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Sports Photography with the Nikon D2X

So my D2x finally arrived and I've been waiting to find the right moment to put it through it's paces. Knowing that football (soccer in the U.S.) is meant to be one of the most difficult sports to photograph and that the local team Umeå IK is one of the best womans teams in the world, I took my gear along to their first game of the season. This was only the second time I had attempted to photograph football (soccer) so I wasn't holding my breath for the results...

Gear

I went along geared up with the D2X, a Nikon D70 as a second body, 2 4Gb Hitachi Microdrives, a Nikkor 70-200 f2.8 VR G and an older Nikkor 300mm f4 AF ED (Non AF-S) and a Minolta IV light meter. For support, I ran the D2X on the top of a Gitzo G1564 monopod with Manfrotto 234 head.

Setup

The game was due to start at 4pm and in Northern Sweden at this time of year (April), the sun is still fairly low so I knew there was a risk of some contrasty conditions as there hadn't been a cloud in the sky for a couple of days. I knew that I didn't want to lose the highlights which could result from this type of weather so took along my trusty Minota IV light meter and metered manually this time. I know metering manually is a bit 'old school' for sports photography, but in these conditions I felt it was the way to go. I set the camera on 100ASA but set the 'auto ISO' to ON.

I was looking forward to trying out the new 'focus tracking' capabilities of the D2X so tried both Dynamic area AF and Group dynamic AF (Dynamic area AF with closest subject priority will be for a future article). I attached my 300mm f4 AF ED which, as you will know effectively becomes a 450mm f4 with the D2X multiplication factor due to the smaller than conventional 35mm frame sensor size. I was expecting the non AF-S lens to be a bit sluggish in the autofocus stakes, but was nothing short of astounded at how fast the focus was. In comparison with the 70-200 f2.8 I couldn't tell the difference...the zoom made less noise but that was about it.

The Nikkor 300mm f4 2.8 ED is already a highly regarded lens, but I hadn't heard of it being used for sports photography before, it produced some astounding results when teamed with the D2X easily capable of appearing in the sports page of a national newspaper. I will let the photos speak for themselves (all the photos I took at the game can be seen on the photos page in the sports photography section).

Malin Moström scores one of the 7 goals that day!

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Hannah Ljungberg wrestles with the Karlstad defense...

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Brazilian Elaine heads towards goal

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Conclusion

I ended the match having taken more than 300 photos in Adobe RGB colour space and mode II on the D2X and had very few where the autofocus failed me...maybe 20...and some of those were down to me without a doubt. All in all, it surpassed my expectations for it's handling in sports photography. Outragiously fast and accurate autofocus in both of the modes I have mentioned above even with older Nikon lenses and great colour rendition...next time I will try to shoot at 1/1600s instead of 1/1250s to see if I can get even sharper results. The best photos can be seen on the photos page...happy shooting!

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