Touch the stubble plains with rosy hue

A sunny autumn day is always good for pictures, with the sun low in the sky and creating a contrast of light and shadows. At Prescot Cables, the stand casts a particularly deep shadow, as does everything else - even the blades of grass seem to be casting shadows of their own.

It is the situation for which auto ISO was invented - quite possibly not exactly this situation, I have never received a visit from the clever people at the Nikon laboratories, but it is certainly useful. We have looked in previous posts at using ISO settings to get the best shutter speeds in various conditions. However, these have looked at constant conditions, in daylight or under floodlights.

Where players stay in one place for more than a few seconds, such as a golfer taking a shot, it is possible to prepare a setting in advance, as there is only one lighting condition to think about at a time. In football, the players move from light to dark without worrying about my exposures. Well, I hope they are not thinking about the photos...

When I first started taking football pictures, I did not find the auto ISO setting on my D50 to be very good, it went to far too low a shutter speed before it kicked in. So, I would either set for the lighter part of the pitch and accept that I would not get many in the shadow of the stand; or, later in the afternoon, when the shadow covered more of the pitch, set for the shadow and accept that pictures in the sun might be washed out. However, the D5000 is much better, so it can jump from ISO 360 (with 1/2000s at f/8) in bright sunlight ...

... to ISO 1600 (1/500s at f/5.6) in the shadow.

The autumn light also gives some striking contrasts, both in colour ...

... and some photos that would have too much contrast to be usable in colour, but where it can make a feature in black and white (I use the "Convert to black and white" function in Photoshop Elements for this).

As for the game, it was a much needed win for Prescot against the bottom club, Ossett Albion, the full set of pictures can be seen here.

The title of this post is one of the lesser known lines from Keats' To Autumn.