1st HS Soccer

First time shooting anything in a while any comment suggestions welcome.

Camera settings were AV Mode, ISO 800, Partial Metering, AI Servo, Center Focus Point, Auto WB.

Exif data included

Was a bit sunny right before sunset.

#1

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not bad but they look either oversharpened or highly compressed, they look extremely noisy which im assuming its the compression.

could do with some pp work

here is #1 before any crop or pp just resized down for this post

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what was your iso set at?

800, my fastest lens is my 70-200mm f/4L USM that has any reach

ah i see thats why theyre pretty noisy, 800 iso on an xti...nothing thats in your power there so well done with what you have!

i would deffinately recommend some noise ninja on the images

one thing to note too is to try and overexpose by a stop whenever possible, you brought the exposure up in PP which also increases the amount of noise youll get, of course if you cant really overexpose at all without a slower shutter then gotta work with your equipment

so by overexposing when I bring that down in pp i would lose some noise am I correct in that understanding?

Here is another from this same game that I thought was a bit hot but now I think its almost correct.

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not entirely you wont necesarily eliminate noise by bringing the exposure down, but if you use PP to bring the exposure up it also bring the noise up...thats not a great way to explain it.

Post processing cant differentiate from noise from actual signal so when you adjust your exposure making all the real natural colors brighter, i also increases the brightness of the noise in the pixel making it stand out alot more...im really not sure how to explain it perfectly but its true i swear! and the same in reverse, bringing your exposure down darkens the signal along with the noise making it look cleaner

try it out in photoshop, take your first image and do a 100% crop with the exposure as is, then adjust your exposure and look at the difference in the noise levels

hopefully someone who can explain the reason better than me will chime in here and help me out with the explanation

i think i came up with a better way of explaining it. No matter how you set your exposure the noise levels will be the same at a certain iso. the noise levels wont be affected by over exposing or underexosing itll stay the say. Like i said in the previous post as you increase your exposure your increasing the "brightness" of the noise along with the true signal. If you overexpose your photo and bring it down in PP your "darkening" the noise, so as you drop the photo into correct exposure the noise will be relatively "darker" and less noticeable than the true photon count

what about the last photo I posted is it better than the first 2?

much, hardly any noticeable noise, no clipping on the jersey...her right arm is blown out a little bit but its hard to keep every detail and get the face which is the most important part exposed properly...out of curiosity what software do you use for PP? and what mode do you shoot in? RAW or Jpeg?

I use Photoshop CS3, and shoot RAW so I can try and fix mistakes until I get more confortable with my camera.

in the case using camera raw in CS# (where you adjust exposure blacks etc) use the recovery slider to bring down the highlights a little bit, itll really help with the girls forearm in the last picture. in the top right of the developer theres a histogram, click the arrows in the top left and top right and itll highlight the clipping and highlights and you can see how the highlight slider really helps you maintain alot of detail

I would like them better shot from a lower perspective and the horizons levelled. Also, using the first as an example, try to get the sun behind you. Especially in a situation such as this when your light is going away, you can use all you can get.

Try to work on you timing a bit too. Try to get more peak action such as when the ball is closer to the player or when the two players are the most tangled up. The second shot is not bad in this respect.

Keep shooting.