Better light, not such good football

Prescot Cables' decisive win "away" to Skelmersdale United on New Year's Day placed us top of the table as we went into the first weekend of the year. We need to be realistic about the likelihood of staying there, we have played four or five more games than the teams around us, and most are in form that suggest they would win at least some of their games in hand. Of course, whether we stay in a playoff position at least will depend at least as much on our own form, and we had the opportunity to test ourselves against Colne, who were the last team to beat us in the league back in October.

After a few weeks of grey skies and rain, we had a clear day, much easier right throughout the photographic process.

Andy Scarisbrick

The better weather had brought out the crowds, and we attracted a healthy 478, second in the division only to Tadcaster hosting South Shields.

James McCulloch

Having made sure to capture the Dugout Irregulars a couple of games ago, it was the turn of the Gasworks Side Regulars.

Jazz McCulloch

The light was good to the end of the half.

Joe Herbert, time 15:43, 300mm f/5.6, 1/500s ISO 2800

This was looking as though it would not be a vintage performance, and neither side had been able to impose themselves by half time.

The light was holding up well, unlike the team, who were having as much trouble with co-ordination as in the first half. With Colne coming out stronger, they went ahead after three minutes. I had settled in front of the Roadshow End, where the most vocal groups of supporters had positioned themselves for a while, so there was plenty of noise.

Jordan Wynne is tripped ...

... and lines up the resulting free kick with James Edgar

Any hopes of this being a good day on the field, and keeping our top spot, slipped away with a second goal from the visitors after twenty minutes. Still, this was the first time for a few weeks the light remained good throughout, with the floodlights assisted by the last of the civil twilight.

Reece McNally

After the game, there were the usual awards, with the Roanza Truck & Van Man of the Match going to Valter Fernandes.

Valter Fernandes

The Fence End also presented their Pesky Bullon d'Or: I am not sure if there are any criteria for the award, but I think it was voted for on the @CablesNation Twitter account, the winner being Lloyd Dean.

Graham Nevitt and Mike Rice present Lloyd Dean with his award

A close up of the Pesky Bullon d'Or

The rest of the pictures from the game can be seen on the club website here, and on Google Photos here.

Final score: Prescot Cables 0 Colne 2.

Flags, firkins and flat caps

There was plenty to entertain the visitor at Prescot Cables game against Warrington Town. Admittedly there was no Shaun Reid, and, wst former Cables defender Lee Smith has maintained their form on the field, he exhibits a much calmer match day demeanour.

Lee Smith (left) watches Phil Bannister

Still there was still a flag display and collection for the Alfie Lund Fund, raising awareness for MECP2 duplication syndrome; a dance display at half time, and the little matter of a beer festival.

Alfie Lund Fund flag display

The latter attracted a few ground hopping bloggers, and I met Matt from the Lost Boyos, whose site I only found a few weeks ago, and who, in the manner of our Train Crew, enjoys getting to the game almost as much as being there. He shows the same respect for the flat cap as appropriate headgear for football as these pages, although his is an all year round trademark, rather than just for keeping his head warm or visiting the borders of the known world. I posed for and took the obligatory #NoFlatCapNoParty" double thumbs up pictures. The all thumbs match day photographer may not be the best person to let loose on your compact camera: my first attempt started a movie by mistake.

Whilst this was going on, I just about saw the visitors' first goal, from Ged Kinsella. We had a decent amount of the play up to this point, but had been unable to convert it. Warrington went further ahead with a second from Ciaran Kilheeny in first half injury time.

I then had an unusual assignment for me, some pictures of the half time display from the Dancebeatz Academy. The dancers had a lot of space between them, which worked live, and may have made a good video panning along the line, but I did not have anything with me to keep the camera stable. It would not have made much of a picture if I had put everyone in one frame, so a presentation montage seemed the order of the day.

I also took the opportunity to capture our new mural on the end of the toilet block. We have been around for a while.

With sunset after 6pm, you would not expect much drop in light over an hour earlier with consistent light cloud cover throughout. However, the shutter speed dropped from a fairly consistent 1/1000s at ISO 800 at the beginning of the game ...

Joe Nicholson

... to 1/500s hovering around ISO 1000 at the end.

