Tips

The rink map below shows my typical shooting positions and lenses for a game at the local Iceplex. These tips are just what I do, you can judge how useful or otherwise they are from the results I get. My inspiration comes from the many, many professional hockey photographers whose work I aspire to one day emulate.

The shooting angles shown are approximate representations only, each position typically affords a range of angles.

Currently my preference is to spend the first period down by the glass shooting 80-200mm from the green positions, the second period by the glass split between my 28-105mm from the blue positions and then back to the green with the 80-200mm and finally the third period up in the stands with my 200-400mm so I have a higher probability of capturing the winning goal because I can cover both goals compared to down at the glass. Is this the right thing to do? Who knows. It currently seems to work for me.

Two things are most important. First - shutter speed fast enough to freeze the action. This depends a bit on the level of the game, for adult division one I can get away with 1/640 or 1/800 much of the time, but generally 1/1000 is safe. Second - aperture, wide open to blur the background as much as is possible. In my case that's either 2.8, 3.5 or 4.0 depending on the lens and focal length in play. ISO, whatever it takes for the shutter and aperture combination - this will vary according to the lighting but I typically fix at ISO 2500 or ISO 3200. Don't be afraid of noise, get your exposure right first - check the histogram to get reasonably to the right and remember that your camera will be telling you that you are over-exposing because of all the ice in frame.