Flint Rogues Rugby Football Team - Team Photo

Since everything starts with the goals of the next airshow, follow me here and I will get to the Rugby team in short order.

Every year I think of what I want to accomplish in the next year's airshow season.  Last year - it was the use of Auto ISO and is it a benefit?  And every year is the battle to get better with prop blur.  In order to determine the goals, I search out airshow and general aircraft photos on line, and see what works for me.  Kills time on rainy days.  This year, I started looking at Moose Peterson's aviation photography.  Moose is primarily a nature photographer, with a fondness for the aviation subject.  He's very good at both.  And since he is a Nikon dude, I don't have to put his tips and tricks through some form of Rosetta Stone.

While looking at the technical aspects of his photography, one of his lines of non-technical advice is 'just show up'.  That gets to me - just do something.  Preferably interesting.

To the Rugby.  Just show up.  Post a few pictures.  Get a bit of an audience.  And it all works.  On Flickr, the Rugby album is the most active.  And popular enough that the team asked me to take their team photo - the 50th year team photo.  I expect they will use where appropriate.

This is my first project with a staged team situation.  I looked up a number of team photos.  I like shots close enough to see and count the rivets.  That doesn't happen here.  I'm used to using long lenses - again not here where a nifty fifty will do.  And the new D6?  In the bag as this is a situation for the D850.  Oh yea, and that pesky tripod thingie.

And if that wasn't enough pressure, the photo was date and time sensitive.  The date worked out as the fall storm clouds cleared.  The time not so much.  The time was less than an hour to sunset.  Oh, those client wishes/demands.  And the setting?  North goal post.  Can you spell harsh light?

I'd like the shots to be a bit lighter, but light is really tough to work at that point.  So it is what it is, maybe newer software will help at a later date.

Both shots were with the D850 and a NIKKOR 50mm f/1.8G lens.

And just the Lads:

You never know what will happen when 'you just show up'.

Flint Rugby

I found out recently that Flint has a rugby team.  Turns out someone in the subdivision is related to the team, and had a sign in their front yard.  A few quick searches and I found out all the pertinent information.  The game yesterday was preceded by the the delivery of the D6 - perfect timing.

Now I know nothing about rugby.  So the night before the match I was cruising YouTube to see what the game was all about.  After watching a few game highlights video, I drifted to the most egregious red card activities.  Don't judge me.

For more photos of this outing: Flickr Album

Next match locally be in a few weeks.  May have to get a heavier jacket by then.

#3 Hole Save

It is tough not be excited about hockey this time of year.  It is this week in 1980, 40 years ago if my math is correct, that the USA Men's hockey team beat the best team, amateur or pro, in the world.  A group of college kids beat the Red Army.  In 9 of 10 games, it would be the other way around - but on on February 22, 1980 that 1 in 10 happened.  There are three events that I remember where I was and who I was with.  This is one of them.  Thank you YouTube.
So the Pens win over the weekend and are looking like they are playoff bound.  I'm getting to the point where I can say 'my' Firebirds, and my Firebirds are looking good as well.  So I'm in the hockey mood these days.  (I've been working on some aircraft photos taken last spring in an effort to have warm thoughts about this year's tour, but not over this week.)
So in the hockey mood, I took the D780 out for its first night out.  Lucky to have any good results at all, I was playing with the menu a lot.  But only on the DLSR side, not the mirrorless side.  Still working on the mirrorless stuff.
One of the things I need to see work is that the new camera would write to both cards.  So I set it to write RAW files to one and JPG files to the other card.  (Spoiler Alert, both slots work.)  And I have a JPG file to work with as well, for comparative purposes.
The #3 hole save.

Straight from the camera.

My take.

Goalie #3 Hole Save

NIKON D780 Ver.01.00/70-300mm f/4.5-5.6

300 mm, 1/1000 sec, f/5.6, ISO 2200 (AUTO)

MANUAL Mode

One of the advantages I've been using as a crutch when shooting with the D500 is the focal length there is a optical 'trick' that gives an allusion of a larger lens.  Not so here.  300 mm is 300 mm here.  But it was enough.
Saturday was Tropical night.  Dig those outfits.

Crim 2016 Hand cycle start

One of the races at the Crim is the hand cycle.  These amazing athletes go the 10 miles on their cycles.  With their arms.  Wow.

This was taken at the start of the race - clearly with the participants crossing the start line.  I had access to get past the crowd control fences, so I could sit right at the line.

I like the excess contrast and a bit of HDR on this - and most of my shots.

1/25
ISO 400
5.6
Aperture Priority

Walking around Flint - Bernie's HQ

The D7200 arrived last Saturday.  I've spent a lot of time in the last week going over the menu items and set up.  As with anything, over time functionality of new models either gets more complicated or more useful.  And this new camera is the same.  I needed a book to get thought it.

The basics are the same.  Nikon's use and names of internal camera functions are the same, but the numbers are very different.  For example, my D90 had 11 auto-focus points.  This one has 51.  How did I ever get by?  Both the D90 and D7200 have two auto-focus modes - but the new one is so fast.

So after a few days of shooting everything in the office - multiple times - it was time to take the D7200 on the road.  Today wasn't the best day, in fact it was cold and a bit of snow.  But I really needed to get out and do whatever I could to see the new one in action.

This past Saturday on my way to the Flint Farmer's Market, I passed the Bernie Sander's presidential HQ for Flint.  For all the wrong reasons, Flint is in the news and for a few days at least the center of the Democratic Party focus.  I've been told I don't have many pictures of Flint.  Well, this was too good to pass up.  I have more pictures from this morning's walk, but I'll start with this one.  I don't know of any in my circle of friends who are socialist - as they all have jobs.  So take this as it is, a subject photo.  Not a political endorsement.

1/250   f/11
EV 0.0
Manual Mode
ISO 200
Focal Length 55 mm

With this set of photos today, I completed my journey to the Dark Side as far as how much the camera helps me.  In the beginning as we all do I started with shooting with AUTO mode.  Let the camera do everything.  Until recently, I used APERTURE mode.  I wanted to keep the aperture consistent because most of my work finds its way to HDR merging.  Today, I cut all dependence on the modes and went MANUAL.  And somehow I got through it all.

Clearly not open for business on a Sunday morning.  To me, there is a lot going on here.  Lots and lots of lines.  Lines everywhere.  I like the blues, I like the oranges.  I like the bricks and other masonry.  

This is a single photo using Photomatix - and mostly the Surreal settings.  However in some spots, the processing left flat white areas that possibly caught your eye and that wasn't what I was going for.  So I did anther processing for the same shot except with a different setting that didn't have all the whites.  I used the second shot as my base and laid the Surreal settings on top with a 75% opacity setting.  It crushed the whites and brought out the definition in the bricks.  Worked for me.

I tried to do all the right things.  Use a tripod.  Get the right light.  Get the right focus point.  Not sure if all of that worked for me, plus the new camera, but today's shots were so sharp without any processing.  Think I'm going to like this.