James McCulloch

I have worked out roughly how the sports mode manages exposure. In the conditions I have encountered (I have yet to use the equipment on summer day), if there is enough light for shutter speeds over 1/1000s, it uses the most open aperture, at ISO 400. In lower light, it maintains speed by increasing sensitivity up to ISO 800, when it reduces shutter speed until 1/500s, then increases the sensitivity again, until ISO 3200, when it drops the speed until it is too slow to be practical, and I need to switch mode.

Jonah O'Reilly

The visitors added their third goal, and continued their march towards the title with a penalty ten minutes from time.

After the game it was back to the festival beers, with a neat system for the transition between the afternoon session (included in the game, and therefore free for season ticket holders) and the evening session. Beers were served up to 6pm in a plastic glass, and then after this only in a glass included in the evening entry fee.

The rest of the pictures from the game can be seen on the club website here, and on Google Photos here. Matt's Lost Boyos blog on the game is available here.

Final score: Prescot Cables 0 Warrington Town 3.

Value for money - 80p a goal

I did not plan to attend Prescot Cables' game at Kendal Town, as I found the 2211 train from Oxenholme gave a short connection to the last train from Wigan, with the risk of ending up there for the night. However, on the day, I noticed there was also a train at 2203 with a better connection and the option of returning via Warrington if it was delayed. On arrival, I adjourned to the excellent Station Inn. There is a sign outside the station informing passers-by that the pub is less than 3 minutes up the hill. This was fortunate: whilst WhatPub has the correct postcode, its map uses an incorrect latitude and longitude, which would have sent me in the opposite direction.

Only having travelled to the ground through Kendal before, I thought it would be uphill from Oxenholme, but it was the opposite, including a steep stretch just outside the station, meaning it would be uphill coming back.

Once there, I found the floodlights to be excellent. I also now understand the relationship between aperture and ISO in shutter priority mode - if I set the ISO to a lower value than I will encounter in the evening, it will always use the widest aperture attempting to reach it. I was quickly getting some of my crispest evening images of the season.

Joe Nicholson

We have not enjoyed much success at Kendal, and it looked as though this may be no exception when the hosts scored after five minutes. Somehow, the score stayed that way for the first half. The hosts increased their lead with two quick goals early in the second half. Antony Shinks pulled one back on the hour, but it seemed of little effect, as Kendal replied a couple of minutes later.

Antony Shinks

By this time, I was contemplating slipping off a few minutes early to be sure of getting the earlier train. At this point, the fun started. There was little point trying to stop a three goal lead getting any worse, as we have performed well enough not to have one eye to goal difference at the end of the season, so Andy Paxton made a triple substitution, or as close to triple as you can with the bright, shiny new electronic boards, replacing Antony Shinks, Joe Nicholson and Phil Bannister with Joe's brother Josh, Andy Scarisbrick and Charlie Duke.

This had an almost immediate effect, with goals in five minutes from ...

... Joe Evans ...

... Andy Scarisbrick ...

... and James Edgar levelling the scores, and having me checking National Rail Enquiries and Realtime Trains for the progress of the 2211. It is worth keeping an eye on both sites, the former gets its information from the train operators' Darwin system, and the latter from Network Rail's systems, and they do not always agree.

A fifth goal from Kendal seemed to have clinched it, but a final score from Lloyd Dean secured a point, and meant we got a very reasonable 10 goals for our £8 to get in, on a night when the four games in our division produced 32 goals between them.

Lloyd Dean shoots for goal

I think both sides had a player booked in injury time (we certainly did) for delaying the restart of play, a case of taking one for the team, running down the clock - having announced the added time, the referee did not extend it further - and preventing quick free kicks in dangerous positions.

By dint of a sharpish exit at the end of the game and a bit of power walking, I got Mr Google's estimate of 42 minutes to Oxenholme Station down to 24, and caught the 2203.

The rest of the pictures from the game can be seen on the club website here, and on Google Photos here.

Final score: Kendal Town 5 Prescot Cables 5 (Shinks, Evans, Scarisbrick, Edgar, Dean)

Battle of the Vikings

It is not often I attend a game as a genuine neutral. Even at a club I do not usually watch, I tend to support my local team. However, on the basis of an unduly pessimistic weather forecast, I decided not to travel to Scarborough for Lancashire's County Championship rugby union game against Yorkshire, but went to Caldy for Cheshire's game against Northumberland. Both sides lost the previous week, against Lancashire and Yorkshire respectively, so I was not looking for a result to help my side (apart possibly from a highly unlikely low scoring draw).

