Old Dog Photography

A few nights back, a friend gave us some “spare” tickets to a Colorado Avalanche game. This would be a hard thing to pass up — particularly since it’s been years since I’ve seen a hockey game in person — so of course, we jumped at the chance.

My almost-immediate second thought was how to maximize the amount of camera gear I brought into the arena with me. According to the Pepsi Center website, you can’t bring in a “professional” camera for any event, and they reserve the right to define just what “professional” means. But the Avalanche website says nothing about cameras, and a close-in parking pass came along with the tickets, so I figured I had little to loose by taking a good (if limited) set of camera gear with me.

I could always take it back out to the car, after all.

So here’s what I took with me:

• Olympus E-3
• Olympus 50-200mm f/2.8-3.5 lens (SWD)
• Olympus EC-20 2x teleconverter
• Beat-up Canon point & shoot camera

The basic assumption here was that we wouldn’t be close enough to the ice to need anything shorter than 50mm; for any crowd shots, I’d just use the P&S.

As for getting this stuff into the Pepsi Center, I had the camera / lens slung off my shoulder, with the teleconverter and P&S in my coat pockets. The Pepsi Center site said tripods and monopods were verboten, and I thought I could get away without either, so I left mine at home. The lady at the door who took my ticket had no issues with my (pro-grade) camera, but thought the (also pro-grade) lens was problematic. After conferring with a more-experienced person (security?), the decision was that my gear was fine for a hockey game, but would never make it in to a concert.

So at least at the Pepsi Center, and at least for hockey games, a single DLSR body with an attached lens is fine. But next time I’m leaving the hood behind, it really makes the lens look a lot bigger…

Anyway, did I mention that our free tickets were for seats in a suite (i.e., semi-private booth)? Here’s a stitched panorama of the view from just behind our seats; click on it for a much larger version of this in a new window:

Yes, they were good seats; pity the game wasn’t anything to write home about. At this point in the season, the Avs are out of contention for post-season play — no coach in his right mind would risk injury to a “marquis player” in a game that no longer counted toward a playoff berth. So going in, we were expecting to see all the Avs’ second- and third-string players get clobbered by Detroit’s first-stringers. And basically, that’s just what happened.

So we were watching for the fun of the game, and I was experimenting to see how best to photograph a hockey game with my gear. This might come in handy some day when I didn’t have such a relaxed setting.

I discovered a few things very quickly:

• From where we were sitting, I didn’t need the teleconverter. I had been hoping I could avoid using it anyway, since I didn’t want to deal with its 2-stop loss of light.
• I’m really liking the Oly 50-200 SWD lens — fast focus, nice and bright.
• The lens is fast enough that I didn’t miss my monopod, not even with image stabilization turned off in the camera.

I started shooting at ISO 100 (for best grain), but after a few shots decided I’d trust the camera and let it go to 400 so I could use faster shutter speeds. Eventually I settled in to shooting at shutter priority, 1/160 sec, 400 ISO. From where we were sitting, this worked regardless of where the action was on the ice.

Here’s an early shot at ISO 100, 1/100 sec:

It’s a bit blurred from motion, so I stepped up to ISO 125:

Not bad (IMHO) for an action shot, but for reaching all the way to the far end of the ice (so zoomed out to 200mm, f/3.5) I needed to pick things up. The next two shots are at ISO 400 and 1/160 sec. exposure:

So anyway, I hope this helps somebody out when it comes time to do your own hockey photography. You’ll need to bear in mind that since I’m shooting with an Olympus 4/3 system setup, there’s a 2x crop factor built in (vs. 35mm format). So if you’re using a full-frame DSLR, you’ll need a 400mm lens to do something equivalent to this.