first time shooting sports! volleyball is hard, help C+C

[david888lee]

trying to be a photog for my school newspaper. had a "workshop" with one of the senior photogs on the newspaper, which helped a lot. what do you think of these photos. only had my tammy 17-50 f/2.8, but my 85 f/1.8 is coming on tuesday :]. should be getting better pictures then.

all were taken in manual mode, w/ shutter speed of 1/500 and aperture of 2.8. also, ai servo, center focus and center weighted metering were used.
should i do anything different?

1.
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2346/1494196050_89f165f569.jpg?v=0
http://www.flickr.com/photos/david888lee/1494196050/in/set-72157602278434574/

2.
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2264/1493341493_e908488a8e.jpg?v=0
http://www.flickr.com/photos/david888lee/1493341493/in/set-72157602278434574/

3.
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2202/1494195566_ee31e294d5.jpg?v=0
http://www.flickr.com/photos/david888lee/1494195566/in/set-72157602278434574/

4.
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2077/1493342611_9875032b0a.jpg?v=0
http://www.flickr.com/photos/david888lee/1493342611/in/set-72157602278434574/

5.
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2206/1494195812_ddcaa24ab8.jpg?v=0
http://www.flickr.com/photos/david888lee/1494195812/in/set-72157602278434574/

6.
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2030/1494194988_7222040ca6.jpg?v=0
http://www.flickr.com/photos/david888lee/1494194988/in/set-72157602278434574/

7.
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2206/1493340775_3985058f7a.jpg?v=0
http://www.flickr.com/photos/david888lee/1493340775/in/set-72157602278434574/

8.
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2318/1494194652_7d14842c65.jpg?v=0
http://www.flickr.com/photos/david888lee/1494194652/in/set-72157602278434574/

[david888lee]

9.
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2320/1493341673_fd57ffe9de.jpg?v=0
http://www.flickr.com/photos/david888lee/1493341673/in/set-72157602278434574/

10.
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2160/1494194830_7fba458021.jpg?v=0
http://www.flickr.com/photos/david888lee/1494194830/in/set-72157602278434574/

[KIPAX]

Apart from crop in more you seem to have it about right. Dont care for pic #2. you needed to be slightly in front of the line. the rest if cropped in more are good. you have moved around, got different positions.. a full room pic and a fans pic... nice set but wiht the 85 you will get in closer and that will make a difference... you got the ball, you got peoples faces.. I like #4 and #5 most

You might get told off for using 2 posts to show 10 pics though.. :)

[khall]

The 85mm f1.8 should give you better player/background separation, but on this posting you have a good set of pictures.

[inchman254]

I'm still trying to work my way through learning indoor sports, too.

Great action on many of these, but I like #1 very much.

One tool I found to be very helpful is Noise Ninja and it looks like you could probably use it on most of these. Not sure if some of it is just due to the upload compression.

On my XTi I find that ISO 1600 is pretty noisy, but NN brings it back into reasonable smoothness... not perfect, but pretty good.

[david888lee]

I'm still trying to work my way through learning indoor sports, too.

Great action on many of these, but I like #1 very much.

One tool I found to be very helpful is Noise Ninja and it looks like you could probably use it on most of these. Not sure if some of it is just due to the upload compression.

On my XTi I find that ISO 1600 is pretty noisy, but NN brings it back into reasonable smoothness... not perfect, but pretty good.

ty for the suggestion. I do have neat image, however, i found that if I run neat image, the whole picture loses a lot of sharpness. is there anyway to prevent that?

[inchman254]

... and therein lies the tradeoff.

I wouldn't consider myself an expert in this but, IMO, I'd rather get rid of the noise, then try to sharpen what's left than keep the noise. I find that noisy blacks are dull looking and colours like blue and red just don't have much punch when they are full of noisy pixels.

[DesertDude]

You were playing my alum, Pacific (UOP in Stockton):D. That brought back some good memories as I used to go to the games as an engineering student in the mid '90s. They're one of the best in Woman's volleyball. Good pics. I'm trying to take some sports shots of my kids at soccer, haven't even tried indoor action shots yet. Not ready for that.

[disneydork06]

nice shots. gotta say ouch for the girl in the first pic, the ball seems to bend her wrist back pretty far...anyways, try and get more faces of the girls from ur school. you finally got more faces in the later pics. oh and be careful with the top tape of the net, you're hiding a girl's eyes in pic 7. but yeah, nice job with the photos. keep it up.

[GM_of_OLC]

I also just started shooting for my school newspaper (although my volleyball shots were horrible)
And somebody please correct me if I'm wrong, but does noise cause that much of a problem when going into newspaper print?
The newspaper itself is pretty noisy, so any noise on the original won't be noticed that much.
Again, this is just my noob speculation.
Somebody please set me straight if I'm wrong.

[disneydork06]

I also just started shooting for my school newspaper (although my volleyball shots were horrible)
And somebody please correct me if I'm wrong, but does noise cause that much of a problem when going into newspaper print?
The newspaper itself is pretty noisy, so any noise on the original won't be noticed that much.
Again, this is just my noob speculation.
Somebody please set me straight if I'm wrong.
noise actually makes the print worse. I know, my school paper won't print any of the stuff that I have to crop in tight :-P it just looks horrible with all that noise. but of course a nice clean photo would work much better than something with a lot of noise.

[pagnamenta]

I've seen noisy images printed in papers and they look much worse. You'd think you might not notice it, but you see the noise in the image and the quality of the paper makes the images much worse.