Merry Christmas mate!!

Excellent video mate!

I just recently purchased the 5D mk IV new from B&H here in the US for $1799, with Canon warranty. I really love it, but later found a used 1DX Mark II for $1100 boxed with all accessories and CFast cards. These 2 cameras are now in my bag. For the foreseeable future. The 1DX mk II had a shutter count of 79k which I thought was high until I found out that the shutters are rated at 400k and many say they have gotten upwards of 1m before replacing the shutter. Got to love Canon’s quality!

Thanks for another enjoyable video 😊 I shoot Highland League games for my local team and currently use the Panasonic G9m2 with the Leica 200 f2.8 ( 400 equiv) on monopod and Fuji Xt5 with 50-140 f2.8 around my neck. Thanks for all your tips throughout the year 😊

My need is more for railways but really getting into the idea of just general all round stuff more now so great to find a quality channel such as yours

Cheers for the answer to one of my questions. Would love to get back into doing sports stuff here in Ireland, but it's a pretty closed shop these days. (I mostly work doing lighting for film and tv, with occasional camera too). But because I had recently bought a canon cinema camera I got to do one of the those canon workshop days, and they gave me a loan of an R3 and the RF400mm f2.8 for the day. Now that is an insane combo. And a woman that was there for the day (that shoots hockey mainly) had the RF 100-300mm f2.8 which also looked amazing. Both are insanely expensive lenses unfortunately. But you are right in that the R3 price has come down a huge amount, and loads more have been traded in with the arrival of the R1 and even the R5mk2. So some good bargains out there now. Have a great Christmas, and with any luck, Canon might decide to give you a nice mirrorless body to test out. All the best.

This is a very interesting topic. Allow me to speak from the point of view of a professional musician; as a photographer I'll never be more than an avid hobbyist. Does gear matter? Let's put it this way; you eventually get to a point where a genius like, say, Yo-Yo Ma or Itzhak Perlman, has his Stradivari instrument, but face it, musicians like them could play on a picture of a cello or violin and still be better than 99.99% of the populace. I also know a lot of professional musicians who play certain brands because Yamaha or whoever gives them their instruments for free, or they play a custom instrument made to their specifications. With photography, I'm not aware that someone can have a camera or lens made custom, though I suppose it's possible. The main things to consider are the gear's features. Will a professional get as much use out of an old Canon 300D than he would out of a current R1? Obviously, the R1 will have many more features that a professional would use than would the 300D. But I absolutely guarantee you that a professional will be able to get good results still with the 300D. Why? Because a professional knows that like all creative forms, photography is a craft before it's an art, and the professional learns the craft first. THEN he can worry about making art. At that level, I'm not convinced that the gear is the be-all and end-all, though of course certain cameras will deliver better results. I have a hard time imagining that a professional F1 photographer would grab the 300D to shoot a race; the R1 will serve far better in that capacity.

Thanks for your thoughts. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you and your family! From Portugal, Antonio

Thanks for your thoughts and pictures of a pro team photographer,my home team has kindly let me practice football photography so these are very helpful.all the best to you and family for Christmas.

Thanks for so many great insights this year. In January of this year I went from amateur enthusiast to official photographer for Northwich Victoria FC. I've watched almost everything of yours this year to learn very quickly and have even bought new equipment on the back of some of your advice. Happy Christmas, enjoy your festive games.

Hi Richard. Thanks for the answer to my question. Another great video. Merry Christmas to you and the family. So looking forward to more videos in 2025, 2025!!!, where do the years go, ?. Can I ask, what does Talru stand for.

I’ve always bought fast lenses, from my old FD 85mm f/1.2L to my Nikon 400mm f/2.8E FL on my Z9. Controlling light, using as low an ISO as possible, these are what I go for in my motorsport photography.

