The local annual amateur tennis tournament dubbed the ‘Roshnee Masters’ gives me a regular opportunity to improve my sports/ action skills. It was also an opportunity to shoot with my Nikon D500 which can fire away at 10 fps and has a huge 200 frame buffer. The D500 is a wonderful camera for action. It enabled me to rattle of frames and increase the chances of getting good images. The autofocus is also superb. However, since I had unrestricted access to the court, I also used my D800 with the 24-70 (f/2.8) Nikkor. Some of my best images came with this combination, proving that timing is equally important in action photography and can compensate for high fps. Compared to my previous years images, I had more ‘keepers’ and I was satisfied that there is a little progress in my sports photography with lots of room for improvement. While shooting the event, it made me think of the great sports photographers who captured perfectly timed images with film cameras shooting one frame at a time using manual focus. The days of digital does undermine concentrating on good technique.
Nikon D800, 24-70 (f/2.8) Nikkor, 1/2000 sec @ f/5.0, ISO 800
Nikon D800, 24-70 (f/2.8) Nikkor, 1/1000 sec @ f/5.0, ISO 250
Nikon D500, 70-200 (f/2.8) Nikkor, 1/3200 sec @ f/4.0, ISO 400