Worcester City - Kidderminster Harriers

Tuesday evening I went to photograph another one of Worcester City FC's pre-season friendly matches, this time against local rivals Kidderminster Harriers.

As I stepped off the train, there was a small group of Kidderminster Harriers' supporters, singing that they hated Worcester. Interesting choice to come and visit a city that they hate ;-)

The game itself was the first time I had photographer at St George's Lane under floodlights.

Initially the lights seemed 'OK' - despite the dark clouds and drizzle I could still keep the ISO to reasonable levels and have good shutter speeds of 1/500 or faster.

But as the game went on, and the light at the ground got gloomier, the real challenge hit me

with the dwindling light I was quickly switching the ISO higher and higher. And before soon I was forced to use ISO 3200 and f2.8 - and was managing with a reasonable shutter-speed of 1/320, which is still OK for football.

Around the half-way point of the second half, the light has reduced to levels that forced me to under expose my images by couple of stops, just to have any chance of catching something. And with the 300mm lens, even if it was on a monopod, you still would prefer speeds to be no less than 1/250 - 1/320 (to avoid the shake).

From the images in the Blog - the top two were taken when the light was getting to it's worse levels. They are slightly dark, but shooting the images in RAW format did allow me to save them a lot more than would have been possible had I been shooting in JPEG.

So, another night of learning the conditions in the English minor league grounds - perhaps in five years time I might get the chance to experience Villa Park or something like it.

How I yearn back to the well light Olympic Stadium in Helsinki, Finland...

Links to the match images : http://googabuphotos.zenfolio.com/p877996799 or at www.xit-images.com