great googley-moogley!

[perfectpixel]

I think this 10D hype is getting out of hand :)

I was taking a few photos of the soccer team practicing...a young boy (maybe 8 years old) walked by a few times and finaly said "nice camera"

He'll probably be posting his shots here soon :)

Anyway, the following are two shots from that session.
I'd appreciate any comments. We have a game on Saturday and I haven't quite got the hang of "one shot" or "AI Focus" yet.
http://www.photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=1758165&size=sm
http://www.photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=1758159&size=sm

[phidong]

Great action shots. :)

[barnold999]

Gosh I tried some soccer shots 5 or so months back, though that was before I had my 10D, gosh your photos turned out nice.

But, yes, it is hilarious bringing the camera out, people always make coments about it... everyone sees SLRs, but when they see an LCD on the back they are amazed, but even with my Film SLR, people were like "oooh it is bigger than my camera" lol

[perfectpixel]

thanks for the comments.
I have to admit though that was maybe 6 or so "great" shots out of ~180 LOL
You gotta love digital for that alone.
I still have a lot to learn.
Do you set it on AI Servo or one shot?
I had a lot which were a little fuzzy. Not sure if it was me or the dreader (unspeakable) focussing issue. Probably the former.
Any tips? I had it set to Tv500, ISO 200, mostly center focus, one shot.

[MediaMagic]

unstuck wrote:

Do you set it on AI Servo or one shot?
I had a lot which were a little fuzzy. Not sure if it was me or the dreader (unspeakable) focussing issue. Probably the former.
Any tips? I had it set to Tv500, ISO 200, mostly center focus, one shot.

I take a couple hundred little league football pics every saturday. It's great practice. One thing I have noticed is that, on those fuzzy pictures, there is always *something* in absolute tack sharp focus. I'm not just talking DOF. It's obvious to me that I'm not handling the camera correctly because it's a panning issue. Sometimes I outrun the focus so that the camera is probably going through meltdown trying to figure out what the hell it's supposed to focus on. So, it'll pick something that may or may not be my intention. Check those fuzzy shots and see what *is* in perfect focus. You may find a pattern. I'm not suggesting that the focus issue doesn't exist, it's just that the more I learn about this camera and the more shots I take, the more I realize that the softness in my shots is operator error.

The way I'd catch great actions shots on film was to compose the shot, then lead the action (move the camera ahead) hold perfectly still and wait for the subject to hit 1/3 or 2/3 into the frame and snap it. This method obviously works with the 10D as well but with all the other hundreds of options available, panning, at least to me, gives more interesting shots. I generally get nice stop action shots now, but the intentional panned blur doesn't always work out.


I switch back and forth between the sports mode and Av mode depending how how deep I want the focus. If I'm in the endzone, I'll mostly use the sports mode and shoot in series. If I'm on the sideline, shooting across the field where the background will be cluttered, I'll use Av mode and stop up so the clutter will blur out of prominence. I use the AI servo mode mostly because if I fire off a series of shots as a play develops, I always get at least one cool shot in the mix and sometimes that *extremely* cool shot.

http://www.mediamagicnw.com/images/midget/game/09132003/105_0595.jpg


the 100-400L has vastly improved/reduced 'softness' in the images due to it's extremely fast and dead on focusing (another indication of operator error), save for the aforementioned panning troubles, but getting used to the push-pull zoom is a bit of a curve.

David