Chicago Wolves

Believe it or not, the chilly month of February is already halfway over. And it’s about this time of the year when the hockey season really start to heat up as the playoffs approach.

While the pros are over in Vancouver playing for their native lands, the amateur leagues are still going strong, and I have two games lined up for the next coming Sundays. And the good news is, we have the same awesome seats that we had for our last game – 3rd row from the glass!

Coming Prepared

If there was one thing I wasn’t happy about with my shots from the last two games I shot at, it would have to be bumping up the ISO to 400-800 in order to capture the action with my f/4 – f/5.6 telephoto. As a result, I had more noise with my 20D and my Rebel XSi than I would have hoped for.

Well, this time I’m planning on bringing along a Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS that I’m renting from CameraLensRentals.com. Having an f/2.8 lens should give me the option to increase the shutter speed from what I’ve been using or bump down that ISO a bit (or both, in some cases).  I’ll lose a little range by going down to a max focal length of 200mm from my 70-300mm lens, but it should be worth it.

The great thing about renting is that instead of shelling out $1,700 for this lens, I get to use it for 2 weeks for only about $150 w/shipping, etc.  The fact that I have 2 games on back-to-back Sundays was a big motivator for going down the rental path rather than just making do with my own gear.

Both games should be a lot of fun, and I hope to add even more intense hockey action to my growing portfolio.

– Kris

Photo: Chicago Wolves defenseman Steve McCarthy lines up for a defensive end face-off.

One more shot in this week’s hockey theme. I promise, just one more tomorrow and I’ll mix it up again.

Being so close to the action and not being able to move around too much was a little limiting, so I wanted to try and mix up a few different looks and shots for a little more variety. This was one of a few where I was playing around with the selective focus and the depth of field.

Photo: The Wolves’ Brett Sterling and Rockford’s Mike Brennan exchange holiday well wishes during a match-up on Sunday. Can’t you just feel the love?

Just a quick post today, and yup, you guessed it, another action shot from Sunday’s Wolves game keeping this week’s theme moving along.

You can only imagine the things that professional athletes say to one another when emotions escalate and the intensity gets too overwhelming.  In the spirit of the season, let’s pretend that Sterling and Brennen are merely exchanging holiday wishes and leave it at that.

Have a safe and happy New Year’s celebration everyone!

– Kris

Photo: Two Chicago Wolves attack the front of the Rockford net while a shot comes in from the point.

Here’s the second image I’ve processed from my photo shoot at the Wolves game on Sunday. I always liked the action in front of the net, even from my days as a defenseman way back when. There were a few neat things with this action shot that I really get a kick out of.

• Where’s the puck?  See if you can find it.
• The forward in front, #27 Johnny Pohl, is leaping in the air out of the way, and in the process, it almost looks like he’s trying to balance on the blade of his hockey stick.
• Again, not to pick on Johnny, but if you view the larger view on Flickr (click on the photo to go there) and look at his face, he appears to have his eyes closed.

As I mentioned yesterday, there was a fair amount of noise in these shots, so I tried to clean it up a little bit here. I also took the image through a little spin in Topaz Adjust like I did with this one, but not as dramatically.

Just Warming Up

There still are a few shots coming this week from Sunday’s game, so hang in there if you’d like to see more. I’m also still riding this excitement from the results of this shoot to the point where I’m trying to make plans for reprocessing photos from my original Flickr account and adding them here to the Hockey Portfolio.

If there was only more time in the day.

Photo: Chicago Wolves Captain Jason Krog on the attack in the offensive zone early in a match-up against the Rockford Ice Hogs.

As I eluded to yesterday, we had amazing seats to Sunday’s Wolves game against (our favorite) Ice Hogs. Only with seats like that would I be able to get a shot like the one above, which believe it or not, I managed to pull of in-camera without any cropping in post. Talk about great timing and a whole lot of luck (more of the latter, actually).

The image is a little noisy, and that’s because I had to shoot at ISO 800 to get some of the shutter speeds fast enough to freeze the action.  This one’s 1/320 sec. at f/5.6, which is as wide open as I can shoot with my 70mm-300mm telephoto zoom set anywhere passed about 200mm (this one was 240mm). I know there are really good noise reduction tools in Photoshop and as plug-ins, I just haven’t used them too much yet. I’ll certainly be revisiting this one in the future once my noise reduction skills improve over time.

New Gear Needed

It’s worth noting that the cameras I shoot these games with now – my Canon 20D and Canon Rebel XSi – and while they have served me well in so many capacities, shooting pass ISO 400 for sports is a bit of a stretch. So, the bad news is that I would have to upgrade my gear if I wanted to do this more often. The good news is that I have more options than I did before.

Both options are pricey, as it would be a matter of buy/renting faster glass to shoot at f/4 or upgrade to a full-frame DSLR. While I would absolutely drool over having a full-frame sensor like the Canon 5DMKII, it’s way out of my price range right now. But the good news is that the newer cameras like the Canon 7D (hopefully my birthday present) have advanced to the point where ISO 800, 1600 and even ISO 3200 in some cases have much less noise than my Rebel XSi of a year ago.

Shooting from the same seats with a 7D and possibly an upgrade (and rented) lens with a constant aperture of f/4 would be such a thrill. Who knows, maybe by next season.

It’s Hockey Week

This is only the first of about 20 images I pulled out of the pile from Sunday’s shoot for processing this week, so it’s certainly going to be a hockey themed week for sure. While I won’t post all 20 in a row, I’ll have a note at the end to highlight the photoset on Flickr where the rest will end up. So if you’re a puck head like me, put on the foil, lace ‘em up, and get ready for more of the greatest game in the world!

- Kris