High School Basketball - C & C welcome

I went to a local HS basketball game last night to shoot some photos for processing/testing the new Lightroom 4 beta.

This was my first time shooting basketball so there was a significant learning curve. How did I do?

Nice action. Looks underexposed on my monitor and really noisy. Have noise Ninja or lightroom?

Looks pretty good to me.

C_Heath31 wrote in post #13688803
Nice action. Looks underexposed on my monitor and really noisy. Have noise Ninja or lightroom?

Thanks for the feedback. But I'm curious; is your monitor profiled and calibrated?

The images are noisy because they were shot at ISO 3200 with a 1D Mark III; I'm usually not comfortable going over ISO 1600 but to get the required shutter speed I had to go higher. I used the Noise Reduction tools in Lightroom 4 Beta to remove some of the noise but you really shouldn't be seeing any unless your monitor is too bright. I have several NR apps - Noise Ninja, Noiseware Pro, Topaz Clean 3, Neat Image, and Nik Dfine 2 but since I was testing LR4 I didn't use any external tools.

Hmmm...just realized that Imgur is stripping the EXIF metadata.

straighten up those horizons (they're not level) and drop the color saturation and you'll have some pretty nice shots there. Good action. WB looks ok ... a little yellowish/greenish look on my monitor but definitely drop back the saturation and the skin tones should look more natural for you.

Looks like a very well lit venue for boys HS basketball. Good for you!

dave

Thanks, I'll rework the photos since I'm still getting accustomed to all the new adjustment sliders in LR 4. One of the things I struggled with is whether to shoot tight or loose then crop in post. I chose to shoot fairly tight so now some of the photos can't be fully straightened without eliminating what I think are important elements.

The fieldhouse was renovated a year ago with new seating, floor, etc. but the lighting is still poor. I looked up and many of the fluorescent tubes were dead or barely lit. Would be nice to use flash or strobes but I wnat to get the basics down first.

snyderman wrote in post #13689169
straighten up those horizons (they're not level) and drop the color saturation and you'll have some pretty nice shots there. Good action. WB looks ok ... a little yellowish/greenish look on my monitor but definitely drop back the saturation and the skin tones should look more natural for you.

Looks like a very well lit venue for boys HS basketball. Good for you!

dave

eh - looks like "uncle bob got a dslr" pics

good try though. sports are tough

blurry_image wrote in post #14186475
eh - looks like "uncle bob got a dslr" pics

good try though. sports are tough

I was going to say the same thing, in a different way. Except for #1, the action has already happened and the frame you're left with isn't very compelling, for whatever reason. FWIW, they look underexposed on my monitor as well.

Nice freeze shot in #3