2020 High School spring season starting

[ac12]

Spring is starting.
High School lacrosse starts up on Friday with a pre-season game.

And I have to do it with a new kit. My standard field lens, the Nikon 70-200 just went into the shop $$$ , and I probably won't get it back for a month.​

We have:

• lacrosse
• baseball (boys)
• softball (girls)
  
• boys volleyball
• badminton
• boys tennis
• track and field
• swimming
• diving (they have not been in the yearbook before, probably because we don't have a dive pool, so for us, all meets are off-campus).
  
• boys golf

And a TIGHT deadline for the yearbook, to get all these sports, in the next 5 weeks.
I'm goina be busy.

 

[ac12]

Man I forgot how hard it is to shoot lacrosse.
That small ball, is easy to loose track of. I had to lower the camera to figure out WHO had the ball, many times.
The jam up around the goal, makes a goal shot HARD to catch.

And some of the boys play rough. Sometimes it looked like a football block

 

[Jeff15]

Good luck......

 

[Derrel]

It always sucks when good gear breaks down and you are left struggling to find a replacement for it. back in 2005 I Shot The District track meet for this area and was out in the rain for about 4 hours and near the end of the meet, my Nikon D1h became unresponsive to shutter speed command changes. The LCDs just blinked 250,250,250 and I was stuck on that speed for the remainder of the event. Luckily about a week later I was able to afford the Nikon d2x and after about a week of drying out the d1h became responsive again, and I sold it for $700.

I still have the d2x, 15 years later

 

[Derrel]

LaCrosse... it is not too popular out here in the Far West, except as a club sport or a university sport. I have only photographed two matches, and it was back in my University of Oregon days in the mid-1980s. I used a 300 mm f/ 4.5 internal Focus Nikon, and I remember it was very difficult. my camera was either a Nikon F3 with motor drive 4 or a Nikon FE-2 with the MD-12 motor. the old 300 F 4.5ED had a Featherlite internal focusing mechanism, not like the old 300 F 4.5 manual focus with the helical Focus. The e d i f as the name suggests used extra low dispersion glass and was internal Focus. It is probably one of the smallest and lightest 300mm lenses Nikon ever made.

 

[Derrel]

The 70-300 f /4.5-5.6 AFS VR G, left, and on the right is the 1980s 300 mm F / 4.5 Ed-IF.

 

[BillM]

I feel your pain, I dropped my 24-70 f/2.8 on the floor of the Boston Garden a few weeks back. $750 and one month later I finally have it back.

For a lot of these spring sports I'll use a 300 f/4 and shoot in DX mode. Except baseball and softball where I'll typically go with a 400 MM

 

[Derrel]

I had some luck with the Sigma 100-300 EX-HSM, but it was an unreliable focuser. The D2x was 5 fps in DX mode, but it also offered a 2.0x high speed crop mode or HSC mode that shot at 8.2 frames per second, which was really quite fast in 2005-06, and gave you a wide range with almost any zoom. For Newspaper publication the images looked quite good, but the camera had very poor high IS0 quality. For baseball, the 100-300 HSM was actually a decent lens. For track and field, not so much, mainly due to the focus issues.

 

[ac12]

More complications.
The Olympus 40-150/2.8 that I planned to used in place of the Nikon 70-200/4, is going back to the seller.
So I am back peddling to my 3rd choice of lens, the Olympus 12-100/4. Not as much reach as the 40-150, and a stop slower, but it works.

I am shooting baseball/softball with the Olympus 12-100 and 75-300.
On the m4/3 camera, the 75-300 has a similar FoV as a 150-600 on a FF camera, but MUCH smaller and lighter.
That is especially appreciated when shooting baseball. They put the baseball field into the FAR corner of the campus, so a LONG hike to/from the field.