I went to my first indoor "Arena Football" game last night with several guys from my church. The Chicago Rush (Mike Ditka's team) played the New York Dragons at the Allstate Arena. It was really different!
The first thing I noticed was how small the playing field was. 50 yards! That's it! Then there were the two huge nets behind each end zone. And the goal post in between was so much narrower too! And the rules were slightly different as well...
And then after every play, we were bombarded with arena advertising announcements! And you can't discount the fan participation in contests for free money and other incentives after every few plays as well. It was almost like a three-ring circus with so much going on!
Another interesting thing was when they accidentally kick the ball into where the fans are sitting, the fans get to keep the ball! You don't have to throw the ball back. It reminded me of baseball with all the "foul balls" being hit into the fan area! They lost a lot of footballs to the crowd!
It was different for sure! But even with all this happening, I'd have to say it was a lot of FUN! You get to sit in an arena that's temperature controlled, so you're not freezing your rear-end off... and you're not being snowed on or rained on either! And, the players all look so CLEAN! Afterall, how dirty can you get when you roll around in Astro-Turf...
Photographing the game was interesting as well. We sat way up at the top of the arena, so we were pretty far from the playing field. But it wasn't too bad. I got to try out my new Nikon D200 camera using my long 70-200mm f2.8 VR lens. I shot it handheld, because monopods were not allowed in the arena. Well actually, I was a little nervous that I might not be able to bring in my camera and huge lens at all since signs by the entrance specifically prohibited cameras and other recording devices. But, I wasn't stopped at the turnstile, so I was happy. This was the first time I have taken photos at a football game. It was a lot of fun shooting continuous action at 5 frames per second!
If you ever get a chance to go to an Arena Football game, do it! After you get used to everything happening around you, I promise you'll have a great time!
By the way... we are the team in blue... and we lost on a controversial call.
3 comments:
now THOSE are some FANTASTIC pictures!!!!! i must ask what settings you used!! lol
my indoor hockey pictures always turn out terrible!! i also need a longer lens though... the distance kills me. right now i only have a 28-80. thanks!! wow!! i love those pictures!
Gina:
For these shots, I was way in the back of the arena... we didn't have the best seats.
But I shot the game with my Nikon 70-200mm f2.8 VR lens... the same long lens I used at your wedding during the ceremony.
My settings for most of these shots was: ISO 800, aperture at f2.8 and I set the camera at Aperture Priority... in which the camera determined the best shutter speed based on the two settings I gave it above. Most often, the shutter speed was about 1/180 second. Any slower and the players would be blurring if they ran. So, you need to be sure that whatever your camera is choosing for shutter speed, it's going to be fast enough to stop the action.
Also, I was handholding that huge lens. But Nikon's VR (vibration reduction) system allows me to handhold at a shutter speed of up to three times slower than I should be able to without camera shake. So in theory, even if I was zoomed out to 200mm, I can handhold at 1/50 second without shake (three steps... 1/200, 1/100, 1/50 sec.)
That's the theory. In reality, I'm pretty steady even without VR and I have successfully handheld that lens down to 1/20 second even at 200mm. I don't recommend everyone trying that though, but if you shoot as much as I do, you can do it if you try hard enough.
This is why many of my weddings in low light is no problem for me. That's just experience...
Forgot to add too that indoor hockey is VERY difficult to shoot. Check out my hockey photo in an earlier post.
The lighting inside those skating rinks are notorious for not being good enough for photos. Obviously, I shoot only with existing ambient light and not with flash on the football pictures and the hockey pictures.
The key is you need a FAST lens (f 2.8 or faster) and you need high ISO for the ability to get shots at around 1/250 second or faster. Any slower in shutter speed and the players and the puck is going to blur.
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