HELP: Shooting through fences

I was at my son's T-Ball game today and the field they were at was completely fenced in. Every pic I took has a fence shadow in it (as shown below)...how do you shoot 'past' the fence?

**Edited to add: I was standing right at the fence, should I have been further away?

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I think that more open apertures will lessen the effect of the fence. Your last shot was f11.

I was shooting everything at f11 because I was trying to keep a bit more in focus (deeper). What would you recommend, 7.1 or so?

The lowest you deem acceptable. Try f 5.6... See whether it improves on the fence problem. If it does, work backward.

From what I've seen, you are handling the focusing very well, so maybe you can risk wide open aperture.

Take a look at an online DOF calculator. It will give you a good idea of what sort of DOF you can expect when factoring in distance, aperture, etc.

The subject is your son, and using a faster aperture will make the image "pop" more as it won't be flat from so much being in focus.

Impossible for me to say "7.1 is perfect" since I don't know how far away you are, etc. But from the look of it, you would get him totally in focus at f/5.6

Oh, also, if you want to get the detail of his face, because he's wearing a hat and casting a shadow, you may want to try flash for fill.

Thanks guys. This was the first field I've been at with a fence, really caught me off-guard. It was 93 degrees, mid-afternoon, with the sun beating down and I was so excited I was getting good images (In the LCD). Here are two more ruined shots:

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I like No.3 Enjoy him before he gets to be a teen!

Ace and Deuce wrote in post #14489161
**Edited to add: I was standing right at the fence, should I have been further away?

No, you want to be as close as possible with your front element, that gives you less wire in the way and it is as out of focus as possible for the aperture chosen. Again, the wider the aperture, the shallower the DoF, the more the fence will disappear.

Also be aware that if the sun is behind you, it will be shining on the wires and this can make them much more visible. If you are right up close with your lens, you can shade the wires so there is no bright glare of reflected sun coming off them.

Been shooting like this for a few weeks taking shots of my grand kids. I have been using the 50mm and the 85mm depending where they are on the field. I put the lens hood against the fence with the lens shooting thru the opening. No fence in any of the shots.

May not work for you with the 55-250, but I would think it should. I also wander out past the dugouts where the fence is mid chest high and take a lot of pics.

As to getting more in focus with a narrow aperture like f/11, what exactly are you after? in the shots you posted the players in the background and foreground are pretty out of focus. Typically, with this type of shooting, you want to nail focus on your focal subject, and let the background go soft. This is both a nice bit of subject "isolation" and will also allow a faster shutter speed, and will also help with the fence problem.

Typically f/5.6 will do fine getting a great focus on the one kid. I don't know how the 55-250 does shooting wide open fully extended, but give it a try, just make sure you keep your focus "glued" to the kid!

Even at f/5.6 you may still see some of the fence, but it will be more like a faint ghost and less intrusive. And, you can always use some post-processing to eliminate that or at least minimalize it.

I was just dealing with this today. The field I went to was completely surrounded by 8 foot chain link... son of a bunt. The closer you can get to the fence the better, I was even taking off my hood as those few inches did make a difference. I braced my camera against a fence post at an opportune position to shoot right through a link hole at my subject. I was able to get away with a medium aperture like f/8 at longer focal lengths like 200 or so. Going larger will help with the fence but leave your autofocus struggling to keep up with the action, esp with that nifty-250. My shots turned out great, the only ones affected by the fence were on long distance pans where I reached the end of my 'hole'.

I shoot a lot of high school sports so I have to deal with chain link fences all the time. Shoot with the lens wide open and get right up on the fence. Also switch your camera to center point focus and put your camera in AI Servo mode. I usually shoot at f4 or f2.8 even in the middle of the day to isolate my intended player from the rest of the field and never have issues with the fence being in my way.

This was shot through the mesh behind home plate of a AAA stadium. I had the lens right up against it, did the best I could with it moving in the wind. Sometimes you see it floating around when looking through the viewfinder, but never gets in the shot. I was always afraid to shoot through fences and stuff, but after doing it and seeing the results, I'm not worried anymore.

And, as tonylong and others have said, shoot at f/4-f/5.6 or so. If you are shooting just one kid, there's no reason to have the others in focus as well. Isolation is better.

Shot at f/4.0, 1/2000, ISO 400

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com/​photos/kenjancef/71742​72986/

Awesome guys, thanks! I've been shooting a lot lately using f11 because I like having a bit more DoF, but I'm going to switch to 5.6 the next time I'm at a game, even if I have to find a high fence to shoot from behind, lol. Just when I think I'm "getting it", something like a damn fence impedes my progress There's 8 different fields at the complex my boys play, and this was the first time in 3 years we've ever had a game at this particular one...and six other fields, all with low 1st & 3rd baseline fences, were empty.

Thanks again for the help!!!

~Steve