H sensor gives a 35mm film effective 246mm focal length at f/2.8 - all images taken at wide open aperture with lens hood in place and AF mode set to AI-Servo with AF menu settings as per default settings.
some images were taken using only centre AF point, but most were in the 49pt mode - unfortunately I can't remember which photos were taken in which mode.
the camera usually acquired AF within approx. 0.5sec (this is a guestimate) but sometimes inexplicably lost focus and regained it during a 1sec sequence at 10fps.
for examples of AF performance and sequence shots from this game, see 1DIII AF tests at the footy
I also took along my new Olympus E510 with its ultra-wide ZD 7-14mm lens for some wide angle shots.

Geelong FC vs Essendon FC, July 2007:

I have always barracked for Geelong FC since I was a kid but they have been the most frustrating team to follow - often playing brilliant, exciting style of football, but more often than not, letting their supporters down - their last premiership win was in 1963.

This year, they are looking great again, hence to avoid a bipolar state of euphoria followed by depression that this team induces, I will be away for most of the final series - for better or worse.

see http://www.afl.com.au for more details on Australian Rules Football.

the Geelong team (the Cats) warm up with their mascot

Canon 1DIII, f/2.8, 1/1600th sec, ISO 3200 (cropped)

the ball is bounced, and the big men get set

Canon 1DIII, f/2.8, 1/3200th sec, ISO 6400 (cropped)

Canon 1DIII, f/2.8, 1/2500th sec, ISO 6400 (cropped)

Geelong's Matthew Scarlett knocks the ball away from Essendon's Scott Lucas in the goal square as the goal umpire watches closely.

Canon 1DIII, f/2.8, 1/3200th sec, ISO 6400 (cropped)

Geelong has won, the crowd is leaving Melbourne's Telstra Dome stadium and the Geelong boys run to their supporters to thank them

Olympus E510 ZD 7-14mm - oops, sorry about WB, left camera on tungsten, will fix one day with the RAW files

happy Geelong supporters after the game

Olympus E510, 7-14mm, ISO 800, 1/80th sec, f/5

time to venture into Melbourne's wet night

Olympus E510 hand-held ISO 800, 1/5th sec - love that image stabiliser

Another game: Geelong vs Nth Melb August 2007:

more of this game here

Geelong's Brad Ottens goes in to the spoil the mark. (Canon 1DIII)

Geelong's Tom Harley showing off some important anatomical groups of muscles as he marks the ball. These guys must spend a bit of time at the gym - I don't need to now that I have to carry the Canon 1D Mark III around - that's a couple of kilograms!

The above was taken with the Canon 1DIII with 135mm F2L at ISO 400, 1/1600th sec at f/2.0 (makes f/2.8 with 1.4x tele-extender).

and for the photographers out there...

the Geelong runner showing you can do action shots with the Olympus E510 with 40-150mm kit lens at 3fps.

It is no-where as responsive or fast as the Canon 1DIII which is 3x heavier and 4-5x more expensive (the Canon lens alone is almost 10x the price of the Olympus kit lens!).

Image on the right is another in the sequence but this time is the RAW file post-processed to recover highlights in Adobe Lightroom - note the difference in the sunlit areas - this is what you can achieve if you shoot in RAW mode.

Good to see he wears plastic gloves when delivering drinks to the players!

The above is a comparison shot with similar crop and camera-to-player position as the previous Canon shot but using the Olympus kit lens at 150mm (ie. 300mm effective focal length) at wide open (f/5.6), ISO 800, 1/800th sec. Low NR in camera but no post-processing other than crop & resizing.

If you were going to use Olympus for action shots then a faster lens would greatly improve the situation (eg. ZD 50-200mm f/2.8-3.5 SWD) and if you had the money, the forth-coming Olympus pro camera with its faster burst rate and better AF for action work.