The Wirral has a strong Viking heritage. Nearby Thingwall includes Þingvöllr, its name in Old Norse, on the signs at the village boundary. Northumberland of course has a Viking connection too, and some players looked the part.

Cheshire had made a good choice of venue for the weather conditions. As it was a bright sunny day, one of the warmest of the year so far, the Dee Estuary provided a welcome breeze.

The comments from the Caldy Chairman in the programme referred to the "open air grandstand", which saw good use.

Some spectators were ready to pounce if the ball came out of play.

The less populated open side provided an ideal vantage point, with the sun directly behind me, so I had no problems with shadows. I did not need to worry about shutter speeds, with the sports mode selecting 1/1600 or 1/2000s. With its also selecting ISO 400, that gave an aperture around f/8. This is narrower than under most conditions, so there is a greater depth of field, which was handy for the pictures illustrating the crowd. In future, I shall try increasing the shutter speed (I can go as fast as 1/4000s) or decreasing the ISO to 200 and see if I can get some shallow depth of field on a bright day.

University players are not common in this competition, not least because of the time of year coinciding with examinations, but Northumberland scrum half Tom Banks of Newcastle University had a good game last week, and looked like doing so again this week, but unfortunately sustained an injury that ended his afternoon after about half an hour.

Being present in a non partisan capacity meant I did not feature one side's players over the other in the final slide show. This is in any event not as clear cut in rugby as in football. In the latter, I concentrate on when our own players have the ball, whereas in rugby a player tackling makes for just as good a picture.

For the individual shots of players running, kicking or passing, my selection was quite even.

Having watched these games for a few years, I recognise some players, although they do not always turn up where I expect them. Qualification for the competition can come from being born in the county (generally following historic boundaries), living there, or playing for a member club of the County RFU. The latter two can change, so, for example, having seen James Smith playing as a replacement scrum half for Lancashire last season, we see him this season fulfilling the same function for Cheshire.

The rest of the pictures from the game can be seen here.

Final score: Cheshire 35, Northumberland 31.

Concentrating on the League this year, Brian

Last season, it sometimes felt like a case of "It's Tuesday, it must be Warrington Town", as we met them in the FA Cup and Doodson Sport Cup, as well as the usual meetings in the League. This season, their place has been taken by Skelmersdale United, who we faced in the first of our fixtures, in the FA Trophy at the weekend. Still to come are the New Year and Easter fixtures in the League, the Doodson Sport Cup, and a possible fixture in the Liverpool Senior Cup if they beat Burscough in the previous round.

With heavy rain having caused extensive flooding and disruption throughout the north of England earlier in the week, it was a relief to have a couple of brighter drier days at the end of the week. Normally on a sunny day, I set the camera to sports mode, and let the apertures and shutter speeds sort themselves out. Sometimes I have a senior moment, and I spent the first 5 minutes of this game shooting in shutter priority mode, with the speed from the last time I used it, 1/200s. This gave the effects - especially movement blur in the player's feet - we do not normally look for in light like this.

Luke Edwards

Having spotted my error, I settled in to more conventional shooting. I usually shoot from the same side of the ground for both halves - when I am trying to get everyone in the album, it means I am closest to the players on the right in the first half ...

Alejandro Barba San Felipe

... and those on the left in the second.

Joe Fielding

It falls apart when the second half substitutes are introduced on the side I have been concentrating on in the first half, but we cannot expect tactics to be determined by photographic requirements.

When there is an incident in the game, there is an element of luck in whether I capture it. Practice means I am pointing the camera in the right direction, with the auto focus point over one of the players involved, but we have seen how the auto focus can wander a bit, and it is luck to press the shutter at the right moment. So, I was quite pleased to capture Skelmersdale's Tony Rendell (a former Prescot player) bringing down Mario Bonetta for a penalty.

I was a little surprised Tony Rendell was sent off for denying a goal scoring opportunity, we can see the edge of the penalty area in the picture, and I think the goalkeeper was on his line and in a good position to make a save. Not that it did us any good, we were unable to overcome 10 men in the second half.

I am not sure where to stand for the resulting penalty. Staying in position behind the goal gives a good view of the penalty taker, as here with Jonathon Bathurst.

