n00b pics for C&C - softball

[max3k]

took a few shots at the church softball tournament this evening. What do i need to improve on?
1. 1/50 f4.6 iso 400

2. 1/80 f5.7 iso 400

3. 1/12 f22 iso 400

 

[musicaleCA]

Technically speaking, if you were going for motion blur in the second, it would have been more effective to lower the ISO to 100 or lower (whatever's lowest on the camera) and then stop-up the aperture a little. f/11 or f/16 probably would have worked just fine for this shot, and lenses tend to get less sharp past f/11 (a very, very broad, over-generalization). Lowering the ISO would give you a whole two stops to slow-down the shutter speed. (stopping up the aperture a little should also help minimize that odd banding seen in the flaring from the sun) That said, the composition of the shot isn't very compelling to me. I feel the subject may be the guy in the centre of the field, but then he's filling up to little of the frame. What I really get out of it is that it's more about the vibrance of the yellows and browns than the scene itself.

As to the first, I feel it could use a little more DoF. Boosting ISO to 800 might be a little nasty, but at least it'd get the rest of the glove more in-focus. And perhaps a little different perspective; angled a bit more left.

The second I'm going to go technical on you again. Noise is really showing-up in his skin tones, especially on the left arm. Skin tones need great care to avoid noise, because we are especially sensitive to oddities in people's skin; attribute that to being around people every day. Boosting the exposure a little, maybe a third of a stop or two, would help. That, or spot metering on the skin would help too.

 

[max3k]

Thanks for the tips. We'll see if I can get them better today