Sporting Chance

Page 3

At most Premier Division grounds you will be pushed back at least another 10 yards from the goal by the slightly wider pitch and by the advertising banners. The upshot is that a 400mm lens gives you near optimum coverage. Remember that this is the 35mm effective focal length, a 300mm on a DSLR with a reduced chip might be just right also. Historically, newspapers always had 400mm lenses in their inventory and so it was hardly surprising that these same lenses got carted along to athletics, etc, and the additional photography led to more awards from those lenses, a simple case of statistics



Anyone for Cricket?

It would be foolish to pretend that all you needed was a 400mm f2.8 lens. If your ambitions are towards cricket then even longer lengths are going to be needed – these guys regard a 300mm lens as a wide angle!

The distance to the centre of the square at Trent Bridge varies from 61 yards at the Radcliffe Road end to 72 yards to the Parr Stand. To that you need to add another 6 yards for advertising hoardings – the boundary rope is usually set close to the outer limits of the ground for test matches. In addition you need to add a little under 11 yards for batsmen at the far wicket and subtract the same amount for those at the near crease. For side-on shots, of course, you maintain a constant 60 to 70 yards depending on where the wicket has been set. You are thus left staring down the barrel of an 800mm lens and sometimes a converter as well. Fortunately cricket is most often played is good light but even so if you use 100ISO

Tweet

Page 1 - Page 2 - Page 3 - Page 4 - Page 5 - Page 6 - Page 7 - Page 8