Mariners So Close I Could Touch 'Em

As a die hard (Red) Sox fan, and born and raised Bostonian, I naturally go to every Red Sox game when they're in town (Seattle). I was lucky enough to get Diamond Club seats (owners box), this last series and I was in the first row with no net in my way and my lens was pretty much touching some Mariners in the batter's box, who seemed pretty big even though they have a .3 win % Here are a couple of my better ones, I'm still sorting through the remaining thousand.

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What great seats!

OK, I'll bite.

Firstly, the shot of Ichiro had a lot of potential. but it doesn't work for me because you missed the exposure.

ISO: 400
Aperture: 2.8
Shutter: 1/1000

I would have tried to get more of his face. It's also probably two stops under-exposed. I see you shot in Av mode, but your camera was fooled by the bright light of the sky behind his head and raised the shutter WAY too high. As a result, his face is seriously in shadow. You need to take control of your camera in this situation to prohibit it from mis-exposing the shot. I'd prefer manual exposure, but you could have added as much as 1+ stops of EC in Av and maybe worked it out. What metering mode were you using?

The second shot is a "meh" capture. Nothing at all interesting happening. A batter, whose face we can't see, a name and number we can't read, just standing with his bat on his shoulder looking towards the plate at what appears to be an moment in time between pitches with a batter at the plate who is OOF and whom we can't recognize. Is there a reason why you think this shot is one of your best? Why did you pull the trigger at that particular moment? What were you attempting to show with this photo? I'm not trying to be critical - only trying to understand what you were thinking when you took the shot.

Agree with what Dennis said.

Further on regarding your first image, here's a shot from a recent game I covered - not a particularly noteworthy image (other than the subject was hitting .425 at the time), but it's taken under conditions similar to yours: in Av, with a very bright sky behind it.

You can see my ISO is a LOT higher than what you chose; the shutter speeds are close, and the apertures are the same. If you take into account the higher ISO and the +1/3 EC, you get pretty close to 2 stops more exposure than your shot (ISO 400 to 1250 is 1 2/3 stops then add the 1/3 of EC), which is consistent with my original estimate of how under-exposed your image is.

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I'd also add the the first image suffers because the focus is on the gloves, not the face.

Has the OP disappeared? Hello?

If you mean that I've stated something you already covered, I read your use of the word 'exposure' to NOT be referring to the focus point of the image.

If 'exposure' means 'focus point' as well as all the other things, I'll try to remember that for the future.

danaitch wrote in post #5635129
If you mean that I've stated something you already covered, I read your use of the word 'exposure' to NOT be referring to the focus point of the image.

If 'exposure' means 'focus point' as well as all the other things, I'll try to remember that for the future.

Huh? I was wondering what happened to the OP, as in Original Poster. He/she asked a question here, then disappeared.

Agree with Dennis...as for the focus being on the gloves, I've seen a VERY similar shot used in an ad for batting gloves like this...so even though it's not on his face the image still coulda been usable/savable.

dmwierz wrote in post #5635287
Huh? I was wondering what happened to the OP, as in Original Poster. He/she asked a question here, then disappeared.

Oh right!

I've embarrassed myself again.

Away for the weekend, thanks for all the suggestions. I will definatly keep them in mind next time I shoot baseball. I haven't really had the opportunity to, so it's great to have a lot of feedback. My focus wasn't really baseball action with these shots, batters on deck, but I really understand what you guys are saying.

Thanks

You failed to mention, you had great seats only to see the Sox get whupped by Seattle. It was not fun to watch on tv. At least you had fantastic seats!

Here the photo is with the 2 Stop exposure adjustment made. No other adjustments made to photo. It totaly blows out the uniform.

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Strnge - Thanks - You've shown very nicely how it's impossible to recover a poorly-exposed shot in post processing. Even if this had been a RAW image, two stops would have almost certainly been too much to fix.

Like what has been said many, many times: get it right in the camera.

Hey Strnge, thanks for the corrections, but I beleive I have image editing turned off.