Tuesday, April 21, 2009

An Evening At The Ball Game (aka: My Camera Is Awesome)

Sunday night, me and a few friends went to see a baseball game over at the Jamsil Baseball Stadium in Olympic Park (get off at Sports Complex station on line 2). We went to see a game between the LG Twins (home team) and the Kia Tigers. It's been a long while since I've seen a baseball game and though I'm not sure how much of the actual game I watched, but it was still fun for me. In case you're wondering, the Tigers won, 8-2.

The game started at 5pm, so we arrived at about 4:20 to buy tickets. There were plenty of men and women outside the stadium selling tickets that they said were real, but we didn't trust them. We went up to the ticket counter and stood in the long line and got our tickets. We were going to buy the mid range tickets (a whole whopping 12,000 won) but by the time we got up there, those seats were all sold out. So, we got the cheapest seats which were only 6,000 won each.

At the stadiums here, you can buy all you want outside the stadium and bring it in. There is no one checking bags as you go in the door. We each bought some beer and water (service-uh), and my friends picked up some Burger King and we headed in side.

It didn't take long to find the yellow section, but we quickly realized that we had no assigned seats (no one does) and it wasn't going to be easy to find a seat (nevermind four seats together) We wandered all around the yellow section, but we found nothing. There was no division between the yellow section and the other sections so we walked all the way around the stadium looking for some seats... or at least a good place to camp out and sit, as many people were doing. But, I should have known going with my friend Alicia, we were going to find seats. She is usually very quiet and always does whatever everyone else wants to do... unless she's out in public and she wants something done. Then she won't stop til she gives up. She walked us all around the stadium til she found some people who had spread out with their bags and food between them. She went over and asked them to move their things. They looked annoyed (which is really rude, as far as I'm concerned, when there were probably hundreds of people like us wandering around looking for seats), but they moved their things... Well, almost all their things, but they refused to move the chair they were using as a table to hold their KFC chicken. Then they pointed out to us that there were seats in front of them that they were using to hold their backpacks (how much stuff do you REALLY need to bring to a baseball game anyway??). They moved their backpacks and we got 4 seats together, in the green section, which was maybe the 9,000 won seats... or something, I forget. Either way, we were around left field, but they were decent seats though.

We had originally planned on rooting for the home team, which is the LG Twins. We realized once we sat down that we had sat with the Kia Tigers fans. There is almost an invisible line that divides the fans of the two teams in the stands. I felt as though it would have been a little uncomfortable to root for the Twins among so many Tigers fans... so I just decided to become a Tigers fan instead. It's not like I really care who wins anyway, but it's more fun when you cheer for someone...

First thing I noticed at the stadium was the crazy fans. Everyone has these inflatable sticks which they pound together and wave and sway with the various cheers that are recited for each player each time they are at bat. If I go again, I need these things!



While I was watching the game... I swear... at least... for some of the time, I spent much more time playing with my new camera. My Canon Powershot SX200. I decided this would be the best time to test out the 12x zoom. My camera also has a 4x digital zoom, which I sort of forgot about. So, anyway, I found that when you zoom out, it stops at 12x, the end of the optical zoom. But, if after it stops, you push it more, it moves into the digital zoom mode. Now, granted, I wouldn't want to use the digital zoom if I were doing anything important, but boy, was it fun to play with. 12x optical zoom x 4x digital zoom = 48x maximum zoom. Do you know how close you can get to the players using this? Well... let me just show you. And let me emphasize that these photos were not cropped, or edited at all, these are the original photos.


Just some shots to give you an idea of where I was sitting.


Maximum zoom: 48x
Pretty clear... I think, at least

30x zoom... I think


The cheerleaders (yea they have cheerleaders at baseball games here) were in the stands along the 3rd base line. This is the full 48x zoom. See if you can find where they are in the photo:

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