2018 FOOTBALL SEASON

Pigpen101 wrote in post #18718371
A few shots from tonight's high school game...

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i HOPE this was early in the evening or later afternoon and NOT the kind of lighting you get at 730pm! if it IS under stadium lighting, i am so jealous. i get ISO 12,800 with f3.2 and 1/800 out of my 70-200 f2.8 and 5D3/5D4...

I am lucky with 2 out of the 3 stadiums I shoot in. The game started @ 7 pm, so these were taken somewhere between 7 & 8. I went to check my exif data & found my clock is set incorrectly so I have to fix that. AWB doesn't work so well in this particular stadium so next time I will have to set a custom WB, but I can't complain about the light.

I am new to the 6D. I have read many things about it having great DR, I knew that would help with nature/landscape but never considered it in sports. Teams usually have very different extremes when it comes to uniforms, many time 1 wearing black & the other wearing white, like in this game. This means with my 7Ds I'd have to pull shadows and introduce much more noise. Not having to do it so much with the 6D.

I know this was shot at 8:30 because I happened to look @ my phone after this play. My 7Ds @ 6400 ISO are terrible. I need another body I would love to just jump on another 6D if it weren't for the kind of low FPS, I still might though, I am liking this camera more every time I shoot with it.

I feel like I am pushing my luck with a 1/1000 shutter speed. I prefer 1/1250 or even 1/1600.

This is without noise reduction

CCapps - Love that you resisted the tendency to hyper saturate the colors. Looks like real football. Blood, sweat, buggers.... its all good. Particularly in the second shot. I don't mind a little motion blur... unfortunately the second shot suffers from more than that. But the capture is really cool regardless. Actual contact and everything... its gritty.

Thanks! Yeah, the only reason I kept the 2nd one was the action. I try not to overdo anything on my sports shots. I want them to look real. Now, I will push stuff if I'm doing some kind of sports edit, but I try to leave the game action alone.

Brock vs Decatur"?

burnet44 wrote in post #18719640
Brock vs Decatur"?

Yes, Brock vs Decatur Freshman

Our game got cancelled due to field conditions had an inch of rain every day all week, then about 2 inches an hour before kick, so did not shoot my usual team this week.

Impressive shots here. Photographed my 11yo son's games the past three weekends and while the kids/parents like the pictures I am finding them a bit boring. Suggestions?

FYI, the first two game I used my Tamron 70-200 G1 and the last game (pictures 85-123) I used a Canon 70-200mm II. Notice a difference?


https://flic.kr/s/aHsm​nU6BfS

I'd say that you have some good photos in that collection and a lot of non-keepers for me if they were mine.

Generally, it takes four things to be a good sports photo; focus, face, ball, peak action.

Every photo must have the player you are highlighting in focus. If it is not, delete it.

Most every photo should have the face of the player you are highlighting. If he is running away from you it generally is not going to be a good photo. Get ahead of the play.

If the sport involves a ball most good photos will have the ball in it. If not you are somewhere away from the action.

To be good you need to be capturing the action of the sport well. Peak action is the goal but something as simple as where in the running stride the player is can take the picture from ok to good or even very good.

For youth players like yours, I'd say you need to be low to the ground to make them look bigger. When you stand you get a somewhat aerial view which is not as dramatic.

Shoot the action tight and then crop tighter. Get rid of as many distractions as you can like players out of the action looking in or spectators. Shooting tight will also help you get a blurrier background which helps limit distractions. Oh, and shoot with your lens wide open to limit depth of field and isolate your subject.

The last thing I can think of is be aware of the background. It is always better if the background is cleaner.

All the advice is good... particularly getting low with young players. Makes a big difference.

The one nit I will pick here is don't let anyone tell you that you should delete any of your photos. If you like them, perfect. If its a picture of the back side of your friends kid scampering down the field - and it brings back memories of the game, its a good shot. Not every shot for a personal collection needs to be a "for sale" image or a wanna-be Sports Illustrated shot. If your not shooting for anyone else other than yourself, keep what ever makes you happy. There is an over obsession on technically correct images, that often tell you absolutely nothing about a game.

