Few questions

[mkoop]

Can anyone give me a few tips on photographing static / low movement players in an outdoor stadium during the snow?

I drove up to Green Bay this morning with a friend and we are staying the night and have tickets to the celebration tomorrow.

I tried to take some pictures of the players today heading to their cars from the bus but the only vantage point I had was from the window of the pro shop and I had some difficulty shooting through dirty glass... (any tips on this would be greatly appreciated as well).

I have pretty decent seats (row 18 - roughly on the 20 yard line) so I am confident a 70-300 will reach and give me good visibility but I'm not sure how to approach the overcast/snowy conditions. I understand how exposure works (on a basic level) but am still not completely comfortable using the manual setting.

I would really like to get some better shots than I did today so any advice is greatly appreciated.

 

[radiorickm]

Advice #1. Donl't shoot through a dirty window...lol. Seriously, when I have to do this, I place my rubber lenshood right on the glass to keep any reflections out of the
photo. Being as close as possilbe to the glass makes any crud less noticable.

#2. If you are uncomfortable in full manual mode, you might want to try TV (or Shutter priority) mode. The reason I am recommending this is shooting the telephoto lens, if nothning else you want to control your shutter speed.the golden rule is the shutter speed should be equal to your focal legnth (leaving out all the mathmetical recripocal stuff) In other words, you shutter should be around 300 if shooting at 300mm.

If your not shooting RAW, do some test shots and make sure you have a good white balance. Also, the snow may throw your sensor off a bit, so some EV compensation may be required, usually around 1 stop, but again test shots. YOu may also have to bump up the ISO setting in these conditons to keep the shutter speed acceptable.

As a young reporter, this was drilled into my head: BRACKET BRACKET BRACKET. Don't shoot all day at the same setting. Change either your shutter speed, the EV compensation, or the ISO to take shots at different settings.

Good luck and have fun and remember this unwritten rule; In the film days, one only expected 1 great shot out of a role of film, and maybe 10% keepers. Don't set your goals so high it's unrealestic.

 

[thingsIsee]

good advice. shutter speed will be you friend on this one.

 

[mkoop]

Thanks a ton rick, I will keep your advice in the (front) of my mind tomorrow and see what I come up with. I usually do set my expectations to high and as a novice this does tend to be a problem for me. Tomorrow I think I'll just have fun with it, try out different things and see what happens.

I'm not entirely sure of the concept of bracketing, could anyone explain this to me perhaps? I will also do some searches and see what I can find.

 

[enzodm]

I'm not entirely sure of the concept of bracketing, could anyone explain this to me perhaps? I will also do some searches and see what I can find.

Literally: it means that you take one shot at the exposure you want, plus one below and one above (of some fraction of stop). So, if you chose exposure slightly out, you have two other shots with different choices.
Almost every dSLR has some automatic bracketing option that automates this (except d3000/d3100).
However, I think Rick intended bracketing in a wider sense: take more shots of the same scene each time changing slightly the parameters. More probability that one of them will be, perhaps, good. And then perhaps study which ones went good .

 

[mkoop]

Thanks enzodm - that makes quite a bit of sense. I do recall reading about the bracketing button in the d200 manual now. This is a really good idea thank you both, I do recall seeing in Aperture program it shows me what settings I used on all my shots. I have actually started righting down in my journal the lighting conditions / oddities that may have been present and what settings I found worked best under those conditions.

I finally feel like I might be getting an infant sized grasp on some of this