Great advice, and Merry Christmas!

cuz jpeg already does the denoise in camera ....the raw files will keep it to let you then do the amount you want in post .....so its not like the jpeg is better its just baked in already and raw gives you more control of the noise in post with how much you wanna denoise it and make it look a certain way in software

Once again great advice. And speaking as someone who came from wildlife photography, depending on your preferred niche then gear does matter. For example, when I started doing some sports photography, I tried to use the lenses that I had already, which were ideal for wildlife. However, my main wildlife lens, an old 500mm f4, was too long a focal length for shooting sports (but it was an excellent length for shooting birds or other wildlife). My 100-400 was a great alternative, but a bit slow in terms of light at f5.6 for sports under bad floodlights. I eventually traded that lens in for a 70-200 f2.8 and couldn't believe the difference in image quality and it is a much better sports photography lens (but a bit too short for most wildlife stuff in Ireland). The main crossover, would be the camera bodies though, as we are both looking for fast frame rates, and great autofocus.

I agree. Once you get past learning the very basics of photography, which you can do with just about any camera on the market, and you move to a particular genre - yes, it matters.

Great comments SBS suggestions. Also your last comment. I don’t use mirrorless camera. I’m still using dslr and slr. Thanks

Tips that have worked for me. I try to nail the exposure and not under or over expose. White kits will be a bit of an outlier, so I would expose for the white values and not the overall environment. AI Denoise has really helped but I have time to post process after the shoot. So I generally shoot RAW. More GPU cores help with faster processing time. I am down to 15 seconds or so per image which is manageable. If you do too much AI Denoise, it can look like plastic. So I try not to overdo it. Adding some grain back can help remove some of that plastic feeling. I generally lower my black point in post processing to hide some darker noise but raise the shadows so it brings out a bit more detail in the dark values above the black point. Color is always a challenge as I am shooting on high school fields with pretty dim green lights mixed with odd ambient lights. Thanks for the video!

Minimizing noise is fundamentally about getting more light on the sensor - this rules out underexposing images. A problem i see in some of your example shots - no fault of yours - is that your team play in white. If you don't want to blow your teams kit out, you've got to expose for those highlights, and this means that the shadows will be more prone to noise, which they are in the images. In the end, the only way to get more light on the sensor is to shoot with a bigger aperture or a slower shutter speed or both. Obviously, the lens limits the former and the fact of subject motion restricts the latter. One workaround could be shooting with a shorter focal length, as these often come with larger apertures, and then cropping - the loss in quality from the crop could be offset by the gains in noise reduction, and the additional light may also allow for a reduction in ISO at any given shutter speed (however, if you're shooting your fastest lens wide open and you've got noise then cropping will only make it appear even noisier). Next, any processing solutions regarding noise are going to affect IQ - reducing detail and softening the image - so this trade-off depends on end use. Lastly - regarding mirrorless vs DSLR: i can't find anywhere reliable evidence that mirrorless cameras produce less noise in images (and it's not my experience either as i shoot both). What i do know is that if you want to increase noise in your images a good way of doing it on a DSLR is to leave it running in Live View and keep your hand wrapped around it - sensors need to stay cool and the warmer they get the more prone they will be to produce noise. My mirrorless cameras have a cooling system built in (as do dedicated video cameras) to reduce this problem of heat being generated internally. Cheers for the vid. Have a good one. (PS - if anything i've said here is unreasonable, i'd appreciate anyone pointing out why - thnx)

Love these tips. Again, all very sound advice. Especially the one about getting advice from some pros and then listening to their critiques. I was more of a wildlife photographer, but the help I got from seasoned wildlife photographers on a few forums helped me improve massively. You kinda touched on it (but were talking about gear), but knowing your subject is big plus. The more you are familiar withe sport you are shooting, the better. That way you can pick a feel for the rhythms of the game, and that allows you to anticipate the action better. So for example, if the goalie is taking sickouts, and kicking it long, roughly where is it dropping. If that is relatively consistent you can be in position for the players competing for a header. Or in rugby, when they set up a scrum or line out, which way the play is likely to develop. Once you've grabbed a few of those in a dynamic way, I feel the pressure if off and you can focus on getting more spontaneous shots.

