Saturday, October 01, 2005

On Assignment: Greenville, North Carolina-Day Five

ECULoRes
"Warming Up" by Wes Aldridge

Tonight I shot the Eastern Carolina Unversity Pirates football game. I have to say, I don't think my idea of fun is shooting football, at least not with a 70-200mm lens. It just wasn't long enough to get any good action shots. I put my teleconverter on it to get some extra range, but that makes me lose 2 f-stops of light. Losing some light isn't good for shooting a night game. I ended up shooting at 800 ISO speed and I knew that meant some big time grain in the shots.

I needed a 400mm f/2.8 lens to get the good action. I got the shots I needed for a feature story with my wide lens from the top of the stadium above the pressbox. I do believe that there won't be too many action shots in the feature, though.

Anyway, I have a 7:45 flight in the morning from Raleigh. The drive to the airport is 1 hour and 30 minutes, if you know exactly where you are going. The rental car return is offsite from the airport. I need to be there about 2 hours before my flight to get the car returned to shuttle to the airport and get checked in and through security. With all that, I pretty much need to leave here at 4 a.m. I do honestly dread this. At least I will be going to the Titans game when I get back, if I can stay awake. Its almost 11 p.m. here and I still need to pack and get my gear situated, so signing off.