Soccer Games

[Murph]

Well tomorrow I enter the realm of Daddy Sports shooter when my 10 year old has her first soccer match up at Canyon Lake. Her game is at 11, but they want us there at 10am so it should be interesting. AAYSA is the organization, and it looks like they have lots of out of town games. I have decided to use my D2X and 80-400mm lens for the most part with the 70-200mm as backup because it does not have the range that the 80-400mm does. So, we shall see.....

[soobumim]

I am canon shooter but that 80-400 range should cover any field sports out there. Wish canon has 200-400 F4.

[Murph]

Only problem with the 80-400 is that it is not AF-S and so focuses sloooowly. I picked up a 70-300mm AF-S courtesy of the Spouse Unit.

[Murph]

Made the 1st game, 10-0 our side. Thanks to Ken for being there. Discovered that the 70-300mm is a superb soccer lens, so next time it will be the 70-300mm on the D700, and the 70-200mm on the D2X. Shot about 251 photos for the wife and grandparents. 80-400mm is just too slow, and too picky about focus to be usable. And a big, big thanks to Sergio for an excellent post game meal at his place the Cypress Creek Inn in Comfort.

[Murph]

Shot Ken's 1D mk IIN w/ 300mm yesterday, and WOW was that lens a beast. I hope I managed to get some keepers, that lens focuses so fast, that if I did not nail the focus point, it tracked on something else. It is certainly not a hand holdable lens, glad I had the monopod. My niece used my D2X and 70-300mm and shot 545 .jpgs of (mostly) the game. Some are pretty good. Sunburnt, 3 gigs of photos on my D2X, and hopefully some decent keepers on Ken's camera.

Those Canon pro bodies are nice, but certainly different enough from my Nikon cameras to make it a learning curve. The 1D IIN balanced nicely though with the 300mm attached. Ken was using his 400mm, and a lady came up afterwards and asked who we were shooting for! I almost said Playboy, but figured I would get banned from the fields for life.