The first cut is the deepest
Originally published 29 April 2018
Last weekend Wellington hosted the NZ U15/Cadet Championships. A couple of fencers from my club came up from Dunedin to compete so I thought I should come by and support the old crew. I brought my camera along and eventually did some shooting. It was a fun day and of course it was a great opportunity for more learning!
One of the things people on the internet harp on about is that the E-M10ii, or rather the micro 4/3 system in general, isn't good for sports photography. Well, I think it's true if you're looking for the high quality 'published' standard. But if you're just looking to be able to capture great moments for documenting/sharing then it's good enough. Obviously you can do a lot of things to make the pictures better, but the system can do enough to help you get there.
I set the E-M10ii on shutter priority, going between 1/400 and 1/500. I thought I'd test out the burst mode at 4 frames per second, then bumped it up to 8 fps. The major point was to make sure I had focused correctly so I could take advantage of the higher burst rate. I did find that the continuous focus tracking had some trouble keeping up, but leaving it on manual worked well enough. It also helps that using the 60mm lens I had some leeway in terms of keeping the action in focus, as in the image below. The image looks soft as well as I cropped it down. Overall though I think it's fine.
When it comes to the tighter shot as with the 15mm lens, the focus was less forgiving as I couldn't move parallel to the action (I would've gotten in the way of the referees, etc.) so I was mainly stuck at one end of the piste. So I did have to make sure I kept refocusing to get the shot.
Another thing I learned is making sure the context is there to make a better photo. Take the picture below where it's two fencers doing something. But it's only the two of them in the frame and nothing else. Aside from the composition being bad with the cropped scoreboard, it doesn't make as much 'sense'.
Compare it to this shot with the 15mm, closer to the action...
It makes it a bit more obvious that there's a competition going on with the spectators in the background. But again, apart from that, it still doesn't say much about the competition. Going through my photos I found that, at the very least, having the scoreboard completes the picture even absent the referee or spectators. And, one advantage I did have being a (non-active) fencer was that I could anticipate when a fencer was about to act. So in theory I could time my photos better than a complete fencing layman could. Further on from that I guess is the balance between my reaction time and the camera's limitations so there is an element of luck involved.
The only other thing I'm not sure how I feel about is the colour quality and the 'look' of the photos. Again, with the limitations of the system it's always going to be hard to compete with full frame cameras or cameras more specifically designed with sports photography in mind. But there is something about the photos that make me think there's something missing for them to be great. They're decent, but not great.
So I edited them to black and white. I don't know what it is but I seem to prefer that aesthetic. Maybe I'll do a black and white project next.
Anyway, for the most part I'm happy with how the photos turned out, especially since it was the first time I tried the features and this kind of event! I put a few black and white versions for comparison.
