First sports shots with the new camera - C&C welcome.

[cliffmccartney]

Took these shots at the Tennessee Smokies game 8/1/12. I used my Nikon D7000 and the Nikon 70-300mm f/4-5.6 zoom that came with my kit. Put it on continuous - high and just shot away.


Shot this one from my seat in right field. Full zoom (300mm), 1/320th, f/10, ISO 200.



This is from the bullpen out in the right field corner of the stadium. There was almost no light. Set the ISO at 800, the shutter to 1/640th, and aperture to f/4.5. Post processed it to death. The color didn't do anything for me so I applied a B&W gradient filter and set the opacity to 90%



This one just captured my imagination because of the umpire's concentration. Set zoom to 90mm, 1/200th, f/4, ISO 200.


C&C welcome - thanks for viewing!

[oldgreygary]

Hello Cliff, I think out of the three #2 is the best composition. But does lack detail and if the catcher's(?) face was visible it would turn a good shot into a great shot. A couple of problems I have encountered when taking sports shots are getting a shallow depth of field and I also personally think they work better when you can see the expressions on the players faces. So, I don't know if you can crop any tighter to achieve this? It can be very difficult with sports photography as you have to shoot from fairly long distances.But you have captured a flavor of the game.

Cheers for now

Gary

[Dave Humphries]

Hi Cliff,

With those backgrounds, I'd be shooting at f/5.6 (or wider) all the time to reduce their distraction factor by getting as narrow as possible a Depth of Field - this suggestion relates to the f/10 used on the first shot of course.

Beyond that, you could give a quick wipe over the distant detail with a blur brush in PP to help that a little, it would only take a second to do with these, given the spacial separation.

I think all three are fine for composition and you have captured the action well too.

It is a shame they are so different in colour temp., but it was obviously an evening with fading light/setting sun, so beyond your control.

Here's the third where I did a few of my 'standard' PP tricks to draw attention to the subject(s) and offer an alternative crop, I hope you don't mind;


Crop (grass goes into lower left corner, lose red bit at top),
Clone out a couple of red bits top edge,
Blur background (3 wipes - possibly one too many?),
Desaturate colourful things in background (jackets, signs)
Input Levels set to 0, 1.1 and 230
10% overall desaturation

You can flick between images 3 (yours) and 4 (my edit) in Lytebox to play 'spot the difference'

Cheers,

[cliffmccartney]

Thanks for the feedback Gary. I tried to crop this one as close as I could and stay relatively faithful to the golden mean. I really wanted to freeze the ball, but this is about as close as I got. I'll play around with some other crops and see what happens.

I agree with what you said about the face. That would be much better.

I'm really a rookie to photoshop. Can you recommend a tool / trick / tip to try and bring out more detail in the face? There is a bit of detail in the catcher's face if you zoom a bit, but I don't know how to bring it out without washing out the rest of the picture.

Thanks again - I appreciate it.

[cliffmccartney]

Wow Dave - thanks for all the feedback and the advice.

I see what you mean about DoF - I like yours much better. I'm really new to photoshop, but you've given me something to learn - thanks for that