Auto focus with a limited attention span

This weekend saw what has become in recent years Prescot Cables' traditional last pre season game against Marine. There has been competition (not to mention regular movement of players) between the clubs for many years, although for most of the Pyramid era, they have been a division or two above us.

Prescot's pre season programme seems to have been very much about exploring options, discovering combinations of players that work well. The squad is therefore still quite large, and I suspect likely to remain so to have cover for all positions. Very few players have played in all of the pre season games, so I am still not sure who will start the season. A couple of players have been in most of the games - top scorer in pre season, James Thomas (who features more in a moment), and James McCulloch.

James McCulloch

There was still the opportunity to bring in new faces.

Joe Fielding

I think most would agree that auto focus is a wonderful thing, especially for fast moving sports like football and rugby, as it works much more quickly and accurately than anything the photographer can do manually. However, it sometimes seems to have the attention span of a gnat. Take this free kick for Prescot's goal.

The ball is in nice sharp focus as James "Smiler" Thomas takes a free kick ...

... keeping a close eye as it goes over the wall ...

 ... still sharp as Marine goalkeeper Ryan McMahon makes a move ...

 ... but he cannot get to it and ... ooh, there's Dave from Football Editorial - wonder what camera he is using ... what do you mean "goal"?

Still, as the principle remains on this blog, a goal is a goal, and this is just the sort of goal for which we keep Smiler on the books, getting us back from a goal down, which would be a valuable point in a league game.

For Dave Smithson's view of the game and some comments from Cables Manager Dave Powell, click here.

The rest of the photos 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.

Mr Hardaker's backyard

This weekend saw Prescot Cables playing away to AFC Fylde. The club won the FA Vase in 2008 under their former name of Kirkham & Wesham. I am not sure the new name has established a unique selling point. Some of us stopped on the way to the game in the Bitter Suite in Preston: when some other customers heard we were going to Fylde, they thought we meant  Fylde RFC (where I have been a couple of  times to watch Lancashire v Yorkshire rugby union).

Fylde play at Kellamergh Park in Warton, between the former and current homes of the Football League in Lytham St Annes and Preston. The ground has an air of provisionality: although Fylde moved there in 2006, their long term plans involve a multi sports complex nearer to Kirkham, so the stand, bar, board room etc. look neat and tidy, and able to be dismantled and sold on to recoup some of the costs of the new development.

It can get a bit windy in these parts, as we can see from the angle of the trees.

It was a clear day for November, although that is a relative term: I think of November as the month with the least attractive light. Perhaps it is the transition from October, when we usually have at least a couple of good days, with the backdrop of the leaves changing colour. From the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, the fruitfulness has departed, leaving just the mists.

The auto focus is not always quite as responsive as in the lighter months. I have no problem getting enough to create a slide show, but a few shots that looked good on the camera's montitor prove to be out of focus when seen on a larger screen.

A lot of shots appear murky as well, even at the beginning of the game. Take this example.

After cropping, the next thing I do in Photoshop Elements is look at the levels.

The black part in the middle that looks like a range of mountains is the histogram, and it shows how well distributed the light is in the photo. There is a flat area to the right, which tells us the picture is slightly under exposed. If we move the white slider to the left, to the end of the mound, this will have the effect of lightening the picture. I do this on the RGB channel (as shown in the drop down at the top of the window), which adjusts all colours at once. This is usually all we need in natural light, although sometimes under floodlights it can be beneficial to adjust the colours separately.

This often leaves shadows that still need to be lightened, and can leave some of the highlights over exposed. This can be adjusted using the shadows / highlights menu.

This makes for a lighter picture, with brighter colours, and a better view of the players' faces.

The purist could say that this is presenting a false image - if it was a grey and murky day, then the photo should reflect that.

I do not agree. Most cameras have their own quirks when relecting the natural light, I find the D5000 (and the D50) on a cloudy day makes a dark picture, and it is far easier to adjust the lighting when you can see the picture on a full sized screen. Enhancing the lighting also makes the action stand out - people looking at the website / programme / local paper want to see Cables' John Couch challenging for the ball, not a reminder that it was a bit dark.

The game was a superb defensive perfomance from Prescot,

who held off a strong Fylde attack for almost the whole game, only succumbing in the last minute of normal time, and taking home a point courtesy of a long range goal from James Thomas a few minutes previously.

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