The brightest lights in town

I am not sure if it is an attempt to address the problem (for astronomers and wildlife) of light pollution, but I find the street lights in Lancaster a bit gloomy. That is not a problem at Lancaster City's Giant Axe, where the lights are to National League North standard, 250 lux off the top of my head (more off the top of the head of someone with less hair). Mr Wikipedia tells us that the ground, is neither giant, nor an axe, but once had adjacent tennis courts, a bowling green and four cricket pitches, the land being shaped like an axe head.

Josh Nicholson - 1/250s, f/4.5, ISO9000

Having secured a point against the league leaders at the weekend, we would need as good a performance again to come away with anything against the team in second place and do better than we had on any of my previous visits.

Tom Brocklehurst is watched by the Shed End Ultras' banner - 1/250s, f/5.6, ISO20000

As well as providing a platform, I use online photo sharing to keep an eye on technical skills I might pick up. Most sites show some EXIF data, to give a good idea how a result you like was achieved. One of my Twitter followers whose work catches my eye is Ben, my counterpart at Needham Market. I was looking at what he reported as his first foray into evening games, and found a collection remarkably free of grain. The data shows he was using a Nikon D3300, similar to my D5300, and a similar lens (70-300mm f/4-f/5.6). It revealed how low a shutter speed you can get away with if movement is in the right direction: there were plenty at 1/100s, and a couple at 1/60s, at a nice smooth ISO 3200.

This breaks every rule in the book about picturing sports, but as the only real rule is to make pictures your audience wants to look at, I decided on a trial. I use shutter priority mode at evening games, and maximise shutter speed at the expense of grain. I therefore kept my thumb on the dial, and cut speed when I thought it might work. Lancaster's floodlight pylons are further back from the pitch and the heads angled differently to many other ground, so the touchline is less well illuminated (Jack Phillips commented as he walked to the bench that he thought it was a bit dark), but the best light is in the middle of the pitch rather than the wings.

Choosing and processing the pictures I could not be oblivious to grain, but only looked at the data when I had finished. Surprisingly, only one at 1/160s made it in ...

Sam Staunton Turner - 1/160s, f/5.6, ISO7200

... everything else was at 1/200s and over.

Bram Johnstone - 1/200s, f/5.3, ISO10000

Using the dial whilst keeping more of an eye on the action than the numbers can mean you go higher than you intend, I even got one at 1/400s.

Jacob Jones - 1/400s, f/5, ISO20000

My experiment showed considerably less correlation between ISO and grain than I was expecting. This, if not exactly under laboratory conditions, was under some of the best lights in the division: I have some opportunities coming to see what happens in some more challenging lighting conditions.

As for the game, we were building on the progress made against Brighouse, but with our biggest problem being once again an inability to score. With a strong Lancaster side managing one in each half, this was set to be another good performance without a result.

Travelling home, I did not fancy the tight connection at Wigan, but there was a slightly earlier train that reduced this risk. The advertised train was indeed late, but the Liverpool train waited, leaving 10 minutes late, to the consternation of Paul from our Train Crew and me, as we had our eye on the last bus passing Wavertree Technology Park. However, online travel tools are improving all the time, so I tracked on Realtime Trains as we made up time, and the Arriva Bus app as the bus encountered a delay, allowing us to make our connection with confidence.

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

Final score: Lancaster City 2 Prescot Cables 0.