In the pink

I remember a rumour at Dulwich Hamlet, back when shirts were stitched together from coloured cloth rather than colours printed on, that our pink and blue kit was delivered late one season because Corinthian Casuals had already used up the available pink cloth. An away game at Casuals was the only time I have seen the opposition in pink (and chocolate), and I have never seen the opposition in pink and blue - until this weekend.

Prescot Cables' visitors, Darlington 1883, adopted this kit as part of their charitable activities in support of the local St Teresa's Hospice.

At the beginning of the season many of us thought Darlington would pass quickly through our Division, bringing four figure crowds with them. Although they are firmly in the play off places, the title looks in Curzon Ashton's grip; and, whilst their visit is the largest gate of the season for most clubs, this has been in the order of 350 - 500.

It made sense once fixtures for the later weeks of the season were finalised (this game was originally scheduled for February) to have the annual Beer Festival this weekend. Good numbers of locals and CAMRA members attended the Friday evening session, and Darlington supporters, some of whom made an early trip, boosted numbers on the Saturday. I have not attended on Friday in previous years, but most of the pharmacologists turned out, so I joined them. Some took a scientific approach, with notes and scores; one of Luke's notes on the ciders simply read "Welsh", not necessarily a complement after a bad experience with the generally well reviewed Naughty Horsey last week.

With the gap in League position, Darlington had to be favourites, but our better form had been at home, and we took points off them in October. We knew we would need to be solid in defence.

James McCulloch blocks Darlington's Terry Galbraith

When I stand behind the goal we are attacking and the opposition spend a lot of time in our half, I take less pictures, although with the 70-300mm lens, I can cover most of the pitch and crop to a large at web quality.

Francis Foy defends our goal area

It does not make much difference to the final collection: I identified plenty of shots with which to work. In some ways it is easier and quicker, I am likely to only get one or two frames of a piece of action at the other end of the pitch, whereas when it is happening right in front of me, I will have a sequence through which to look and make a selection.

Man of the match for Prescot was our goalkeeper Richie Mottram, who kept us in the game with some fine saves, in particular a spectacular one in injury time (not this one) to ensure that we kept hold of another useful point.

After the game, it was time for more of the festival beers, and some of our visitors were staying for the weekend, so stayed on to enjoy some of them too.

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

Final score: Prescot Cables 0 Darlington 1883 0.

An apple, a tangerine and a bag of nuts

I do not have children of my own, but if I did, I suspect they may not like my ideas about a traditional Christmas present. Not for me the delights of Xboxes and Play Stations, whatever they are, I would be dispensing the fruit and healthy comestibles of the title. Tangerine is also probably the most popular description of the colour orange when applied to a football kit.

Prescot Cables' visit to Salford City was our last pre Christmas trip of the year. I was expecting the trains to be packed with shoppers, there were warnings two weeks previously of queues to get in to the station, but there were fewer people around, and therefore a more pleasant journey, than I anticipated. There are no decent pubs (or, as far as we can tell, any pubs) near the ground, so Richie, our leader in beer and pub choices, guided us to the New Oxford in central Salford, which has an excellent range of real ales and Belgian beers. Sometimes I think it might be fun to order one of the latter with the correct pronunciation, complete with short wave radio effects on the gs, but the landlady seemed so knowledgeable I think she would have been correcting me.

We were in our red away kit, and Salford were in their usual tangerine.

Connor McCarthy

On first sight, we were a bit concerned that the colours were a bit close together. On the whole, I think they were sufficiently distinguished, although there might have been a problem if there had been thick cloud - in which case they would probably have been a bit close if we had been wearing amber too.

Being a week after our earliest sunset, it was two minutes later this week, with the difference in longitude between Prescot and Salford taking a minute off. That minute made all the difference - well, not quite all, the absence of thick cloud may have more to do with it. The ground is in a natural dip, but there there was still some sunlight for the start of the game.

Paul Cliff makes his first start

The sun soon dropped below the surrounding houses, leaving an even light, supplemented by the floodlights.

Dave Dempsey explains how to get happier and healthier. A goal usually does the trick for me.

