Today’s image is a bit of a departure from my normal type of photography isn’t it? (rhetorical question again, Dear Reader). This is about as much as I want to get involved with sports after the way this weekend has gone – to say it’s been disappointing is a bit of an understatement. We’re in Rugby season, more specifically the annual Six Nations competition – the six nations being England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, France and Italy. Following England as I do, I was rather nervous about the home game against Wales and it wasn’t unwarranted – despite a very close game England lost. Hmmmph!
Today was another Rugby-fest starting out at a kids Rugby tournament which was very enjoyable – I actually don’t know what the scores are, but it was a lot of fun. We then hotfooted it over to watch the local (Premier League) rugby team play; London Irish, the team in question, are 8th in the league, the opposing team Northampton are 3rd and despite a very close game the team I was cheering on lost. You can see why I may be a little disgruntled.
I’ve mentioned already that during out time away we happened upon the Forest of Dean Motor Rally running through the ancient woodland that borders England and Wales and how the photo opportunity this offered was so exciting. Whilst the cars appear to be travelling at an incredible speed, they had in fact just left the start line, taken one corner and were accelerating up a hill gaining speed as they did. To produce the blurred effect, I had to change a number of settings so that the shutter speed was relatively low, in some cases as low as 1 second, panning with the car’s movements. An important function when photographing any fast moving objects, whether they’re birds, animals, planes or even cars as is the case, is AI Servo mode. When set, the subject has to kept within the central circle within the view finder, and the camera will automatically follow focus (as it’s called) tracking the subject all the way. It’s not as easy as it sounds, it’s taken me a number of attempts until I’m happy with this functionality, but now I use it all the time with anything on the move, especially with the kids football (and Rugby). I often state that the digital camera is just a box with a hole in it, which it is, but perhaps it has a modicum of sophistication built in as well.
Andrew Skelton: 
Some nice pix Andy. I am currently writing this from our caravan in the depths of the Golden Valley in Herefordshire. The wildlife and the scenery up here is wonderful. As a matter of choice we have no television which gives us both lots of valuable reading time. Hence I had not heard the great news about Wales’ success, sorry old chap but it is about time the Welsh got back that loving feeling for the game!!
By: Mark Goodwin on 26/02/2012
at 9:47 pm