New Lens! 6th Grade VolleyBall Tourney C&C welcome

[CMfromIL]

Talked the wife into letting me get the Canon 70-200 F/2.8 IS II. What a difference in low light gyms! Got my ISO down to 3200, able to maintain shutter speeds of 1/500. It was a different gym than I normally shoot in, and the light was even WORSE than normal, but the shots came out very well.

I need to work more on the much shallower DOF with the 2.8. This was the first time I had taken the lens out. Got a few ooooh's and aaaahhh's from other folks taking pictures. And I had several parents tell me that they appreciate the pictures I take of the team for them. :blushing:

So here are some of my favorites from the tourney (that we lost. )

1. Blocked!

2. Eye on the ball. (I was fortunate to get her shoes in the shot. Been working hard to not chop off the feet!)

3. Reach that ball.

4. Right back at you.

5. Coach says you better not miss this!

6. Strike a pose....or serve?

7. You gotta open your eyes to keep your eyes on the ball!

Thanks for looking.

 

[imagemaker46]

First two are the best ones, after that they drop off. Tighter crops and a little colour correction would make all the difference. New lens always takes time to get used to, keep at it.

 

[CMfromIL]

Thanks for the comments. I'll work some on the color, but I'm not a huge crop fan (particularly in sports). I find that it takes away from the moment, and simply isolating the athlete leads to a sterile image. I might as well be taking pictures of them practicing alone if I'm going to do that. I do some cropping before posting, but I appreciate your suggestions.

Secondly, I take these images for fun and the enjoyment of the parents. If I were to crop out every player not relevant to the particular image, it takes away the fun of seeing their kid in a shot.

 

[MLeeK]

They're INCREDIBLY magenta/warm. You did a great job. I think you are going to find that you are better off raising your ISO up and shooting at about 3.5 at the widest. The sharpness on that lens increases in the extreme when you take just that little step up.
You did a great job. I JUST started shooting Volleyball this year and it's harder than hell! It is the hardest sport I have ever shot. It's VERY hard to capture the faces and emotion of the game and you did really well with it-I, however SUCKED! LOL!

 

[Kombipete]

Love the face on the coach (?) in 6!!

 

[CMfromIL]

Love the face on the coach (?) in 6!!

Coach is on #5 in the red. On #6 is just some random person walking behind the server.

 

[imagemaker46]

Thanks for the comments. I'll work some on the color, but I'm not a huge crop fan (particularly in sports). I find that it takes away from the moment, and simply isolating the athlete leads to a sterile image. I might as well be taking pictures of them practicing alone if I'm going to do that. I do some cropping before posting, but I appreciate your suggestions.

Secondly, I take these images for fun and the enjoyment of the parents. If I were to crop out every player not relevant to the particular image, it takes away the fun of seeing their kid in a shot.

It's not so much a matter of cropping everyone else out, it is a matter of making an average image into a much better one. If there are elements of any photo that take away from the overall composition then it makes sense to make that correction.

 

[CMfromIL]

It's not so much a matter of cropping everyone else out, it is a matter of making an average image into a much better one. If there are elements of any photo that take away from the overall composition then it makes sense to make that correction.

My images are fine to edit. Show me what you are suggesting. Otherwise, I'll take your suggestion with a grain of salt. I've noticed in many of your critiques you suggest cropping (just doing a quick search on your posts). Let's see what you mean.

 

[CMfromIL]

They're INCREDIBLY magenta/warm. You did a great job. I think you are going to find that you are better off raising your ISO up and shooting at about 3.5 at the widest. The sharpness on that lens increases in the extreme when you take just that little step up.
You did a great job. I JUST started shooting Volleyball this year and it's harder than hell! It is the hardest sport I have ever shot. It's VERY hard to capture the faces and emotion of the game and you did really well with it-I, however SUCKED! LOL!

Thanks for your kind words. It is a challenging sport for sure! I've found it's easiest to concentrate on 1 team. I typically try to have my camera 'ready' on the side I'm shooting on, and visually watch the server set the ball. You then have to kinda guess where the ball is going to go, but it's not too hard to guess. It gets signifigantly more difficult if it gets into a volley situation! If you are up for more of a challenge, take 95% of your shots in portrait mode. I find it's easier to get the entire athlete, but much harder to compose the shot properly. But in the end I'm personally satisifed with my images.

Zooming during the composition is another challenge. In these shots I had to struggle because I kept adjusting the wrong part of the lens! I'll get better....just need more games.

 

[imagemaker46]

It's not so much a matter of cropping everyone else out, it is a matter of making an average image into a much better one. If there are elements of any photo that take away from the overall composition then it makes sense to make that correction.

