Friday Night Lights "Lakewood Varsity vs Cabrillo"

After a tough loss against Poly last week our varsity players needed to get back on track and play some serious football. Well this week they played against Cabrillo. They had a slow start but once Cabrillo showed that they will score if given the chance, our boys got their game together and pushed forward even harder eventually winning 30-8.

I did try something new and different for this game, but you'll have to wait until the end of the post to see what I did (used). Let me say this though, I was very pleased with this new tool and think it will give more people the opportunity to shoot night games.

"Sportrait"

Some nice tight warm-up shots.

"The Action"

The Flash X-Tender

While photographing the Lakewood varsity vs Poly game last week my friend, whom I shoot the Lakewood games with, and I noticed that the local Staff Photographer for the Long Beach Press Telegram, Scott Smeltzer, was using a new flash extender on his flash. We learned that this new extender will extend the power and distance of your flash. It uses a magnifying lens, which is extended out in front of the flash. Scott was able to shoot that game with his ISO set at 800 and a shutter of 1/250. Now I normally have my camera set to ISO 3200 with a shutter speed of 1/320 - 1/400. So the following day my friend ordered two of them from B&Hphotovideo and we tried them out during this game.

Basically this extender is two light alloy pieces that velcro to your flash. Then a magnifying lens is attached by velco to the end of the allow pieces. It is also recommended that this item not be used with anything less than a 300mm lens.