Last Sunday (12/31) marked the end of the Buccaneers football season.  They went 5 and 11 but finished with a bang by scoring a touchdown in the last 15 seconds to defeat the New Orleans Saints 31-24!  I was lucky enough to attend courtesy of my son, Mike.  

Thanks Mike!!!

Pre-game Stadium Panorama (iPhone

The start of the game was really nice. There were fireworks and an Air Force flyover, and the  group that sang the National Anthem was extremely good.

Pre-game F-15 formation flyover

They introduced the pilots from the four planes later in the game.

Air Force F-15 Pilots from the pre-game flyover

We had a wonderful view of the action from Mike’s seats on the second level towards the North end zone.

Hurdles

Winston handing off to Barber

Bucs score (just barely)!

The Buccaneers pirate ship lets loose with a broadside!

National Football League rules allows cameras if the longest dimension is 12 inched or less, but they’re very strict about bags.  So I brought my Olympus EM-1 Mark II with a 75-300mm lens on a sling strap, with a spare battery in my pocket. Since Micro 4/3 has a 2x crop factor, this gave me an effective focal length of 600mm – pretty good in such a small package!

I used the camera in Olympus Pro Capture mode which let me select frames with peak action – ideal for this kind of photo-op.  Although the camera can shoot at 60 frames per second (!) I limited it to 10.  This cut down on the number I had to review and I think it was more than enough.

The game started at 4:30, and light quickly became a problem.  I shot wide open and had to balance ISO and shutter speed.  The 75-300mm is a fine lens, but it’s a dim f/6.7 at the long end.  I was getting about 1/500th second at ISO 1600.  I got some usable frames with this though I really wanted an even faster shutter speed.  As the sun set I kept raising the ISO and eventually ran out of light at ISO 6400 when my shutter speed dropped below 1/400.  I usually don’t use such a high ISO setting, but I think the camera did well with it this time.

The city looked pretty at sunset from the second deck.

Stadium Sunset (iPhone, 3 frame panorama)

It was great going to the game with Mike and we enjoyed seeing the Bucs win.

Many thanks to all of you for stopping by and reading my blog. Now – go make some photos!

©2018, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved