My wife, Sarah, just joined a brand new roller derby league in the Seattle area, One World Roller Derby and they had their first scrimmage match a few weeks ago. I brought along my camera and decided to try my hand at something new; sports photography. It was so much fun to shoot, and the ladies did a fantastic job as for many this was their first scrimmage match. The two teams walked away hugging each other and having a blast, which is really what it’s all about.

I’ve got to say that that experience gave me a lot of respect for sports shooters. You’ve really got to know the sport, know where to be, and have pretty sweet gear in order to get premium shots. I was pushing my gear as far as it would go, and I’m only mildly pleased with the results. This is one of those times when the gear really does make a difference.

Mostly where I ran into the limits of my gear is the the low-light performance. My 3-year old camera tops out completely at ISO 1600, and it’s a very noisy 1600. This basically means that I couldn’t get my shutter speed over 1/160th of a second, and for fast-moving subjects, like women on roller-skates, you’re going to get some motion blur. Also, the low-light auto-focus of that camera is not spectacular, and the body did not have a continuous auto-focus mode where the camera tracks the subject as it moves. Thankfully I’ve since upgraded my camera to the new Pentax K-5, which means much better low-light performance for both the auto-focus and also means I can get a better aperture and shutter speed to stop the action with less noise.

I can’t wait to shoot their first bout at the end of January. January 29th to be specific at the Skate King in Bellevue. Grab your tickets here!