Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2000/05/16
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Michael Scarpitti wrote: > > > Having photographed just about every sport at the > collegiate level, I must admit that soccer is one of > the toughest, with football actually being one of the > easier ones. My advice is to follow the player until > he pauses to kick, and then shoot. Trying to follow > the ball is actually harder. Follow the player. > Another pointer is to stay behind the goal area, > because the action will often be coming toward you. > Shhoting from the touch line is a little harder, but I > have some good shots from there too. > > (I'm assuming manual focus here.) > Hi Michael, someone else was focussing on the ball. I focus on the player, try to compose so the ball is nicely placed in the shot (few people like a shot without the ball in it!), and generally shoot quite some time before the kick. Players heads always drop right down, with back hunched over, when kicking in soccer. makes for a bad shot. So shooting about .75 seconds before the kick gives a shot with arms outstretched, head up often, eyes looking at other players, etc. Of course with juniors, anything can happen. I get lots of shots of children completely of the ground. Mums love those ones. I used to use manual focus leica, and found it easier from the side line as relative distance between player and photographer changed less quickly, but with Nikon and auto focus, shooting from the goal line produces many shots of players running at the camera, which is really nice. Regards Rick Dykstra