ECU v. UMD Baseball (Feb. 26 2012)

arich wrote in post #13988857
If its a bright sunny day, why are you boosting your ISO so high and overexposing your shot? The 1/4000 shutter speed serves no purpose. You don't need over 1/1000 to nail your shot and 1/800 works just as well. It would be much better to keep your ISO down and have a cleaner image than push it for no reason for the sake of an unnecessary shutter speed

It's not an unnecessary shutter speed in any way. At 1/1000 or 1/800 arms/ball/bat are all going to be blurred because of how fast they are moving which is not what you want. You want a nice crisp picture with everything frozen like the last few Mike posted. The noise isn't going to show that much in a bright day time setting especially when black uniforms aren't always the one they wear.

Mike - good shots...seeing some of these always makes me wonder why they pick the ones they pick to print, but never the less. Nice shot in yesterdays issue!

Except that typically your focus isn't going to be directly on the ball, particularly at 2.8, so its not really going to be noticed too much. A higher shutter speed is nice when possible but I wouldratherhave a properly exposed image.

Examples:

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Good examples but no EXIF leaves us wondering about the settings that made the shot how it is.

However, not to be rude, just giving my opinion. In the first one you have a blurry arm making the throw, which does show movement but at the same time leads to an OOF looking shot. The second one is a shot where not much movement is occurring and for that shot the slower shutter speed is fine. The last one looks very soft to me and again shows lots of movement.

Also we are kind of comparing apples to oranges with his shots in bright sunlight vs. yours under the lights. Two different scenarios that would be shot two different ways.

I believe all were in the 1/1250 f4 range. And my primary point is that overexposed images are rarely preferable to properly exposed and that the gains of shoving your ISO that high in the sun are minimal at best. Sports Illustrated regularly runs photos with the amount of arm/ball blur you see above and the settings I referenced are what just about all the pros more or less shoot at.

arich wrote in post #13988857
If its a bright sunny day, why are you boosting your ISO so high and overexposing your shot? The 1/4000 shutter speed serves no purpose. You don't need over 1/1000 to nail your shot and 1/800 works just as well. It would be much better to keep your ISO down and have a cleaner image than push it for no reason for the sake of an unnecessary shutter speed

Because there are about 3 different zones due to the shadows, etc. that I'm shooting in which means 3 different settings. I can either sit there changing settings all day, missing shots left and right or expose for the shadows and adjust later in post. This is where shooting RAW+Jpeg comes in handy. Actually, if the shot is overexposed, I would need a faster SS. All due respect, 1/800 is fine for basketball but for baseball it's simply not fast enough if you want to freeze the entire scene. I also don't think you read the thread very carefully because the OP was asking what it took to freeze a bat or ball. 1/1000 certainly won't accomplish that. Everyone has a different way of doing things. I appreciate your input.

arich wrote in post #13990380
I believe all were in the 1/1250 f4 range. And my primary point is that overexposed images are rarely preferable to properly exposed and that the gains of shoving your ISO that high in the sun are minimal at best. Sports Illustrated regularly runs photos with the amount of arm/ball blur you see above and the settings I referenced are what just about all the pros more or less shoot at.

You have expressed the intent of getting a properly exposed photo and I agree, that is always best but the three you have presented look a bit underexposed. As for SI, they're as picky as it comes. Everyone has a different path to arrive at what we all hope is a good photo. How you get there and how I get there don't have to match up. The OP simply wanted to know how to freeze the bat and the ball and the simple answer to that is higher SS. I don't personally like motion blur for most photos sports related. And I do what I can to make sure it doesn't happen most of the time. It's just a personal preference of mine.

elrey2375 wrote in post #13990462
Because there are about 3 different zones due to the shadows, etc. that I'm shooting in which means 3 different settings. I can either sit there changing settings all day, missing shots left and right or expose for the shadows and adjust later in post. This is where shooting RAW+Jpeg comes in handy. Actually, if the shot is overexposed, I would need a faster SS. All due respect, 1/800 is fine for basketball but for baseball it's simply not fast enough if you want to freeze the entire scene. I also don't think you read the thread very carefully because the OP was asking what it took to freeze a bat or ball. 1/1000 certainly won't accomplish that. Everyone has a different way of doing things. I appreciate your input.