What ISO was it shot at?

Disappointed. I thought you'd cover actual camera work, especially focusing and modes, but nothing.

I use Photo Mechanic to select those for editing and mark them with a 'star'. Import those in LRC. Select synch and auto adjust all of them. Scroll thought the photos quickly in case the Auto function did over / under adjustment. Export to Photo Mechanic to add captions and then send the via the ftp software to the agency.

Excellent video!!

I've tried to use LR in my workflow but I just cannot get it to work for me pitch-side. I import images into Photo Mechanic. Edit images in Camera RAW editor, open in Photoshop and run an action which saves a full res image and closes the file. I have a separate tab open in PM which shows the full res edits. I FTP these images. I also have a save-as preset for social media/watermarked images which go to PCloud.

Thanks for sharing!

Always great vlog but mysrlf i use Capture One and Photomechanic and stopped using Adobe products

Is the 400 F2.8 good?

That’s some great advice. And good to see someone showing that you don’t need all the newest gear to do the job to a high level. I would be interested to see what you do when it comes to shooting in less than sunny conditions. I know the 1-dx series cameras can take it, as can the L series lenses, but do you use rain capes or anything like that? I managed to blag a press pass to shoot super 14 rugby in NZ many years ago, and was using my old canon 20d and a 100-400mm lens, along with 7d and an old canon 500mm f4 (I was a wildlife photographer mainly so I had the wrong lenses for sports. Too long. If I wanted to use the 500mm I needed to be behind the goal, and get the players running from the halfway line :) But the reason I bring up bad weather, is that one night I got a loan of a canon 40d and it really didnt like the rain (and humidity) so I had to just put it away and go back to my old 20d which was more robust.

Another fab football ⚽️ vlog

Really enjoying these videos and appreciate the time and effort it takes to put them out. Thanks Richard.

Nice one

Do you work another job or do this full-time?

Mainly shooting indoor sport so have the advantage of predictable light allowing me to nail exposure in camera. But 90% of shots are at ISO6400-8000. Shoot in Raw, pre-process in DxO PureRaw 4 and apply preset on import to LrC. Only extra editing is crop/straighten and sometimes a shadow lift. On an M1 Mac, DxO step only takes around 7 seconds. Other denoise options like Topaz can produce good results but my preference for DxO is it produces most predictable results in batch mode and can export to jpeg since my post-edit gains no benefit from raw’s larger file size. Also have to say that I recently went from 1DX2 to R6M2 using the same lens with adapter. Blown away by the increased in image quality.

Good tip!

Great video, excellent advice. Thanks Richard.

Grewt advice to newbies

What do you do editing on. Which laptop and do you have a pc

Many thanks for this video. I'm just a guy that enjoys photography but also a dad. My youngest plays football U14 in a portugueses local championship. And again i say thanks for all the tips and tricks. All the best to you sir.

w vid like always

If you are exporting photos live from the match, then it is JPEG with camera built in noise reduction. If you are editing at home, I have had great success with my 5D MKII and DXO's Pure RAW 4. Cheers!

Another very interesting video. You deserve a lot mere subs.

Thank you for showing us your "day in the life of.." You obviously love your work. Anyone who can do a 6-7 round trip with a couple of hours sat outside in the freezing cold and comment that they "really enjoyed that" has to be a natural sports photographer! I love your enthusiasm. You are an inspiration. Keep up the great work 🙂

Very good tips and points raised

for the denoise, you would need to have a lot of memory and ram on the laptop as that will make the processing quicker and also going topaz ai or Dxo RAW those work must quicker than LrC Denoise but you would need to buy the software

very much enjoyed this video / tutorial. I'm an experienced football shooter who has a history of working with the Canon system (1DX bodies / EF Lenses). I have recently transitioned to the Fuji system with adapted and natural glass. I'm eager to see how my new system handles poorly lit pitches at night. I have been using Topaz and have found the results quite good.

Thanks 👍

I own this lens! Love it!