I had previousely played around with a 5-megapixel, 8X optical zoom Nikon 5700 digicam which allowed you to get pretty close to the action, although the electronic view finder (which blanks out at shutter release) makes it semi-worthless for action photography IMHO. So this time around, a friend of mine was nice enough to loan me his 6-megapixel Canon-10D digicam, which is a darn nice professional digital SLR. This is one bad-ass camera ... optical viewfinder means you can always follow the action, and the shutter lag ... is not ... so you don't have to "predict" when something is going to happen and hope it does.
He also let me use his various lens, which cost even more than the camera itself ... so I was a bit nervous shooting with 'em. While I was setup beyond the end zone (see the cones in the first picture), I flipped through the various lens just to see what a difference the various zooms make; it is VERY impressive ... and even more so because since you have 6 mega-pixels to work with (and those are "really good" pixels), you can get amazingly close as seen below. All pictures below were shot from the same spot withen a minute or so of each other and I just let the camera auto-set exposure/focus. I have resized 'em to 400X267 in Photoshop, sharpened, and saved as JPEG quality=5. Note that as with most digicams, the 10D has a focal length multiplier (1.6) and the numbers listed below are adjusted for that - i.e. 35mm equivelents.
| 27mm - look wayyyy down there for the Hulk | 45mm - now you can see something green |
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| 102mm - Steve raises hand for the pull | 320mm - Steve sends it flying |
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| Gina does Tai Chai in this 1200X800 crop/resize | David goes up to catch the pull |
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| 400X267 actual pixels of the Hulkster | Look at that vertical leap! (I didn't nail the focus here) |
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