Beach Volleyball Tournament - Padina 06.07.2025
Padina has no sea :) so is it a Beach Volleyball? It is a more or less annual tournament (depending on how enthusiastic and free the organizers are that year :) ), and more or less just a fun way to spend few summer days.
From a photography standpoint, moving people are a challenge. 3 people moving randomly, with just a guess where the ball is going to go, is a guessing challenge. Pick a person and hope they will do something spectacular. At least with the 85mm lens.
At the beginning one side was in shade and one in the setting sun. A bit of a struggle to pick settings, but R6 did a good job at keeping everything in the usable range. But sun is always better than no sun, at least here. And i was not the only one coping with bright light :)
And to be honest, i think i was double lazy that day. First i decided to take the smaller bag, and the only lens i left home was the 50mm. After editing the photos i have a feeling the 50mm would be the best for this. 85mm was nice but i noticed i am often too close and the ball is out of the frame.
16mm lens here is, well nice for few documenting shots, to get everyone in frame, but after a few it is just bunch of people randomly standing there.
So i settled with 35mm because i was a bit lazy with chasing the frame with 85 and a bit disappointed with a lot of misses.
35 was ok, but i feel sometimes it misses the separation of the subject from the background and foreground. That is the reason i have a feeling the middle ground of 50mm would do the job.
As the sun went down, so did my will to photograph did too :) 4000 ISO and 1/125s was giving me below the average results. 1/125 was just too slow for the movement. It does not look that bad on the phone, but you don't want to look at it on a 30inch screen :)
From what i was told, the idea was that all the money from participation fee and drinks sold will go to finance new lights for the court. And that it should happen before the next tournament planned in August. Well we will see :)
