Weather conditions for some hockey history today here in Chicago couldn’t have been more perfect. And as a bonus, the slightly overcast afternoon in the Windy City offered some fairly nice lighting conditions for shooting a very memorable outdoor hockey game.

While I witnessed history from the comfort of my living room, and in 42″ flat screen and full HD glory, my brother and his buddy were at the game with about 40,000 others. He was kind enough to bring along my Canon SD890 for the afternoon and took some really great shots that I wanted to share. Even though the main focus of this site is aimed at showcasing my work as a photographer, I felt the quality of these photos was a strong testament to how versatile the Canon SD890 really is.

Perhaps the biggest thing that sticks out with this set of photos is the image quality using the 5x optical zoom of the SD890. While his seats were pretty decent, the optical zoom got him closer to the action without introducing noise and other distortions that digital zooms are known for. Even in the hands of someone that just picked up this particular camera for a few hours, this Canon did a very respectable job of capturing some great memories.

You can see more of these photos in the Flickr photoset Winter Classic 2009. And if you like these, check out my hockey page in Viewfinder section for more.

These photos are courtesy of Bobby Nelson.