Was asked by a very special friend if i would like to take pictures of her and her team playing rugby yesterday and i was more than thrilled to ablige. They want me to go back again next Sunday hopefully and take some more pictures but i was just wondering what you guys thought of these photos.
Shot with a D300 + Sigma 70-200mm f2.8b at f4.0. Had colours set to Vivid and ISO at around 400 - 640 on quite a dull, miserable, cold day.
Good action. I'm not familiar with rugby, but they looked good. The third one would be better, in my opinion, if you could see faces.
Is there an end zone in rugby? Do the teams try to get to a specific end of the field? You might try shooting from the "end zone" and that way, you'll have more of a chance of getting 'face shots'. That's worked well for me shooting football. It may require a longer lens that you have available, however.
Hello, yes, it's similar to American Football in the way it's played. It's not played on a full size rugby picture though, it's only around 50m long this one, full size is double in both directions. I was generally around the half way line but was moving up and down quite a bit. I think i will go towards one of the corners with the team playing towards me next time, thankyou for the advice.
#1 - You gotta get in front of them, in my opinion. Look back at them, not straight on from the side.
#2 - A crop, with a thin aspect ratio used, would work better here. 1:3 vertical crop works best for line-outs I find.
#3 - There are a lot better tackles out there, that will happen around you. Keep around the action, and you won't be forced to keep shots like this as your better stuff.
#4 - Solid shot, though you need to crop more off the top. If you get a scrum-half that likes to leap when releasing to the fly, you'll get amazing shots. Always watch out for when you do, because shooting them a few times on the releases can give you a couple of solid keepers. I've seen women do it too, though the last time I saw it was the U20 Nations Cup I shot a couple of months ago.
Keep shooting, and you'll get better. I actually prefer to shoot Rugby with a 70-200, rather than the 300, because I enjoy moving with the ball, and getting inside the rucks and scrums. When they're on the 5, get in the endzone, and watch for diving tries right around you. You'll get them, over time.
kiz5 wrote:
#1 - You gotta get in front of them, in my opinion. Look back at them, not straight on from the side.
#2 - A crop, with a thin aspect ratio used, would work better here. 1:3 vertical crop works best for line-outs I find.
#3 - There are a lot better tackles out there, that will happen around you. Keep around the action, and you won't be forced to keep shots like this as your better stuff.
#4 - Solid shot, though you need to crop more off the top. If you get a scrum-half that likes to leap when releasing to the fly, you'll get amazing shots. Always watch out for when you do, because shooting them a few times on the releases can give you a couple of solid keepers. I've seen women do it too, though the last time I saw it was the U20 Nations Cup I shot a couple of months ago.
Keep shooting, and you'll get better. I actually prefer to shoot Rugby with a 70-200, rather than the 300, because I enjoy moving with the ball, and getting inside the rucks and scrums. When they're on the 5, get in the endzone, and watch for diving tries right around you. You'll get them, over time. ...Show more →
1. If i shoot this Sunday, i'll go behind the tri lines so that my special lady friend's team is running towards me.
2. Could you give me an example of how you mean please?
3. The game wasn't that heated, the team won 51-5 so i think everything seemed to
be quite relaxed. I've heard next weeks might be a bit more even so hopefully the tackles will be a bit more solid.
Thankyou for the advice.
The scrum half is my special lady friend so i'll make sure she knows to leap as she passes the ball back to be a little more photogenic as well
I'm no pro photographer or anything, i just like taking pictures of whatever i can. They want the photos for their website so hopefully i can get something regular from them, they aren't paying me so i don't see it being a problem. The guys and the children train their as well so might be offered the possibility of photographing them as well.
One thing i did do was to increase the saturation by 10 in Capture NX, do the colours look ok? I wanted to increase the vibrancy of the colours a little due to the crappy, overcast, freezing cold day it was. The one thing i noticed was that the colours tended be a little warm straight out the camera, would this be due to me setting colours to Vivid over Standard or Neutral?
