I have learned a few lessons shooting sports in the past few years. Indeed, it is a difficult genre of photography, specially if you are concerned with good image quality. In my case, it just came with the territory, I just wanted to take good pictures of my son playing basketball and football, sports he likes a lot. However, football, for its technicality, strategy, and speed, even for seven graders, it is challenging to shoot, not only in the interest of freezing action, but in following quick plays, and keeping up with not adequate illumination, one can only hope to get a decent shot.
So this year I planned ahead, and after some gear selling and saving, I procured myself with the beautiful Fuji XF 50-140mm 2.8 which coupled with my Fuji X-T2 became a sports dream camera. It is just the exact range of focal length to cover quick plays, the X-T2 is fast, plus it handles noise very well at ISO 12800, and allows to shoot jpegs medium size files. This way the camera can shoot easily 8+ frames per second, clean its buffer rapidly and keep shooting some more.
And the one great thing about Fuji jpeg files, besides its colors and image quality, is that you can work post on them with similar ease as a RAW file, recovering highlights and shadows, and still keeping a great look. I shared these pictures with all the other parents of my son's team and on social media, and I noticed they worked just fine. If Sports Illustrated gave me a call, that'd be another thing.
Yesterday's Kiwanis Football League Jamboree was much fun. Our team remained victorious playing different teams, and even though the day was cloudy, and games went all the way into the night, I was pretty much satisfied with my camera combo. A lot to learn though.
