Sports C&C

Tony S · Dec 5, 2011

I can easily live with some noise in the background, but when you are shooting wide open at f2.8 you really have to make sure your focus is dead on your subject as there is not much room to miss with. A few of these miss the mark where you can see the sharp areas in the image and those slightly oof(#1 player #88 is sharp while the QB is softer, #2 the ball and grass behind foot are sharp, eyes are not). You've got the action shots, but for me the trophy shot is not working as well with no faces really visible.

EXIF shows all but one shot at ISO 3200. I would love to have a field where I could shoot that without using off camera flash. Maybe next season if the one local team here from Washington State make the trip down to Permian I will go with them, the lighting there is supposed to be real good.

Ohh, and those are really large files for posting, took forever for them to open up to see.

matt.garnett · Dec 5, 2011

Oh ok, I get it now. I've just been playing with it here in my room. I'm looking forward to testing it out this Friday night...

matt.garnett · Dec 5, 2011

Tony- Thanks for the feedback. I'm thinking about stopping down next game to f/4 (on a f/2.8) just so I get a little wider DOF. Does that sound like a good decision? Also, is there any way to export my photos to the highest quality while saving space when I upload them? Thanks.

MLeeK · Dec 6, 2011

You are so far from your subjects in football that it doesn't really make all that big a deal. I have stopped down and I have shot wide open. You wont see a whole lot of difference. Now if you are shooting basketball? Its closer and depending where you are positioning it may make a difference. I also find I can't drop mu shutter as much with basketball. Too close, too fast. By all means play with it. Find what works for you!

File size-are you shooting raw or jpeg? I find most sport shooters are shooting jpeg. I don't. But I also have my raw processing down to a few clicks and the whole batch ia done. I do it that way so that I can over expose and retain the full dynamic range. I shoot in full manual so my exposure is consistent throughout the whole batch. I can then open up one, apply my tone curve, adjust exposure and blacks, noise temoval etc. Save it as a pre set. Apply to whole batch and process thru photoshop to jpegs, resize for web, apply watermark and save for web.

MLeeK · Dec 6, 2011

I answered this on my phone earlier, but I wanted to come back and say: use the noise removal in lightroom! It's excellent!
Zoom in to 100% when you are doing it so you can see what it is doing accurately.
When you are sharpening in LR zoom in to 100% and hold down the alt key while you adjust the sliders. It will change the image so that you can see what you are having an effect on better. You will want to mask back (bottom slider) to nearly 90% or so and that will help a lot with the background noise getting amplified.

imagemaker46 · Dec 6, 2011

The bottom line for shooting. Pretend you are not having to rely on a computer to fix everything, get the exposure correct in the camera. As soon as you start to tell yourself, "I can just photoshop it" throw the camera away.

MLeeK · Dec 6, 2011

imagemaker46 said:
The bottom line for shooting. Pretend you are not having to rely on a computer to fix everything, get the exposure correct in the camera. As soon as you start to tell yourself, "I can just photoshop it" throw the camera away.

Adding... I totally agree and the idea of fix it in PS is not what I am advocating at all... just in case that's the thought. Lol!
I am talking about very deliberately exposing differently and maintaining control over that exposure 100%. Then reducing by a half to a full stop (if possible) to help eliminate or prevent noise problems.
Luminous landscape has a great article on ETTR or "expose to the right." I would link you to it but I am on my phone and frankly... my DROID sucks.