Welcome to December.  The end of football season for me has arrived and it was once again a season of Shooting IU Football.  I’ve been lucky the last few years since working for the paper to have been regularly spurattically shooting sports for various teams or news agencies.  For football this year I shot almost all of the IU Hoosiers football season for USA Today and quite a season it was.  The Hoosiers may have just lost their coach, Zandier Diamont (below) is leaving the team to protect his brain, and they are headed to the Foster Farms bowl in Santa Clara California but  I won’t be there.  That’s fine with me as I’ve got other exciting projects on the horizon.

(Nikon D4s, 360ISO, Nikon 70-200F2.8VR2@70mm. 1/1600th@F2.80

The season started out a bit rough with Richard Lagow seemingly making every pass an interception, but they got themselves back on track once they started putting Zander Diamont in at random to play some tricky running plays (as shown above).  Tricky being the operative word there as when he was in, even the photographers on the sidelines were having trouble keeping track of the ball.

(Nikon D5, 6400ISO, Nikon 400mmF2.8VR with Nikon TC20EIII making 800mmF5.6.  1/3200@F5.6)

For the IU vs Nebraska game I was given a special opportunity to test drive Sigma’s new 500mmF4 Sports lens, and wow it was quite a lens.  Even today I’m trying to find a reason to need to buy one despite already owning a 400F2.8VR from Nikon and already being able to reach 500mm with a teleconverter and honestly I won’t use my 400F2.8 much until next Spring.  Anyway the lens performed flawlessly even though I was forced to ditch my beloved Nikons for a Canon body that game.

Canon EOS 1Dx, 800ISO, NEW Sigma 500mmF4 1/2500@F4)

There rest of the season was with my Nikon’s, including the NEW 70-200F2.8E VR3 towards the end which totally messed my world up via the switched zoom and focus rings.  Really though, as usual the star of the show was my Nikon TC20E3 teleconverter, making 800mmF5.6 very possible, with my Nikon 400mmF2.8VR.

(Nikon D5, 320ISO, Nikon 400mmF2.8VR with Nikon TC20EIII making 800mmF5.6.  1/4000@F5.6)

Another football season down, another basketball season starts up again.  Been playing with Nikon’s WT-5 and WT-6 the last few weeks trying to figure out why they are $600 each to buy.  Good news is that I love it, bad news is they are $600 each!  Anyway, more on that soon. Until then, More soon.

(Nikon D5, 250ISO, Nikon 400mmF2.8VR, 1/4000@F2.8)