Salford have a larger than usual gap between the pitch perimeter fence and the touchline. A few years ago, some clubs with this arrangement would change the width of the marked out pitch from game to game to play to the weaknesses of the opposition, cramping a team with good wide players, or giving a team with fitness issues more ground to cover. Such shenanigans are not allowed these days at our level, with leagues imposing tighter restrictions on the permitted size of the pitch, and requiring clubs to stick to the dimensions they have registered.

It was nearly two years since I was last at Salford, with last season's fixture having been in midweek and inconvenient for travel due to engineering works. Looking back, I made the observation on that occasion that the pitch was in one corner of the available surface, but it seemed more centrally placed this season. One effect of this is that the dark patch that usually occurs at the base of the floodlight pylons in the side arrangement is not on the touchline.

Robert Gilroy progresses near the touchline

The gap also avoids one of the pitfalls of taking pictures from the side with a 70-300mm lens, namely that a player running along the touchline can come too close to be able to capture from head to toe in a landscape frame. I have not developed the manual dexterity to flip the camera to get the frame in portrait orientation with sufficient speed to continue to capture the action.

The best illuminated spots remained on the edge of the penalty area.

We can get an idea of the illumination at the touchline from the player taking the throw in - usually in this sort of situation, he would be shrouded in gloom.

Despite the good photographic opportunities, the game was not one of our best performances - the rest of the pictures from the afternoon can be seen here.

Final score: Salford City 2 Prescot Cables 0.

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.

I'm sure it's not supposed to crunch when you do that

That is what I have been saying for 30 years when I rotate my left arm. As the occasional discomfort in the shoulder (usually in damp weather) started when I was 14, and has got neither better nor worse since, I have never regarded it as a cause for concern.

However, my 70-300mm zoom lens has recently been making a sound as if something is not engaging, at the 300mm end of the range, which suggests it may be developing a fault. Not that I can complain, I have subjected it to a level of usage many would not normally reach. I took it to a repair shop, where the helpful, if lugubrious, assistant was confident that the issue was with the Vibration Reduction (VR) unit.

VR is a wonderful thing, but not particularly relevant for sport. As a rough rule of thumb, you start to have a problem with the shake from hand holding the camera at a shutter speed slower than 1/focal length. VR provides additional stabilisation, allowing crisp images to be captured up to 4 shutter speed settings slower, and it works, I have taken pictures at 1/125s at 300mm. However, I rarely use speeds that slow taking sports action, we can get away with 1/200s, but any slower will usually not freeze enough of the action.

So, when shooting sports I usually turn the VR off. That does not isolate it, and when it goes wrong, it er, vibrates - fortunately only for half a second, after which I can focus normally. After talking to the man in the shop, I decided to see how it develops, as the remedy in any event is to replace the VR unit, which is quite expensive.

It was with my equipment thus impaired that I set off to Prescot Cables' home international friendly against Flint Town United of the Huws Gray Alliance. The weather was much more like we would expect on a summer evening than last week.

Davison Banda

Andy McCoy

With the mixture of bright sunshine and long shadows, the Auto ISO really comes into its own, with lighting conditions varying in a single run or pass.

At this time of year, every week brings sunset 10 - 12 minutes earlier, so the floodlights came on for the second half.

Luke Edwards

With the natural light assisted by the lights early in the half, I did not manage to get rid of a slightly pink hue, but later on, I got the results we expect under the lights.

Matty Parker

I also spoke with our programme editor, Paul Watkinson, who explained that we have new printers this year, which allows a different picture on the cover for each game if we wish, so I will be providing some pictures for that. Paul very wisely (from his point of view) persuaded me to send 2 or 3 from which to choose, in the same way I do with the Liverpool Echo. We will look at the requirements for the programme cover in more detail in a future post, I think it will be a bit different from the paper, whose priority is to have a picture to go with the words, and can be summed up as: 1 - goals, 2 - goal scorers, 3 anything else.

The rest of the pictures from the 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.

Emergency wet weather cover

In my previous post, I suggested three positions clubs have on paying players - those who can afford to and do, those who cannot afford to and do not, and those who cannot afford to and still do in defiance of financial sense. I should have mentioned a fourth category, those who can afford to because of a financial backer, and suddenly stop doing so when the backer loses interest or has to devote funds to his business.

