England 30-17 Wales
6th Feb 2010. England sent the Welsh packing with a cracking 30-17 win at Twickenham. 2 tries from James Haskell, who was also awarded man of the match, and one from Danny Care, all converted by Johnny Wilkinson, proved too much for the Welsh.
England were very strong during the first half, going into the dressing room 13-3 up, benefiting from a yellow card for Alun Wyn Jones for a blatant trip. A Welsh comeback during the 2nd half ratcheted up the tension as the England team took throttled back. The Welsh had pulled the score back to 20-17 after a try by Hook.
Delon Armitage then intercepted a pass from Jones, sending Flood and Tait clear with Haskell doing a proper flankers job and following up to receive the pass and go over the line to score.
Top work by the England team, and another extremely satisfying performance from the Canon 1D Mark IV. The high ISO capability of this camera allowed me to shoot with a 300 f/2.8 lens with a 1.4x extender attached, giving me 420mm f/4.0 lens. Usually in floodlit situations like this a f/2.8 lens is essential, but the superb image quality up to ISO5000 allows easy shutter speeds of 1/1000th at f/4.0. This setup also brings extra flexibility as the extender can be removed in an instant to drop back to the standard 300mm f/2.8 lens. I can see the sales of Canon 400 f/2.8 lenses dropping as a result.
I also used a 15mm fisheye lens with a Canon 1DIII mounted on the end of a monopod with a remote wired shutter release to get some elevated shots in an otherwise congested tunnel area as the players came out onto the pitch. A nice little setup, it lets me get above the other photographers for a quite dramatic and unusual composition.