Which is why I was addressing you and not him. There was no criticism, just curiosity as to the high ISO and wondering what was more important; a frozen ball or proper exposure. As a deadline driven journalist I do not personally have the luxury of correcting all of my levels post-shoot but if you do then that's a nice option to have.

I personally wish I could shoot everything at 1/8000 and still nail exposure but I would rather keep my ISO 800 and lower when possible than boost it for the sake of shutter speed. Again, purely personal and has been successful for me in my work, simply wanted to hear the reasoning behind your own decisions. Glad you could share.

elrey2375 wrote in post #13990542
You have expressed the intent of getting a properly exposed photo and I agree, that is always best but the three you have presented look a bit underexposed. As for SI, they're as picky as it comes. .

Night games in closed roof stadiums will do that to you. These ranged from 3200-6400 ISO. As for SI, my work is good enough for them so I will keep doing what I'm doing. Best of luck with your own work.

Drewc2010 wrote in post #13990120
Good examples but no EXIF leaves us wondering about the settings that made the shot how it is.

One of my pet peeves is when photos are posted and the EXIF data is not embedded. There are EXIF data readers available.

In this thread "Phased" has none of his photos with the EXIF embedded so constructive criticism is really limited in the scope that can be given.

Also in this thread "elrey2375" and "arich' have all of their photos with the EXIF data embedded.

When asking for comments and the EXIF data is not embedded then please take the time to give some of the parameters of the shot. Such as ISO, shutter speed and aperture.

arich wrote in post #13990568
Which is why I was addressing you and not him. There was no criticism, just curiosity as to the high ISO and wondering what was more important; a frozen ball or proper exposure. As a deadline driven journalist I do not personally have the luxury of correcting all of my levels post-shoot but if you do then that's a nice option to have.

I personally wish I could shoot everything at 1/8000 and still nail exposure but I would rather keep my ISO 800 and lower when possible than boost it for the sake of shutter speed. Again, purely personal and has been successful for me in my work, simply wanted to hear the reasoning behind your own decisions. Glad you could share.

It really doesn't take that long in post. I have settings saved so I can just batch correct most and then tweak them a bit. I'm not working with a hard deadline all of the time but even when I am, we're talking maybe 10 or 15 photos, so it doesn't take long to find the good ones and then dedicate time to tweaking them. Everybody works differently and like you said, it's been working for you and my way has been working for me. More than one way to get it done.

John Godwin wrote in post #13990594
One of my pet peeves is when photos are posted and the EXIF data is not embedded. There are EXIF data readers available.

In this thread "Phased" has none of his photos with the EXIF embedded so constructive criticism is really limited in the scope that can be given.

Also in this thread "elrey2375" and "arich' have all of their photos with the EXIF data embedded.

When asking for comments and the EXIF data is not embedded then please take the time to give some of the parameters of the shot. Such as ISO, shutter speed and aperture.

If you want to see the exif data click on my photo that redirects you to the flickr you simply go to actions and show exif data. Calm down

Drewc2010 wrote in post #13989714
It's not an unnecessary shutter speed in any way. At 1/1000 or 1/800 arms/ball/bat are all going to be blurred because of how fast they are moving which is not what you want. You want a nice crisp picture with everything frozen like the last few Mike posted. The noise isn't going to show that much in a bright day time setting especially when black uniforms aren't always the one they wear.

Mike - good shots...seeing some of these always makes me wonder why they pick the ones they pick to print, but never the less. Nice shot in yesterdays issue!

Thanks a lot Drew, and yeah it happens. I'll see your shots in tomorrows paper

Phased wrote in post #13990737
If you want to see the exif data click on my photo that redirects you to the flickr you simply go to actions and show exif data. Calm down

I wish Flickr would change how they handle exif, it is nice to mouse over an image and just have it pop up (depending on what plugin you use). It's dumb that you have to click several times because many users aren't as courteous as you when it comes to including the actual link or or even leaving the exif as viewable once you get to Flickr. You'd think that one of the top photo upload sites would be aware of things like that

Yeah very true, I didn't know about third party Exif data viewers. I might use my smugmug next time.

Phased wrote in post #13991676
Yeah very true, I didn't know about third party Exif data viewers. I might use my smugmug next time.

There a plugins for chrome and Firefox that let you view images exif (when available ) very useful