Despite a good firm shot, Skelmersdale's Sam Ashton went the right way, which gave me the feeling (correct as it turned out) that this was not going to be our afternoon. The disadvantage of this position is that I do not get a picture of the goalkeeper as the post is usually in the way. A view from the side would enable me to capture both, but would require gathering my equipment and making a brisk trot to the side (I am built for comfort rather than speed), and risks another player moving between the camera and the ball at the crucial moment and ending up with no shot at all.

In the programme, the write up from Skelmersdale referred to their having won something called the "Amateur FA Cup". They turned Amateur in the 1960s when they saw an opportunity to perform well in the FA Amateur Cup, with some justification, as they were runners up in 1967 and won the competition in 1971. Wearing my hat as a supporter of Dulwich Hamlet, with a rather longer amateur tradition, holding the status from their foundation until it was abolished in 1974, I can be a pedant, and point out that the Amateur FA Cup is something completely different.

The rest of the pictures from the game can be seen here.

If a tree falls in the forest ...

An occupational hazard for the match day photographer is attending an eventful game, like Prescot Cables at home to Bamber Bridge, and coming away with a collection of photos that suggests nothing much happened. Five goals? Two for the opposition at the other end of the pitch; one a superb ball over the keeper's head from James McCulloch, of which the picture was too blurred to use even on the "goal is a goal" principle; a penalty from Jake Ellis where I at least got the goalkeeper going the wrong way; and a scramble for the opposition to get the points. A disputed sending off? For foul and abusive language, which is not exactly photogenic.

My favourite picture of the night was probably this one of Jake Ellis and an unnamed Bamber Bridge player (numbers on the front of shirts, you know it makes sense) ready to compete for an airborne ball.

One could see this as an existential question: in today's society with its emphasis on image, if the event has not been captured electronically, did it happen at all? However, this is a blog about taking sports photos and mildly diverting things that happen when doing so, so we can leave that one to the philosophers.

A lack of pictures on which to comment gives us space to look at some technical points. As this was the first game of the season to be played fully under floodlights (the sun disappeared behind clouds from about 7pm, necessitating the lights being turned on at kick off), it seemed a good time to look again at our old friends. I have mentioned before how different arrangements of pylons affect the distribution of light on the pitch. I have had a look at a couple of diagrams with lux values, and created rough and ready graphics based on them.

The first has 4 pylons along the side. The yellow and cream areas are those with the most light on the pitch, the orange areas are those with the least.

We can see a line of light spots along the wings, with darker spots around the goal mouth and corners, with most of the penalty area being lighter than the goal area. The outer pylons are at the corner, a little different from Prescot Cables and many other grounds that have the outer pylons nearer the middle of the pitch, which I suspect makes the dark spot in the middle of the pitch smaller, and extends that at the corners.

The second arrangement has 4 corner pylons.

Again, the goal area is one of the darker parts of the pitch, as is the centre circle, but the lighter areas are much closer to the corners.

The distribution of the light affects the best vantage point. For pylons along the side of the pitch, I usually stand below one of the middle pylons, close to one of the lightest parts of the pitch, and where I am likely to have some action taking place right in front of me, a help when using a fixed shutter speed and a lens where the maximum aperture increases as the focal length decreases.

For the corner arrangement, the decision is a trickier one. The lightest part of the pitch is in the corner, but that is further away from most of the play, demanding a longer focal length. It is an arrangement that is less common at our level of football, but when I have encountered it (e.g. Worthing, Durham City, Marine), I have found the best compromise to be found behind the goal about half way between the goal and the corner flag.

The rest of the pictures from the Bamber Bridge game can be seen here.

A Tale of Two Cities

My main clubs have the good fortune to have a unique name: there is only one Cables, and one Hamlet. It is different in Finland, IFK is a network of clubs in Sweden and southern Finland, although I am not aware of the name being particularly associated with one club outside its own location. I have some sympathy for clubs with a name ending in United or City, as the media take the view that these names refer to one club, based in Manchester. This must be especially annoying when your club is in the neighbouring City of Salford, which, in the middle ages, gave its name to the Hundred covering the whole of south east Lancashire.

At the time of Prescot's fixture against Salford City a couple of seasons ago, I was working at Salford Quays. One of my colleagues, Liam, was a Manchester City supporter (an allegiance inherited from his father and grandfather, so we can let him off). Chatting about the weekend, he mentioned he was watching City. I did not have the quick thinking to come back with the riposte that, on the contrary, as we were in Salford, it was I who would be watching City.

