The Homecoming Queen

[fjrabon]

Was shooting a football game last night, got this one of the queen during the half time ceremony. Was purely a candid, that's actually the band playing the half time show in the background.



C&C appreciated

 

[MK3Brent]

CC:
Missed focus, white balance looks off (orange), but you'll have to see.

 

[texkam]

The camera autofocused on her hand. Sometimes you've got to switch to manual focus. Using a higher f-stop would have also solved this problem, but would have created others. A good photographer must be able to outhink their camera at times.

 

[fjrabon]

The camera autofocused on her hand. Sometimes you've got to switch to manual focus. Using a higher f-stop would have also solved this problem, but would have created others. A good photographer must be able to outhink their camera at times.

eh, no way I would have went to manual focus in this situation, I can almost guarantee you that given how dark it was I couldn't have seen the difference in the focus anyway. Heck, I couldn't see the softness until I pulled it up on my computer, let alone through the viewfinder in high school football stadium at 9PM lighting.

also, perhaps some of this is the good old "posting photos using the gallery means half resolution" softness as well. It looks slightly soft on my computer, but her hand is razor sharp and her face is about as soft as her hand is in the picture here.

I guess maybe I could have gone to 1/320 SS and then gone to f/4 aperture.

Here is a cropped, but higher resolution version to give you a better idea:


But yeah, good old 7D autofocus jumpiness for the womp womp, haha. Thanks for the comments!

 

[Derrel]

Too bad you guys don't have Nikon D3s bodies for the night-time football...

Any idea on why the 7D's autofocus is so jittery???

 

[rexbobcat]

Too bad you guys don't have Nikon D3s bodies for the night-time football...

Any idea on why the 7D's autofocus is so jittery???

Because it generally sucks for precision.

 

[sm4him]

Still, my guess is the homecoming queen and her parents would LOVE to have a copy of this photo.

 

[fjrabon]

Too bad you guys don't have Nikon D3s bodies for the night-time football...

Any idea on why the 7D's autofocus is so jittery???

It's only really bad in servo mode. Unfortunately most of what I do nearly requires servo mode to be at all efficient. In this, I just kind of noticed the queen there (didn't even know she'd be out on the field) and I sprinted to get a good angle, and snapped the shot while still half jogging (thank goodness for 1/640 shutter speed, thinking about it that way, haha). So I didn't really think about servo mode or really anything other than framing the shot correctly.

 

[fjrabon]

Still, my guess is the homecoming queen and her parents would LOVE to have a copy of this photo.

Thanks! Hope so too.

 

[texkam]

eh, no way I would have went to manual focus in this situation, I can almost guarantee you that given how dark it was I couldn't have seen the difference in the focus anyway.

We're so spoiled. My Dad shot for a major newspaper with a manual focus Nikon and before that with a Speedgraphic. It's a wonder he got anything at all. : )

 

[fjrabon]

eh, no way I would have went to manual focus in this situation, I can almost guarantee you that given how dark it was I couldn't have seen the difference in the focus anyway.

We're so spoiled. My Dad shot for a major newspaper with a manual focus Nikon and before that with a Speedgraphic. It's a wonder he got anything at all. : )

Yeah, though soft focus was WAY more acceptable back in the day. Like I can look at older photographs that were considered good for the time, and they would hit the edit floor so fast today that they'd be in the basement. A lot of the guys I know who've been around for a while now say that most of their older portfolio shots wouldn't even be keepers these days. Plus, I suppose if you manual focused all the time you'd get way better at it as well. But I know right now I'm not using manual focus unless I've got a completely static subject and decent light.

edit: and sometimes I think this has more to do with photographers and editors just becoming obsessed with sharpness, perhaps to our detriment. I've seen photographers look at two photos, one of which was clearly the better shot, but pick the inferior one, simply because it was a tiny bit sharper.