ice hockey

This would have been perfect had at least part of the face emained

unblurred. Unfortunately I don't get to experiment as much as I like -

team, parents and grandma all want crisp shots that freeze the action.

thanks for looking and your comments

1/15 of a second for shutter speed is way to slow for hockey. Increase your shutter speed to at least 1/250 of a second. I usually shoot at 1/320 for hockey and use a high iso of 800 or more to get a good exposure.

Mark,

Thanks for your comment. I usually shoot at 1/500. But I was not going for the crisp "frozen in time" look here. Every once in a while I treat these games as an opportunity for abstract images to express motion while still being able to make out the subjects. So, ideally, I would have captured the player at the center in that split second when her head is almost stationary because she waits for her opponent's move, while everything around her explodes into one crazy motion. That did not happen in the twenty or so shots I dedicated to goofing off during the game, and I consider it weakness number one for this image. Weakness number two are the ref's black legs in the background - who wants to see those :-).
If you look at the next image in the folder you'll see that even 1/500 is not fast enough to freeze the puck, but with an old D90 the noise gets a bit too noticeable above ISO 1600, which I generally need at our rink.

So, maybe, I should have categorized it as "abstract".

Christoph