HS Softball

My first try at Soft ball

SO CLOSE TO BALL ON BAT! GAHHHHHHH

they look under exposed.

how does the background behind u look? cause of the dumpster

The background is just those 2 dumpsters and then a road and my school.

The histogram was way on the left. Truthfully, I am not sure how to get it to the middle or the right. (Supposed to be in the middle right?) Help!

Either slow down your shutter, open up your aperture, or increase your ISO. You'll probably want to start with adjusting ISO so that you don't lose the shutter speed or DOF.

ISO was at 640 I think.

Thanks for all the C&C! More please!

anyone else?

I shoot alot of softball, and in school settings you get the background you get. Unfortunately they squeeze so many athletic fields into such a small amount of space, and sports like girls softball usually gets the least desired areas. Now football they get the choice real estate. Anyway this is how I start my setup for shooting, I select my lens sharpest aperture usually 2-4 stops above wide open. Then I adjust my ISO to get a shutter speed of no slower than 1/400th in the darkest part of the field usually the catcher's box. Make sure you check this with both the catcher and official in place because they will create shadows and block light. And then go from there now everything I shoot with is 2.8 (the lens not the sharpest setting) or better so I usually have a lot of lee way in my other settings. And depending on the length and time of game you may need to check your setting mid way through.

Thanks for the info Dennis, that's a big help to a "newbie" like me.

Your images look a bit green to me. What was your white balance set at?

No idea. I believe it was set to cloudy though.

All my shots out of my 1D look like that though. I love it!


Thanks for the tips Tom! We do not have a foot ball team, and this field just got finished 2 weeks ago. We dont even have a base ball field for our team!

I'm super noob to baseball (and softball); I've never even seen a live game.
I'm asking why do you guys try so hard to get a ball on bat shot. I've seen few done it with success and many very close to it yet any of those shots haven't made me scream "OWOW!!1" my lungs out.
I prefer those ones where players are diving in the air trying make it to the base and sand flying all over.
Still everyone here's trying so hard to get that "BOB" shot. OK, I understand that if there is something unordinary like bat breaking or something like that those are pretty cool.
Does no-one understand my pain?? Am I all alone in this world??

Pro, If this was your first try, I think you have the right idea. Your action shots include one person versus the entire field. LIke the baseball cards. Maybe through some adjustments in PS, you can lighten them up a bit. You'll make some happy parents. Keep trying.

Thanks! I think im gonna sell my 50 and get a 2X TC. Maybe after prom's over....

vantsi wrote in post #5450066
I'm super noob to baseball (and softball); I've never even seen a live game.
I'm asking why do you guys try so hard to get a ball on bat shot. I've seen few done it with success and many very close to it yet any of those shots haven't made me scream "OWOW!!1" my lungs out.
I prefer those ones where players are diving in the air trying make it to the base and sand flying all over.
Still everyone here's trying so hard to get that "BOB" shot. OK, I understand that if there is something unordinary like bat breaking or something like that those are pretty cool.
Does no-one understand my pain?? Am I all alone in this world??

The bat on ball shot is a very tricky thing to master. It requires good anticipation skills and impecable timing. Unless you have a 1D and can shoot a 12 frame burst from pitcher release until the ball is in play. Even then... at 50-95 MPH depending on how hard the ball is thrown... it's still pretty hard to get. This is as close as I've ever come. 30D 5fps with my old 70-200 F4L

forkball wrote in post #5450465
The bat on ball shot is a very tricky thing to master. It requires good anticipation skills and impecable timing. Unless you have a 1D and can shoot a 12 frame burst from pitcher release until the ball is in play. Even then... at 50-95 MPH depending on how hard the ball is thrown... it's still pretty hard to get. This is as close as I've ever come. 30D 5fps with my old 70-200 F4L

FPS isn't really a factor when trying to capture BOB shots.