u/antonhauff

Shot this at the St. Petersburg Diving Championship in December. Sharing because diving is a sport I see almost nothing of on this sub, and the shooting problem is genuinely different from the field sports most of us cover.

Settings:

• Sony A7 IV + 70-200mm f/2.8 GM II
• 200mm, f/2.8, 1/1250s, ISO 6400
• AF-C, wide area tracking (I think — wouldn't swear to it months later)
• Hand-held, shooting up from poolside

The actual problem with diving:

You can't react to it. The whole thing — takeoff, rotation, entry — takes about 1.5 seconds. By the time your eye registers peak inversion, she's already past it and tucking for the entry. So AF tracking isn't really the variable. The variable is whether you can pre-visualize where peak position will be in space and start your burst a hair before it gets there.

What I do: lock focus during the approach on the platform, hold it as she leaves, then burst through the rotation. The keeper is almost never the frame I thought it would be while shooting — you sort it later. Out of maybe 12-frame sequences I'd get one or two with the face actually toward the camera and eyes open. The rest are mid-rotation blurs of the back of a head.

On the light:

Indoor pools are darker than they look. You're working with whatever fluorescent/LED mix the venue gives you, and there's no flash. ISO 6400 at f/2.8 and 1/1250 was the floor — slower shutter and you lose the limb separation, lower ISO and you underexpose. The greenish rim on her legs is bounce off the water below, which I actually like — it tells you where you are without showing the pool.

One thing I'd do differently:

Should have moved 2-3m to my right. The wall panels behind her work as graphic lines but they're a touch busy near her head. A cleaner section of wall would have isolated the face better. Live and learn — diving doesn't give you a second take.

Happy to answer questions on positioning, why 70-200 vs longer glass for pool work, or anything else.

Shot this on Sunday at the last home match of the season — Zenit beat Sochi 2-1 in a comeback that put us back on top of the table with one round to go. Pedro on the right wing, winding up to whip in a cross.

Settings: Sony A7V, 70-200 GM II @ 133mm, 1/1250s, f/2.8, ISO 320. Daylight, roof open at Gazprom Arena.

Position: Behind the goal, off-center toward the near corner flag. From there the 70-200 covers the box and the wing all the way out to the touchline without me having to swap to a wider body. When the play swings to the far side I just lower the camera and read the game.

A few things I was thinking about on this frame:

• Why 1/1250 and not faster. A lot of football shooters live at 1/2000+. I drop to 1/1250 in daylight because I want the planted foot sharp but a touch of motion on the swinging leg — it sells the kinetic load. At 1/2500 the leg freezes and the picture goes flat. ISO 320 in this light gives me room to come down further if a cloud rolls in.
• Why f/2.8 with the crowd that close. I wanted the Gazprom signage and the away supporters' section to read as colour and shape, not detail. The 70-200 GM II at 2.8 wide open is sharp enough that I trust it on the eyes even with a player moving laterally.
• Frame timing. I'm trying to catch the moment before contact — back leg loaded, arms wide for balance, eyes on the ball. The actual strike is often less interesting than the wind-up because the body language is more extreme one frame earlier. AF-C with subject recognition on Human, tracking sensitivity at 3.
• What I'd do differently. I'd lose maybe 10mm of focal length — 120mm would have kept his trailing foot in frame. At 133mm I clipped it. Cropping in post fixes the composition but not the choice.

Happy to answer questions on accreditation, working Russian Premier League stadiums, or anything technical. Full EXIF intact if anyone wants to pull it.