Illinois Baseball Playoffs

I took some photos at a HS playoff game yesterday. I'd greatly appreciate any CC anyone is willing to give. I'm pretty new to baseball photog, so I didn't get any BoB shots. The only one I had ended up being out of focus.

Below are a few of the shots. If you're brave enough, all of the photos can be seen at:
http://good-times.webshots.com/alb​um/563582038xkijzF

These are SOOC except for some sharpening. I used my 40D with the Sigma 50-500. I also experimented with using BBF, which I had never done before. I shot in manual, mostly with an aperature of f/8, shutter speed between 1/1000 & 1/2000 depending on if the sun was behind the clouds or not. ISO 800 most of the time, too.

I would appreciate, if possible, if someone more experienced than I could look at some of the full-resolution photos in my album & comment on the sharpness. These were slightly sharpened in Photoshop because the 50-500 is pretty soft beyond 300mm. I'd like to get started offering my services, but I wonder if the equipment I have (especially the lens) can give me the image quality that paying customers would be satisfied with.
1.

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Why f8? The photos are too hot (on my monitor)!

There are instances where the uniforms have some hot spots... but when the uniforms did not have hotspots, then the faces in the shadows of the hats were often too dark. So I sacrificed a bit of detail in the uniform for a better exposed skin tones.

Why F8? Because the lens I was using is soft at the longer focal lengths and I was trying to maximize the sharpness by getting more DOF.

Edited to remove stupid comment I made.. as I do on occasion...

well, no images are coming up. that may be why you're not getting a response.

MizzouMan_2000 wrote in post #5601622
Wow.. They must have been better than I thought. All of those hits and only 1 comment... (that's sarcasm, incase you couldn't tell. )

Chris -

remember you posted during the holiday weekend, I'm sure some of the regulars will be posting more today.

I haven't seen that particular lens used by pros (sigma 50-500). More often, I have seen the pros that post here with either the 70-200 f. 2.8 canon, the sigma 120-300 f. 2.8, canon 300 f.2.8, and the 400 f.2.8.

I hope that at least answers one of your questions initially posted.

Pat

jhuckelberry,
Works fine on my end and from several different computers.

pigtailpat,
You are correct.. I shouldn't be so hasty... just anxious, I guess, to get some feedback on how to improve.

They are a little hot but I do the same thing to help with cap bill shadows. They look a little flat and need to be cropped tighter.

Wish exif was present. In some shots there is too much room at the top and bottom. 500mm would have more than filled the frame.

#1 - I wish shooting position was different. And there is no ball.
#2 - A moment earlier would have been better.
#3 - A closer crop.
#4 - Same as #1
#5 - Quite nice
#6 - No action
#7 - Same as above
#8 - Wrong side, shoot from other side.

bobbyz,

Even though I have 500mm.. I try to limit how much I use it as this lens gets very soft at that focal length. I'm considering selling it and upgrading to an L lens...

1. I agree about there being no ball, but what do you mean by "shooting position was different"? I was shooting over the fence on 1st base side, maybe 10 feet past 1st base.


These were taken at 500mm.

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Didn't know that you were shooting over the fence. I think the batters shots would have been better if your shooting position was along the 3rd base line.

Maybe more experinced folks can chime in, I am just a rookie in these sports shooting.

well i dont know much about baseball shots but i have to say, go ghosts. we sucked at baseball when i went there.

speedtest,

You'll be happy to know they made it to the final 4, I believe. They play tonight at 7PM, unless it got rained out, which is a strong possibility. I hope they go all the way, too.

Looks like they got rained out.. play tomorrow at 9 am.

Speedtest,

IVC won their make-up game this morning and play for 2A state championship at 7PM tonight.