Phoenix Coyotes Prospects Camp in Scottsdale

You’ve all heard the phrase, “location, location, location.”  That certainly is one of the lessons learned from photographing hockey on 11 July 2013.  I started off taking photos with my Canon 5D Mark III and Canon “L” 24-105mm lens off to the side, but through netting.  Some were good; most I had to toss. 

After 45 minutes of hard practice, the whistle blew and the prospects skated off to let the Zamboni machines re-ice the surface.  Then they ran a full scrimmage and I went over to a new location by the glass. 

The venue was the marvelous Ice Den in north Scottsdale.  It was well over 100 degrees outside, a typical Arizona summer day, but a very very chilly winter-like temperature inside.  Note to self:  bring a jacket next time!

I experimented with ISO during this shoot.  I started at ISO 400 but the shutter speed was far too slow.  I settled on ISO 800, even ISO1600 for a few shots, that allowed me to have a faster shutter speed of around 1/100^th of a second.  My f/stop was wide open.  We had sort of tungsten lighting inside the Ice Den, but the florescent setting gave me a much better result.  The tungsten setting gave too much of a cool blue look to my photos.  The joy of shooting in raw format is I could easily re-set the white balance through Lightroom and sync all of my shots to that setting. 

 

I took close to 300 shots, but only kept 22. 

How would I do it differently?  Putting myself against the glass was about as good as it was going to get.  I couldn’t get much closer.  I could have used my Canon 70-200mm (f/2.8) lens for more reach.  Using a 1.4x extender would have meant I would lose even more light and would have had to used a higher ISO.  When you do that, you run the risk of more noise in the photos. 

For more on the Phoenix Coyotes prospects camp, go HERE. 

Keep Shooting!  One of these days you’ll get it right! 

Jim Patterson

http://JamesGordonPatterson.com 

Here are all 22 of my shots from my visit to the Ice Den….