New 70-200 f4L Wakeboard Shots

[dsze]

Ok, I must admit that I was one who shot rulers and such when I got my 70-200 f4L, and was obsessed with the backfocusing, but the more I use it, the happier I am with this lens. I'm convinced that it does backfocus a little at 70mm, but I don't think its a major issue.

I shot a friend wakeboarding yesterday morning with this lens on my 300D and am pretty happy with the results. Take a look and offer your comments on both the lens and my technique:

http://home.insightbb.com/~photographs/wakeboarding/index.htm


thanks,
daniel

[ScottJE22]

Great shots, Daniel. I love how you can so clearly see each water droplet in the spray around him...

[Sendide]

great shots,
nice focusing, what were the settings in general?

regards

Khalid

[dsze]

In general:

Shutter ranging from 1/1600 on many shots to 1/4000 with the majority being 1/2000.

f4 on all shots

ISO 200

FL ranging 100-200mm, most shots at 200mm

Center Weighted Ave. Metering


-daniel

[yb98]

Great shots !
I'm very interested by this lens. So, thanks for posting these shots.
As I'd like to see the real performance of this lens, may I ask you to post a link for one of these shots in full size ? Thanks

Yacine.

[dsze]

Which shot do you want in full size and can I just email it to you? Do you want a JPG?

Forgot to mention, these were all shot in RAW and then converted in PSCS to JPG for the web.

-daniel

[yb98]

Thank you Daniel.
I'm of course more interested by a raw file.
The shot n° 14 would be perfect.
You can click on the button button below to send me the link by e-mail (please don't send the whole raw file by e-mail as it's too big).

Thanks a lot.

Yacine.

[mjordan]

Nice shots and good action. Your camera got fooled by the backlighting in those that didn't have trees behind him, but that's probably because you were bouncing around and couldn't keep the focus point on him all the time and it sometimes metered on the back sky.

I would have sacraficed some of the shutter speed for a smaller fstop though. That would have given you a bit more depth of field, which is always helpful when you have fast movement like this.

Mike

[dsze]

You think the smaller f-stop would have been good? On wakeboarding shots like these we typically shoot with the largest to get the subject to really "pop" out of the shot with the blurred background.

I'll work on the link to the full size photo. I may have deleted all of the RAW's.

[dsze]

Ok, sorry it took me so long....but here is your full size No.14 image.

http://home.insightbb.com/~photographs/fullsizefiles.swf

Click on this URL and then once you're there:

Rt. click on the button and save target as to get the image on your hard drive, or just click on the link to see the full-size image. Keep in mind it is a compressed jpg, so some minor quality will be lost.

-daniel

[dsze]

Sorry, I forgot I did that link in Flash, so you can't "save target as." But just go under Tools and Internet Options in your Browser and make sure that automatic image resizing is disabled, and then you'll get the full size image by clicking on the button.

-daniel

[mjordan]

Daniel, you can always soften the background in Photoshop if you really need it, but with the digital cameras, you don't get a out of focus background like you do with film cameras anyway. And in my opinion, the added depth of field is going to do you a lot more good on shots like this than a partially out of focus background. That wakeboarder is bouncing in and out of focus as you compose the shot, so the wider your DOF is, the better.

Try some with a wider DOF next time and see if it works for you. You might like it or you might not. But that's the fun of trying things out. :lol:

Mike

[yb98]

Thank you Daniel for the full size jpeg.

Even if the quality is great, but to say the truth, in regard to what I have read about this lens, I was expecting a little more sharpness.
May be it's because the action was very fast or may be it is the ISO 200 (even if I don't think it is for that reason...)

Yacine.

[dsze]

Mike,

Do you really think that you can't get the blurred background with digital SLR's? I'd like to hear more about this. This effect is a result of the aperture, which has more to do with the lens than the camera body. And this lens, of course, is used on both digital and film SLR bodies. I'm curious as to the reasons why you say you can't get the blurred background with wide-open digital SLR's? I will try a longer DOF next time and see what I think....You're right, the fun is playing!

But the rider bouncing in & out of the DOF really is more limited than you might think. Remember that he is on a fixed-length line. So, he's not moving toward or away from the boat more than a few inches between the time I compose the shot and press the button. And at 65ft away, those few inches may or may not make a big difference.

You're right, you can pretty easily blur the background in PS, but I'm one of those who likes to get the best shot possible before any post-processing. PS is alot of fun, but for real-photographs that I want to get printed, I really try to not do any processing outside of the RAW format processing to JPG or TIFF. I know with many images, it doesn't matter, but I just think that anytime you're mangling pixels in PS, you're losing original quality. And then when you save that JPG you're working on, of course you lose more quality as the file is compressed.

I'll play with the DOF though next time and post the results for ya! :)



YACINE,

You're welcome. Sorry the quality is not what you expected. I was very critical of this lens at first too, and I didn't think it was quite as sharp as it should be. Maybe it isn't. But after comparing a friend's wakeboarding shots with his descent-quality Point & Shoot....the shots from this lens are easily 10X the quality. They were not even comparable. You have to remember that I was in a boat going 20 mph, bouncing around, and shooting a moving action-target. I was fairly impressed with the results.

Does anyone else feel that the images are not as sharp as they should be with this lens?

-daniel

[Sendide]

form taht aperture and shutter speed, hard to get sharper images. I thing it's jsut a great lens/ camera combo
if you did try f/8 and >, you'd loose some DOF but also got much less softness, you couldn't get better for the setting

regards

Khalid

[dsze]

Khalid, don't you mean that if I tried f8 and >, that I'd gain DOF? I'm guessing that I'd probably gain some sharp-ness too, but as Mike said, would have to soften the background artificially.....which might be worth it.

