Over the Easter weekend in 2023 I traveled south to Lincoln University which is just south of Christchurch. This was to attend the southern regional convention of the Photographic Society of New Zealand.

The conferences tend to be a mixture of speakers, workshops and outings. By coincidence, on Saturday there was a one-day cricket match. New Zealand A playing against Australia A at the Lincoln Oval. This was in the grounds of the university and we were allowed to photograph it.

I have taken photos of cricket in the past but these mainly involved schoolboy teams. It was therefore a good opportunity to attempt to capture sport at the highest level.

Unlike other sports that I have photographed cricket is one that is difficult to anticipate the action. Therefore you just have to rely on your cameras burst ability and hope that something will happen. It is definitely a sport better watched on television with the benefit of the replay.

I took my Lumix G9 camera and 100 – 300mm lens. I knew that the camera could shoot at a high frame rate. Plus being a micro 4/3 meant that the lens had an equivalent focal length of 200-600mm.  I also shot jpg’s as I knew that I would be taking a lot of images. The smaller file size meant that more images could be taken before the buffer filled up.

Nailing the focus was an issue. As you can see in the image below, the camera would often lock onto other objects. 

It was quite an overcast day and the wind had a bite to it. I had set the ISO at 800 as I wanted a shutter speed of at least 1/250s to freeze the action. 

I ended up only shooting for a hour. Australia were in bat and we did not manage to get a single wicket during the time. The batters were also playing quite defensively which also meant there was no real attack in the images. Still it was a great way to shoot something completely different to what I normally shoot. 

My daughter Samantha was taking an active role in promotions for the Richter roller derby club in Wellington. She asked me would I come and photograph two of the events being held at the Kilbirnie Recreation Centre.

I decided to take two cameras to the event. My main camera would be my Nikon D90 with a 70 -200mm f2.8 lens. This has been my “go to ” sports lens for many years. The D90 is a crop sensor camera meaning that the lens had an effective full frame equivalent range of 105-300mm

I had never shot at this location before. I figured it would not be that different from the many stadiums I had previously shot. I also knew that I would need to take a lot of images to get usable one. Therefore, I would be shooting in JPG’s rather than RAW’s.

This has two advantages. Firstly the cards can store more images. Secondly images would be written faster to the card, meaning that the camera’s buffer would not fill up so fast. Again that meant that a burst would have more images in.

The camera was set in shutter priority mode. In this mode you set the shutter speed and allow the camera to alter either the Aperture or ISO. I started with a shutter speed of 1/80s. I found that this was a little slow and so I increased it to 1/125s of the second. 

As a result the images were shot between f2.8 and f5 with an ISO range between 800 and 3200. Traditionally you would think that f2.8 would produce a very narrow depth of field. That is true if you are close to the subject. However the further you move away the greater the DOF becomes. As I was shooting some 40m away it was not an issue.

The action in roller derby is very fast and quite often a jumble of people. This makes focusing somewhat challenging for the camera. Generally speaking I would stay tracked on the Jammer. However, it was also good to capture the activities away from the main action. This includes team members waiting to be subbed in.

The second camera I took was my Lumix G9. For it I took two lenses. Ultra wide 14-28mm and a longer 90-300mm. I wanted to see how the camera would perform.

The wide angle lens let me shoot images that was so different from the others. Such as being able to capture what the venue look like. Or putting the camera closer to the ground and shooting up.

At the end of each match, there is always a group photo with everybody involved. The wide angle was perfect for those shots.

I ended up shooting over 3000 images in the two games. As the images were shot in JPG I knew that I would not be doing much processing to them. 

After importing them into Lightroom it set about culling them. I used the same approach as I normally do when handling large numbers of images. The first stage is a cull of images that are either out of focus, or where the focus is on the wrong place, or have other issues.

Then the second cull will look for those images that do not add to the record of the event. In the case of the games these included shots of the Jammer skating on their own. 

Finally I looked to crop any of the images to better center in on the action. I then loaded the final images onto a drive for the club to chose whatever they wanted. 

It was a full on evening with two games but I enjoy the challenge.

The sports my daughter has played has had a big effect on my photographic journey. When she was a lot younger it was shooting a netball game that showed a good digital SLR could be and resulted in us purchasing her first one.

She went on to artistic rollerskating which pushed my gear and my own understanding of how to use the camera even more.

She eventually gave up the rollerskating when she went to university in 2021 she got interested in rubble Derby. In theory this is a low contact sport played mainly by women who all take on different personas for the games.

Unlike many of the others Samantha could skate very well so she ended up in the position of Jammer (denoted by the star on the helmet) who is person who once they have made it past the other skaters (called blockers) score points.

I had photographed Roller Derby on two previous occassion and found that it was even more challenging to shoot that roller skating. So when Samantha invited me to of their training sessions. I decided to give it another go as I could try out different settings without the pressure of delivering any images.

All of these images were shot with my Panasonic G9 using a 100-300mm lens. This is a full frame equivalent of 200-600mm. I had a setting of f4 and played with shutter speeds of 1/125 and 1/200s to freeze the action with ISO provisions the boost (2500 at the lower end and 4000 at the upper).

Focusing what the main challenge and ultimately you end up taking a lot of images and rejecting them.

Sport is a great way for anyone to learn how to use their camera on the fly and particularly the limitations that the gear will give you. You make lots of mistakes but in the process you learn heaps.