There are some challenges to photographing a sporting event among those are knowing where to point your camera where the action is. But there are those little things that can get in the way of you getting the shot you want. First off, lights. Is there enough of it? In this softball game, the sun was setting low and the park lights hasn’t kicked in yet. Easy enough to compensate by turning up the ISO to about 1600. Yes, you’ll get grain, but this is softball not portraiture. But there was another factor, I had to shoot through a chain link fence. I wasn’t allowed to be on the field so the next best thing is shooting just outside of the openings. But that gets you only some of the shots, so I had to focus between the chain links to get the others. Focus is a big problem here because even though I set my lens to manual to avoid lens erroneously focusing on the fence, nothing beats the speed of autofocus to get the shot fast. I used a 70-200 f/2.8L with a 2x II converter for these shots. So my lowest aperture setting was at f/5.6. That’s a bit too small for light to come in through the barrel. The Samy’s salesperson told me that 2x converter on a 70-200 would not be a good idea. But I told him I was going to shoot sports, then he changed his mind. He was right, it’s good enough for sport photography (as long as there is enough light). But I do agree, it’s not as clear without it. But nonetheless, this is practice to keep up with the game and what’s going on and overcoming the challenge of minor things that keep you from getting the right shots. I missed quite a few action shots on this game that I wish I had gotten. But overall, if you can’t get those shots, there’s always the before action shots or I call beauty shots.