[Whaler]

Ya gotta love the 70-200. #6 and 11 are great. . . . . . and ahhhh don't get to close to the fisheman. :wink:

[mjordan]

Daniel, The DOF on a digital camera isn't the same (more or less) as a film camera. So where f2.0 would blow out the background on film, on digital cameras it's only going to make it out of focus. There's a lot of math involved as to why (has to do with sensor size, pixles and things like that, but mostly I just looked at my images when I went from film to digital and found my backgrounds were not being as blown out with the same lenses and settings as they were on my EOS 3.

The other aspect of digital over film, is that you need lenses that are sharper (hence better quality and more expensive) for digital than you do film. This is why so many people that switched to digital find they don't get as sharp a picture with their kit lens as they did with their film camera.

Here are a few links that will probably explain it better than I can... and I know there are a number of people on here that can explain it as this is where I have read about it a lot.

http://wrotniak.net/photo/dof/
http://www.photo.net/learn/optics/dofdigital/
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/understanding-series/dof.shtml


I hope some of this information helps.

Mike

[dsze]

Yes, I've been reading about this and it seems it has to do with the crop factor (1.6) of the 300D & 10D. That is, the circle of blur doesn't extend as far out, because of the sensor size.

Off Topic: (sorry)

WHALER; Fishermen, Smishermen! :) I used to worry about staying way clear of the fishermen, but my attitude has changed a bit. Every weekend there are bass tournaments on our lake and every high-dollar bass boat comes by my dock/boathouse and throws their luers under my boat house, onto my boat lift, INTO MY BOAT, and are constantly loosing their luers in our swim area, where my 2 little girls spend time in the water. I fully acknowledge that no one owns the water, but if they can't show enough mutual respect to not throw luers under, into and around my boat & dock, then I'm not going to worry too much about steering far away from them when we're skiing/wakeboarding. I guess I've dug 1 too many rusty hooks out of my upholstery, dock and feet! That said, remember on those shots I was shooting at 200mm FL...so we weren't as close as it appears.

-daniel

[Whaler]

Wo! Wo! Wo! Bro. . . . :oops: not trying to start a pissing contest. It's just that some people are just inconsiderate, including the a$$hole fisherman that crosses my lines while trolling and toss lures where kids a swimming. I fish a very large lake, Berryessa, in CA. It's one of the largest impounds in the state. I'll be trolling along in a REMOTE part of the lake and some &$#@ water skier, wakeboard, or 3 kids on a GIANT frog come wizzing by. Consideration was all that I was implying. :wink:

[dsze]

lol....easy whaler. Consideration is exactly all that I was implying. Consideration works both ways....not that your one of those fishermen with 100 luers in my boathouse. I wasn't saying that at all. Maybe, being a fisherman though, you could tell me why it is so important to toss lines underneath peoples' boats that are hanging in their boat lifts? What makes that such an attraction that some fishermen are so intent that they disregard all "consideration" for my property and throw luers at my ski boat?

By the way, #6,11 are probably my 2 favorites as well.

-daniel

[defordphoto]

So now, about that bokeh...;)

[defordphoto]

Dsze: Next time also try some slower shutter shots. Freezing the water scene is cool and you have some great shots here. I love the water in 3600. Very cool. However, slower shutter shots can give a different perspective of action and it makes for a neat effect on water. It's nice to have a mix. That's what I do when shooting the Sprint Boats.

[dsze]

Jim,

I do like the effect of slow shutters with movement...I was worried though when shooting these that without the very fast shutter, I would not only get the water-movement, but I'd also get a blurry wakeboarder. How slow were you thinking of trying?

I love shooting these (probably because I love wakeboarding as much as photography) ...but the bummer is that I never get to see shots of myself. I guess I need to get some friends who are not only into wakeboarding, but also into photography! :)

[defordphoto]

Experiment. I'd play with 1/250 a bit, but would go for about the 1/500 to 1/1000 range. Depends on what the subject is doing. If they are crossing behind the boat then you'd hope your Drebel would kick into AI Servo and follow the subject. With AI Servo it's pretty easy, but you'll just have to experiment a bit and see what the camera does.

If they are straight behind the boat 1/500 should be fine. But, motion blur even on the subject can be a good thing too.

I've done pans as low as 1/15 with some great effects. You get a lot of throwaways shooting at slow speeds, but when you get a keeper, they're awesome.

[Whaler]

Maybe, being a fisherman though, you could tell me why it is so important to toss lines underneath peoples' boats that are hanging in their boat lifts?

Don't know Dan, I've never understood Bass fisherman. Sparkles on boats? Outboards the size of refrigerators pumping out a gazillion horse power? :roll: Anyways. . . . ya gotta love the 70 - 200

[dsze]

Ha ha...ok, I hear ya. I think the sparkly boats are what push me over the edge! :shock: ....and the fact that they need those gazzillion HP to run 75mph across the lake.....cause you know the fish will only wait so long for you. If you don't get there as fast as you can they might be gone! lol


Anyway, Should the DREB kick into servo mode automatically or is that a setting I've missed somewhere? For all of these shots I had just the center focus-point selected. Should I have been doing something else?

-daniel

[Whaler]

I think you were right on target. #6 the handle is in focus even though it's partially submerged.

[dsze]

Yes, I was really impressed with how fast this lens focused for these shots. At 200mm, when I wanted to get him in the air, I couldn't follow him through the viewfinder from the flats into the wake and into the air. So, I just pointed at the sweet spot in the wake and waited for him...as soon as he came into frame I placed the center dot on him and shot.