C&C's Looking to Improve III

[Matina]

Several months later and still shooting ice hockey after getting some advice from my other posts. Here is the latest batch of Ice Hockey for C&C’s.

#1 - 1/800 ƒ/2.8 ISO6400 182mm

#2 – 1/800 ƒ/2.8 ISO4000 200 mm

#3 – 1/800ƒ/2.8 ISO6400 95 mm

#4 – 1/800 ƒ/2.8 ISO6400 125 mm

#5 – 1/800 ƒ/2.8 ISO6400 120 mm

#6 - 1/800 ƒ/2.8 ISO6400 200 mm

 

[runnah]

#2 & #5 are your strongest IMO.

You do have a good eye for the right moment to capture, all portray good action.

Technically some look underexposed and the white balance looks off. Also I would shoot portrait so you can get in a bit tighter as it feels like you have a lot of extra space.

 

[runnah]

Quick edits, the black border also helps make white images pop on this forum.

 

[imagemaker46]

Crops on a couple are still a little lose and the horizon line is crooked on a couple, other than that I think you did a great job on these. The action is there. As runnah mentioned the exposures are off a little bit.

 

[Matina]

Thanks All!...I'll try to work a bit more on the exposure. Finding if I increase the exposure in Lr for the subject the ice surface becomes too bright, and slowing down the shutter speed when shooting causes some blur....don't think I could go too much higher with the ISO either, noise being an issue. Is there a way to do reduce noise in post without softening the image?

I've also been making an effort lately to "fill the frame". I've recently started shooting more portrait and will continue to do so especially when focusing on individual subjects.

The WB is a bit more tricky for me to get right out of the camera. I've recently purchased a WB filter cap and it appears to have helped a fair bit compared to some of the first couple shoots, Atom Ice Raiders vs Avenue Road 11-12-2012 - a set on Flickr and Minor Atom Ice Raiders vs Forest Hill 11-18-2012 - a set on Flickr earlier in the season.

I'm finding in certain arenas I'm getting a colour shift in certain spots on the ice, and even getting images with different temps from one side of the image to another. Even when I burst a few shots there are some shifts from one image to the next (I've been told that this is due to the "phase" of the lighting in the area). I'll continue to look into some more systematic ways of adjusting in post. For now I've been doing it by eye with the aid of the histo in Lr and Cr, and a few times auto adjusts with jpg's.

Off to the rink again tonight....after a few more YouTube tutorials, and clearing the snow!

 

[sekhar]

Shoot in RAW. You won't need to worry about white balance, you work on it in post. RAW will also give you enormous latitude for fixing exposure errors (among other things).

 

[Matina]

Shoot in RAW. You won't need to worry about white balance, you work on it in post. RAW will also give you enormous latitude for fixing exposure errors (among other things).

Hi Sekhar, I'm currently shooting raw. Some of the images WB among other settings were edited with Lr and others with Cr. However, I'm finding the process somewhat tedious, hope to find a way to speed up the process. Might just be practice needed to perfect a workflow. Still pretty new to the software though.

 

[runnah]

Shoot in RAW. You won't need to worry about white balance, you work on it in post. RAW will also give you enormous latitude for fixing exposure errors (among other things).

Hi Sekhar, I'm currently shooting raw. Some of the images WB among other settings were edited with Lr and others with Cr. However, I'm finding the process somewhat tedious, hope to find a way to speed up the process. Might just be practice needed to perfect a workflow. Still pretty new to the software though.

Edit less photos. If you take 100, 5 should be edit worthly.

 

[sekhar]

Yeah, just a matter of getting used to the whole workflow...give it some time. The first thing you want to do is learn the workflow optimizations (and ins/outs in general) with Lightroom. I use Adobe Camera Raw, and just watching one video helped me a lot in speeding up (e.g., like applying white balance and other changes in a batch).