The bright lights of the big stadium

Last week saw Prescot Cables in the first round of the Liverpool Senior Cup away to Widnes FC. The Select Security Stadium is the home of Vidnes Wikings, as I think my Finnish friend Max calls them - his first language is Swedish, and like many speakers of languages with no labio-velar approximant (the English w), he has trouble remembering whether it applies to a v or w. The capacity of the stadium is 13,350: the crowd was 127. A mismatch of that magnitude can feel like rattling in a small corner. However, at Widnes, the whole south stand is open, which allows spectators to spread themselves out as they would in a smaller ground.

Lighting is provided by a number of heads (about 15) along the roofs of the north and south stands. I do not have a lighting plan, but a newspaper report suggests the requirement for Super League is 1000 lux. Modern lighting is efficient reducing spillage, so walking from the bus I saw less lighting of the night sky than from many less powerful installations.

1000 lux does not give shutter speeds and apertures five times as good as the 200 lux with which I am familiar. I tried some shots at 1/320s - this one gives some idea of what this will give us (after enhancement), but most of my usable shots were at 1/250s.

There were a lot of additional reflections to take into account. There is a 3G pitch, which can be on the shiny side.

Joe Evans

The seats' reflections are different from each stand. The east has the logo of Halton Council, which looks fairly new. I was last there a few years ago for a rugby match, in which the visitors were an incarnation of London. The Council logo was a single lower case "h" - in which one wag observed there were the right number of seats for each of the London supporters to sit on one of them. As many of the seats in the new arrangement are white, new and shiny, this enhanced lighting at this end, with the chance of a grain free picture...

Sam Corlett

... although there was an issue with backlighting.

Callam Gardner and former Cables player Fraser Ablett

The north stand had Wikings, er, I mean Vikings, in white seats against black. They look like they have been there a while, and have lost most of their shine.

Jack Phillips with the north stand in the background

The west stand has the stadium sponsor's logo, also new. These cast the most difficult reflections, a mainly black background with numerous points of light, so I got the least usable shots here, and less in the second half (playing towards this stand) than the first.

Liam Dodd in front of the west stand - taken in the first half

I did not inspect the south stand closely, although from the lack of reflection behind me, I suspect these seats were of a similar vintage to the north.

At evening games, I usually do not extend my 70-300mm lens beyond about 200mm, which gives a maximum aperture of about f/5.3. With the lighting, I was not so concerned about this, but I found the longest focal length of a usable picture was 210mm, in the picture of Liam Dodd above.

We can realistically aspire to win the Liverpool Senior Cup, as only about 20 teams enter it, and Neil Prince took Bootle to the Cup a couple of seasons ago. However, neither prize money or points are at stake, so it provides the opportunity to try some changes, a number of players were resting or unavailable (not many clubs play on Monday), and some usual starters were on the bench.

Phil Bannister joins the substitutes warming up before resting for this game

After Widnes opened the scoring in the first half, the changes looked to have paid off in the second when two goals from Neil Prince and one from Sam Corlett gave us a 3-1 lead. However, the hosts almost immediately replied, and scored an equaliser in injury time. The resulting shoot out (there is sensibly no extra time) meant we had gone out of the competition on penalties for the fourth time in three seasons - having been reinstated the first time, when Southport fielded an ineligible player.

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

Final score: Widnes 3, Prescot Cables 3 (Prince 2, Corlett); Widnes win 5-4 on penalties.