Hockey

In soliciting for ideas to cover on my blog, one of my recent brides asked me how to shoot hockey games.

Well fortunately for her (and you), I actually shot a bunch of hockey games for one of the local kids leagues almost two years ago. I did this just for fun and found that a lot of the parents really liked the images I took because their little point and shoot cameras were not sufficient to do a proper job photographing hockey games.

I found that to shoot these games, you cannot shoot through the plexiglass that is often used to protect the fans. So, you either have to be in the penalty box (they don't let you do that unless you are a pro photographer...) or you have to go way up in the balcony areas so that you are shooting over the plexiglass.

This image was shot from up above.

To stop the action, you'll need to be at a shutter speed of over 1/250 second, preferably over 1/350 second if the action is really fast. You'll need to have a very fast lens as well, since the light in most hockey rinks is not too good. This means a lens of f 2.8 in maximum aperture. And, you'll need a zoom lens of at least 70-200mm or even up to 300mm in focal length.

Lastly, you'll need very fast film. In digital, you can just bump up the ISO rating (just like fast film). ISO 800 or ISO 1600 is a minimum.

So, can you shoot this with a point and shoot camera and get good results? Only if the players aren't moving around much. Otherwise, it requires an SLR camera with a long zoom lens and low noise ratings at high ISO settings.

Have fun!