It is that time of year again...Got out for the second half of a football scrimmage last night - wanted to shoot the whole thing, but rain and traffic accidents causing horrible traffic made my arrival at the field later than planned. Luckily by the time I got there, the rain had stopped. I still dressed up the D4 and 200-400 in the rain suit (just in case it started again) and got out there on the turf. I usually shoot at least one scrimmage each year just to get back in the swing of shooting football. Last night was more about trying to get used to shooting with the D4 and see what it could do at a poorly lit night game.
Here's one I shot - slight crop, but no other editing...340mm, 1/1000, f4, 12800 ISO
Another at 270mm, same settings:
Another at 400mm, same settings - slight bump in exposure:
Pretty impressed with the noise level on those shots at 12800 ISO. I shot RAW and did no noise reduction to the images. You can definitely see the grain enlarged and I would certainly do some reduction if I were posting these, but I know I'd have to do quite a bit more work on D600 images at 12800. I missed a few shots that I thought I would get, but it wasn't the camera's fault ! They were the fault of the operator and I know exactly where the issues were. There will be more opportunity for practice next week with another football scrimmage on Wednesday. Hopefully I will correct the operator issues and be ready to shoot something for real! Shooting RAW with the D4 does not seem to be an issue with that buffer. I didn't encounter a situation where I went crazy with the frames, but I did go far enough on a couple of occasions (just for another test) where my D600 would have filled its buffer with JPEG.
Overall, I LOVE the D4! Very impressed! Hopefully I'll get to a point where I do it justice!
Today is our 27th Wedding Anniversary. This afternoon, we're heading out of town to take our youngest off to college. Move in day is tomorrow and we will officially be empty-nesters! Not sure if that is a good anniversary gift or not yet!