Covering a game professionally is also another task completely. Peak action shots are perfectly fine... it is the nirvana of the game. But covering a game also means you have lots of b-roll shots. Line men coming out of their stance. This is particularly with little dude football. There aren't going to be a lot of really good action shots to be had. The competition just isn't that good. Maybe a half dozen opportunities in a game. You can't cover 100% of the field also. So spend time getting those story telling shots. Kids emotions. Coaches doing their thing. Parents reacting. Mini cheerleaders if they are there. Players on the sidelines not paying attention. It all paints the fuller story than a few peak action shots.

The ideal shot. Yep, face (emotion & eyes), get low, have the action clearly defined, all that mess. Want to make other parents happy... their kid, in focus, doing their thing... even if it was secondary to the main action. Centers need loving too.....

EDIT: BYW, in a lot of these shots you have the lens lower than eye level of the kid... so good on that.

EDIT 2: some of these just need to be cropped in tighter... like 0H6A9149. Good youth shot.... just crop all the extra space out of it.

burnet44 wrote in post #18712158
UT vs USC
Noise and focus bad as usual
These may be overprocessed
C and C as always
brutality encouraged

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The composition on these shots is fine. You can see the eyes, see the ball, and the action on the tackle for the second shot is really good. I'm assuming this was a night game, and there's not much you can do about noise if you have a lens with an f/4 maximum aperture at night. You have to bump that ISO to maintain a reasonable shutter speed.

I'm not an expert at post-processing so I can't give any advice as to cleaning up the noise other than to rent a 2.8 lens for night games.

Canon 70D
Canon 70-200 f/2.8 Mark I

My advice is to keep shooting. The more games you shoot the better you are going to get. I'm a little lucky in that I have coached high school football for almost 10 years prior to shooting it. That background helps me anticipate where the action is going to be.

Your shots look good to me, I would also echo what others have said, shoot tight and crop tighter. Almost every shot I shoot in football has been cropped. It helps get the distractions out.

I keep a lot more shots from games than probably a lot of people would. I shoot for the local paper, as well as my site, and the school. So I try to tell the whole story of the game.

Be patient with the 70-200 and let the action come to you. Probably 85% of my action shots come from my 300mm. So I'm preaching to myself as much as giving advice here, wait for the action to get closer and let the kids fill up the frame.

I think for just about all sports, the lower you can get the better your shots are going to look. I think you're doing fine, just keep at it.

Couple more from last Friday night.

bpalermini wrote in post #18720883
I'd say that you have some good photos in that collection and a lot of non-keepers for me if they were mine.

Generally, it takes four things to be a good sports photo; focus, face, ball, peak action.

Every photo must have the player you are highlighting in focus. If it is not, delete it.

Most every photo should have the face of the player you are highlighting. If he is running away from you it generally is not going to be a good photo. Get ahead of the play.

If the sport involves a ball most good photos will have the ball in it. If not you are somewhere away from the action.

To be good you need to be capturing the action of the sport well. Peak action is the goal but something as simple as where in the running stride the player is can take the picture from ok to good or even very good.

For youth players like yours, I'd say you need to be low to the ground to make them look bigger. When you stand you get a somewhat aerial view which is not as dramatic.

Shoot the action tight and then crop tighter. Get rid of as many distractions as you can like players out of the action looking in or spectators. Shooting tight will also help you get a blurrier background which helps limit distractions. Oh, and shoot with your lens wide open to limit depth of field and isolate your subject.

The last thing I can think of is be aware of the background. It is always better if the background is cleaner.

Agree on the "non-keepers" but to explain the why. These weekend game pictures go out to every parent with a player on the team and if I only sent out the close action shots a vass number of the other players would not make the cut.

I do take most of the pictures while resting on one knee but maybe get even lower?

The remaining games I will be shooting a lot tighter and looking forward to the overall quality of doing so.