My images are fine to edit. Show me what you are suggesting. Otherwise, I'll take your suggestion with a grain of salt. I've noticed in many of your critiques you suggest cropping (just doing a quick search on your posts). Let's see what you mean.

I do suggest cropping images that I feel could be made stronger. To be honest I don't really have the time to crop all the photos I look at and make comments about. I will download a few of these and make the crops that I think would make them better images. Volleyball is a challenging sport to shoot, but like anything, the more you do it, the easier it becomes.

 

[o hey tyler]

I find that it takes away from the moment, and simply isolating the athlete leads to a sterile image. I might as well be taking pictures of them practicing alone if I'm going to do that.

Hmmmmmmm... Okay... If you say so.

Did you shoot these in RAW?

 

[CMfromIL]

Hmmmmmmm... Okay... If you say so.

Did you shoot these in RAW?

I'm not anti-cropping. I just don't like to have single pictures of players all the time. I like to also see the action around them. I take lots of sports pictures, and do plenty of cropping. I have ok'd pictures to edit. If you see an image that would benefit from cropping, show me. I'm trying to get better.

But I'm not also on the 'crop it all' bandwagon.

As for RAW, I tried that a couple of times. Frankly, it's quite time consuming to shoot that way, as I like to post them up for the parents to view within a day or so. If I shoot 200 images, that's A LOT of pictures I have to convert for uploading. Much too labor intensive for a non-paying gig!

I might try to shoot RAW + Jpeg, but not sure how much time that takes between photos to write the info to the card. With VBall in particular I don't have much time between shots, and if the camera is writing to the card, I will miss more than I capture.

Lastly, did you have any C&C on the pictures posted, or were you just driving by?

 

[CMfromIL]

I do suggest cropping images that I feel could be made stronger. To be honest I don't really have the time to crop all the photos I look at and make comments about. I will download a few of these and make the crops that I think would make them better images. Volleyball is a challenging sport to shoot, but like anything, the more you do it, the easier it becomes.

You don't have to do them all. One would be fine. I could see on #7 where the right side of the picture could be trimmed w/out affecting the tone of the shot. But with the others, I don't have much more to crop w/out losing the ball. And I've got hundreds of VBall pictures w/out the ball in the frame. What fun are those?

 

[Derrel]

This debate goes both ways: "Some" sports photo editors like photos that show a LOT OF background and a LOT OF the setting where the event took place. A good example of that???? Sports Illustrated magazine.

Many photographers shoot a LOT with 300/3.8 and 400/2.8 lenses, and have become so accustomed to ultra-tight,blown-background shots that they cannot understand why photos shot any other way could possibly be any good.

Gary Winogrand shot a somewhat famous NFL football photo right from the sidelines, using I believe a 28mm wide-angle on his Leica. All 22 players are in the photo...all of them. http://www.atgetphotography.com/Images/Photos/GarryWinogrand/winogrand_23.jpg

What would that photo be like if one were to crop that down to just the running back and the tackler???

 

[o hey tyler]

Hmmmmmmm... Okay... If you say so.

Did you shoot these in RAW?

I'm not anti-cropping. I just don't like to have single pictures of players all the time. I like to also see the action around them. I take lots of sports pictures, and do plenty of cropping. I have ok'd pictures to edit. If you see an image that would benefit from cropping, show me. I'm trying to get better.

But I'm not also on the 'crop it all' bandwagon.

As for RAW, I tried that a couple of times. Frankly, it's quite time consuming to shoot that way, as I like to post them up for the parents to view within a day or so. If I shoot 200 images, that's A LOT of pictures I have to convert for uploading. Much too labor intensive for a non-paying gig!

I might try to shoot RAW + Jpeg, but not sure how much time that takes between photos to write the info to the card. With VBall in particular I don't have much time between shots, and if the camera is writing to the card, I will miss more than I capture.

Lastly, did you have any C&C on the pictures posted, or were you just driving by?

No one's saying that you need to crop images so that there's only ONE player in the frame. I think you've got that all wrong. But what you need to do is understand where the strong elements are and why the weak elements need to be cropped. Images 4, 6, and 7 could all benefit from crops. YES the crops will involve cropping out people but it will actually improve the images. I'm not going to download the images to show you, as I think it would be a good learning experience for you to take your images and make crops of them to see what works and what doesn't.

Your images have a lot of color balance issues. This could be easily fixed if you shot in RAW, not as easily since you shot in JPEG. If you're aim is to get images to other parents without regard for white balance, straight horizons or crops, then by all means continue what you're doing. Especially if the parents like them... But if you want to get the most out of your images, you'dshoot RAW+Jpeg if not just straight RAW all the way, and take the time to process the keepers.

If you want some general C&C as I was driving by: They're all pretty much underexposed, in addition to the WB, and composition issues as stated above.