Tuesday's Doodson Sport Cup game against Warrington Town saw the first game for Prescot Cables since the return to amateur status, so the supporters who braved the weather were somewhat apprehensive as to who would be playing. Not falling into the fourth category above, there were no eye watering pay packets suddenly disappearing, so only a couple of players were missing. There will undoubtedly be other departures as some players obtain places at teams who are able to pay, or decide they can no longer afford to travel to training, but hopefully many will remain.

That the match was completed is a testament to the work of the groundsman, Doug Lace, and those who assist him, as the pitch responded well to the downpour that started a couple of minutes after kick off.

Conditions were far from pleasant, and both sides were quickly playing in brown, but there were none of the pools of standing water that we would have expected even a season or two ago, and which would have entailed abandoning the match.

Having forgotten my camera cover, and its being only shower proof anyway, I spent the first half in an unaccustomed position under cover near the half way line. Due to the weather and the game being a League Cup tie, the area in front of the bar was quite sparsely populated, allowing freedom of movement when the action disappeared behind a floodlight pylon.

This was also one of the best locations to get advantage of the new floodlights. I combined this with the technique I tried at Trafford a couple of weeks ago of trying not to extend my 70-300mm lens beyond about 200mm, and was rewarded with some pictures with less grain than I am used to, despite the weather.

This applied even to some of the longer range shots towards goal.

For the second half, I tried going up to the stand. I was not expecting this to work, thinking it would be too far away from the pitch under the floodlights, but found it worked surprisingly well, not just on the near touchline, as here...

... but also in the goal area...

... although we start to lose clarity towards the opposite side of the pitch, which becomes more apparent if you click on the picture below to see it in full size.

Of course, none of these pictures came out of the camera looking like this - how I enhance them still needs to be covered in another post.

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

Not Old, just Trafford

When English local government was reorganised in 1974, it gave rise to knotty questions about what to call some of the new areas, with two or three previously independent towns grouped into one district. In some places small villages, like Tandridge or Tendring, that gave their names to Saxon hundreds, were rescued from obscurity to become the names of the new districts. In others, geographical descriptions were used, like Calderdale, or Tameside.

Trafford brings together Stretford, Urmston, Sale and Altrincham, and crosses an historic county boundary. Its name comes from a ford across River Mersey on the Roman Road between Deva Victrix (Chester) and Mancunium (Manchester), a route largely used by the A56. The name was already well known, from Old Trafford cricket and football grounds, and from Trafford Park, Europe's largest purpose built industrial estate. These in turn were named after the de Trafford family, who owned land in the area, and took their name from the location. The rest of the borough seemed content to ignore the fact that the name is Norman French for Stretford.

Trafford FC (founded as North Trafford - the part of the borough historically in Lancashire) play in Flixton at Shawe View, a compact ground surrounded by trees, which, whilst they are in leaf, provide a good windbreak. A couple of branches could have done with being lopped near one of the floodlight pylons, as they seemed to be casting a shadow on the pitch. A couple of darker patches were closer to the middle of the pitch than I would normally expect, and one team was playing in white, with the other with a kit including black. So, all in all, a lighting challenge.

Getting a decent picture in these circumstances needs a certain amount of trial and error. A position behind the goal is not much use, there are too few of the better lit parts of the pitch in range. I stuck with the 1/200s speed I usually use under floodlights, and tried not to extend the zoom lens beyond 200mm, which increases the maximum aperture. It is not a large increase, f/5.3 instead of f/5.6, but it seems to make a difference, producing a result that, after enhancing the lighting, is a bit grainy, but useable, such as this one of Cables' Chris Rowntree.

As is often the case, when the action is close enough, and in a good patch of light, we can get a result that is quite clear after an appropriate lighting enhancement, such as this one featuring Cables' Ashley Ruane.

Apologies to the Trafford player who does not get a mention, I am terrible with names - it takes me about 3 weeks of their playing for us to start to recognise our own players!

How much grain can be tolerated in the picture will depend to a certain extent on the size at which is is to be shown.

This example of Cables' goalkeeper Michael Langley looks reasonably crisp at a small size on this page, but I left it out of the selection for the slide show, as it was far too grainy when viewed at full screen size - if you click on the picture, you should see a larger image to demonstrate what I mean. There are factors I use selecting pictures to show, such as trying to show all our players, looking out for the better images, etc., but often in an evening game, these take second place to finding pictures with enough light.

The photos that made it through to the slide show can be seen here.