Another Hockey Trip and More Camera Fun

Lowell’s season ends Sunday… they didn’t make the playoffs… and there is still some questions about whether they’ll exist next year.  So I decided to hit the road for a few extra games at the end, just in case there aren’t any more after this year.  A few weeks ago I went to Providence.  Last week I went to Portland.  Tonight I went to Manchester.

Not much of note in the game itself other than Lowell got their asses kicked.  It’s been that kinda year.

What’s interesting to me is my groovy camera.  I was very unhappy with 90% of the pictures I took in Portland, and I’ve been generally unhappy with pictures taken anywhere lately.  So at some point during tonight’s game I stopped using the presets and started setting things up manually.  I spent a few minutes with the user manual (admitting defeat) and tonight I put it into practice.

I thought I was doing pretty good with it.  The pictures generally got better as the evening wore on.

Here’s some examples.  Just to note, I didn’t alter any of these shots other than to resize them.  I took them all at 5.1 megapixels and figured it’d be easier to see if I shrunk them down.  Other than that, this is how they came out of the camera.  Also, I was sitting in the second row of the balcony behind the benches pretty much in line with one of the blue lines.

This first one is okay.  It’s washed out, but not painfully so.  It sure looks better than the raw images from the Portland game last week.  I posted a few shots from that game too but they had some serious touch ups.

Okay, now for one I like.  For this one the focus was centered about where #27 in red is standing.

Not bad.  Certainly not professional, but pretty good for a fat guy in the balcony.  Here’s another one.  This one was centered on the body check behind the net.  I took a burst of five shots as #27, Mark Pandolfo, was skating through the slot.  It’s purely coincedence that the shot was centered on the same player.  I was actually trying to get shots of Keith Aucoin tonight as he’s the guy rewriting Lowell’s scoring records this year and he’s probably the guy with the best shot of sticking in the NHL, although so far no dice.  He’s actually way to small (5’9″, 185lbs… we’ve knicknamed him “Midget” although he’s not the smallest guy on the team) for the NHL, but he’s a skilled enough playmaker that maybe he can beat the odds.  Anyway, back to the photos.

After reading my user manual (admitting defeat) I even figured out why many of my pictures come out blurred beyond recognition.  I forget what the function is called though because I’m really, really, really tired.  Its the shutter speed.  That’s it, I remember now.  You leave the shutter open longer to let more light in.  I was using presets that leave the shutter open for a long time and it resulted in blur from the subjects moving around, and more blur from my hands shaking a little.  I felt so good about aquiring this tidbit of knowlege that I set out to take a few shots that were rediculously blury on purpose.  Success!

Well now… looks like Robbie’s got this camera shit figured out, huh?  The fat man is feeling pretty good about himself.  Shooting pictures that are clear and well lit even though they are from a pretty serious distance.  Feel that confidence building up, huh?

That’s how I was feeling when I took this turd.

Scheie

The next time I start feeling confident I want you to whack me upside the head.  I’m going to bed.