On my way to the same fixture, a tourist got on the bus and asked the driver if he went by City's ground. It was tempting to assist, but that would have been mean. There were no such challenges on the way to this game, although First added to the Bank Holiday fun by choosing that day to change the fares, so passengers took twice as long to board, as they rummaged for change. They were mostly loaded with shopping, so I am not sure how they did not find out about the new fares on the way in to town.

I therefore arrived at the game a few minutes late, as Salford's goalkeeper was about to leave the field with a rib injury. Steven Tames took advantage of the stand-in finding his feet (a necessary precaution even for a draw, as we have not kept a clean sheet this season). He has missed a couple of times recently when it seemed easier to score, so hopefully a good goal like this will increase his confidence.

 For the photographer, the first half was in the low angled light of a bright day at this time of year.

For the second half, the lights cast a good light in the middle of the pitch, and in the goalmouth, which is often surprisingly dark. All grounds have their quirks, and Salford has a large perimeter, with the pitch in one corner, so the perimeter fence is close to one touchline and one goal line, but 6 or 7 yards away on the other two sides. It is not as large a gap as a running track, but it can make a difference to the available range if, as I do, you restrict the use of the focal length of the lens under lights to obtain a better aperture. The quality of the light made up for the distance, and I was able to catch action in both goals.

The rest of the pictures from the game can be seen here.

Moles see fine tonight

This blog is about taking sports photos using consumer kit, working from the terraces of clubs at step 4 of the National League System. So, no Nikon D3S with its ISO range extendable to 102,400, or 200mm f/2 Nikkor lens with its combination of wide aperture and long view. Nor do I frequent Anfield, with its international standard floodlights (1400 lux minimum, 2000 lux recommended for high definition television). So, we have to improvise sometimes.

Tuesday saw Prescot Cables visiting Warrington Town, to play them for the fourth, and, as we have lost all four, thankfully last, time this season. Prescot had seven players normally in consideration for a start missing due to injury or work commitments, so it was unlikely to be a good evening. So it proved with Warrington scoring three goals in the first 13 minutes, with two more in the second half. The only consolation was Steven Tames taking the opportunity of a place in the starting XI to end a barren patch in front of goal.

Well, it is not the best of pictures, but a goal is a goal.

The photo above shows the pattern of the light on the pitch. More to the point, there is not one, the spread is fairly even. The spread of light depends on the siting of the lights - a column at each corner, or three or four columns along the sides - and how many lights are on each column. In my experience (relatively limited, as I have only been taking pictures at night games for a couple of years), there are dark patches where you cannot capture anything, and light patches that are very helpful. At Warrington, I suspect the lights passed their test with few values much above or below the average.

It quickly became apparent that I was not going to get very far with my 70-300mm lens, even at the lower focal length, the resulting pictures were very dark. Here is Cables' Lee Roberts at 125mm, f/4.8, 1/200s.

We can improve the lighting ...

... but it is still quite grainy.

So, it was time for emergency measures. I have a 50mm f/1.4 lens. The much better aperture (f/1.4 takes in 8 times as much light as f/4, and 16 times as much as f/5.6) gives a clear, light image when the action is immediately in front of the camera, for example Cables' Phil Cooney taking a throw in.

There are, however a coupe of disadvantages.

Firstly, action further than a few yards away will be small in the middle of the image. In practice, the lens can only really be used over the quarter of the pitch nearest to the camera. Take the original of the picture above of Steven Tames' goal.

Of course, we can crop out the unwanted part, but if the part we want to keep is too small, there may be issues with the quality of the resulting picture. Take this example, with Cables' Ashley Ruane.

This looks like a promising image to crop. However, when we do so, we find the players are quite blurred (which will be more apparent if you click on the image and view it at full size).

This picture also illustrates the second problem with the shorter lens. The auto focus point is a constant size in relation to the frame. Using the longer lens, and a camera with a small focus point like the D5000, it is easy with some practice to position the focus point wholly on the player. With the shorter lens, the focus point is far more likely to be partly on the player and partly on the background, so the camera may focus on either - you can see in the picture above that the advertising hoarding is in better focus than the players.

This means that more of the pictures will have to be rejected. The rest of the pictures from the game, in a somewhat smaller album than usual can be seen here.