Nikke Sue Nikon goes to a soccer tournament

[fstopMike]

This weekend, I got to pair two of my greatest passions when I was able to take Nikki Sue Nikon to my great niece's soccer tournament. Soccer and photography, it doesn't get much better! Nikki Sue had a great time and she wanted to share some shots with you!

Nikki Sue likes the graceful aspect of soccer:



Nikki Sue also likes to dance!



I love to see well-honed skills, and so does the girl on the green team:



Don't let anybody tell you that soccer is a non contact sport!



Nikki Sue hopes you all enjoyed the action!

[brandy wilkinson]

I like the sports shots. What lens and settings did you use to get nice light and freeze the movements?

[ricklumpas]

Are these in Action mode? or you just used fast shutter speed? Thanks for sharing.

[Rian Malynn]

WOW! That first capture is amazing. Are these for a school team? I'm sure the yearbook would be thrilled to use some of these in the book. I know when I was on staff it was hard to get really good sports pics. I like the last one too...looks like that one hurt a bit! Yikes.

[pjflan7]

All of these are great and the captions add the humor too. I have yet to try this type of photography and need to get out there and try it. I love all that frozen action.

[jakethepig]

Great captures Mike. You and sue did another fine job. Great freeze action. I know all abot the contact side of soccer (football to us in England) lol. I have all the bruises and scars to prove it. I now await a new knee. Never mind though. I now have photography. Great work once again my friend. You and nikon Sue have a great relationship..

Jake.

[FoG]

Nice hosts but I much prefer Rugby lol ! Love the captures and the clairty you got nice job Sue and you lol !!

[fstopMike]

Originally Posted by brandy wilkinson

I like the sports shots. What lens and settings did you use to get nice light and freeze the movements?

[QUOTE=ricklumpas;502460]Are these in Action mode? or you just used fast shutter speed? Thanks for sharing.[/QUOTE

Hi Brandy & Rick. Thanks for looking. These shots were taken using a Nikon D40X with a Sigma 70-300 f4-5.6 lens. I normally shoot in manual and focus manually. For these shots, I switched to auto focus because the action is much too fast to focus manually. I had to throw out a few shots because the auto focus chose to focus on a player closer to me than the one I was actually shooting, but out of about 600 shots over the weekend, I'd guess there were only about 10 of those, so auto focus is the way to go.

I bumped my ISO up to 400 so I could have shorter shutter speeds and more narrow aperatures for greater depth of field. My D40, being a cheapie unit, has unacceptable noise above 400. I figured I might as well do myself a favor and help the camera stay in focus with higher f-stops and greater depth of field.

I've never used action mode, so I'm not sure what kind of choices my camera would make for me. These were shot in manual mode with me adjusting either shutter speed or f-stop to get proper exposure as the light changed.

Now that you know my thinking behind my choices this is the general range of settings that proper exposure dictated:

Shutter speed somewhere between 1/640th and 1/1250th. At these settings, most ball movement was frozen. I had some shots where there was some blurring of the ball, but it wasn't much, so I would say 1/640th was about the minimum. For older kids, higher skill levels, or boys of comparable age, the kicks would be harder and the minimum shutter speed would have to be faster than 1/640th. For younger kids and lower skill levels, you could probably get away with slower shutter speeds.

Aperatures generally ranged between f8 and f16, depending on the light. I kept an eye on the exposure meter in the viewfinder and either adjusted speed or aperature, depending on which one made more sense to me at the time.

This is the second time I've taken soccer shots, so I'm still learning, but I hope this will help you and give you a basis from which you can build. The key is to go out and do and experiment! Maybe I need to get out of my old school way of thinking and try action mode and see if I like it, or I might even try shutter priority or aperature priority!

[fstopMike]

Originally Posted by Rian Malynn

WOW! That first capture is amazing. Are these for a school team? I'm sure the yearbook would be thrilled to use some of these in the book. I know when I was on staff it was hard to get really good sports pics. I like the last one too...looks like that one hurt a bit! Yikes.

I love that first shot. It's very athletic, but girlie at the same time. It's like she was doing soccer and ballet. This is a recreational level team competing in the Georgia state recreational cup. They hope to move up to a higher level in the fall. The last one did hurt, but she got up and dusted herself off and carried on

Originally Posted by pjflan7

All of these are great and the captions add the humor too. I have yet to try this type of photography and need to get out there and try it. I love all that frozen action.

Thanks, Patrick. You should try it. It's great fun and I've seen enough of your work to know that you could do it well.

Originally Posted by jakethepig

Great captures Mike. You and sue did another fine job. Great freeze action. I know all abot the contact side of soccer (football to us in England) lol. I have all the bruises and scars to prove it. I now await a new knee. Never mind though. I now have photography. Great work once again my friend. You and nikon Sue have a great relationship..

Jake.

Thanks for looking, Jake. I fell in love with football (soccer) when my boys got involved with it. We've made a trip or two to the emergency room and you always have to keep the butterfly bandages handy!

Originally Posted by FoG

Nice hosts but I much prefer Rugby lol ! Love the captures and the clairty you got nice job Sue and you lol !!

Thanks! I'd like to take some Rugby shots, but I'm not too sure about Nikki Sue Nikon...she's a little squeamish at the sight of blood.

[Glayva]

Lovely fun shots. Well taken