Softball - chain link fence isolating or distracting?

1. sharpened

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Frankly the best way to isolate is to blur the background when shooting. Use an fstop of at least 2.8 (I see you used f5.6) if your lens can support it and your BGs will be a little more blurry which helps to better isolate batter.

As for your two images and what you already have, I think the oversharpened images actually do better at isolating the batter from the BG. The only other thing I would do is crop everything else that you can out of the pic so that the batter fills the frame. Not much you can do about the guy in the gray t-shirt though!

I'd love to have a zoom that would let me open up to 2.8.

I'm using the canon 75-300 4-5.6

alphonsis wrote in post #5832587
I'd love to have a zoom that would let me open up to 2.8.

I'm using the canon 75-300 4-5.6

Ah ha..well, so much for that Maybe some different positioning can also find a BG that has less going on? What is the BG like if you shot from 1B line (ie what is behind 3B dugout?), or maybe move down the 3B line more to try and take the BB hoop out of the way?

There was much less going on by the 3B dugout. However, the sun was setting from left field, giving me harshly backlit shots from the 1B line.

Yeah, not the greatest setup.

That's always the issue with this sort of shot, the busy background. About the only way is to open wide and blur the background, but can't always do that...gotta work with what ya got.

Crop tighter -- you have way too much fence showing.

Out of the two I'd say the non-sharpened is less distracting, but it really needs a tighter crop.

no biggie =

dupe the layer using a quick mask on the batter to select him

working on the background layer apply a gaussian blur

working on the top layer that has only the batter apply your sharpening technique

end of problem

Palladium wrote in post #5833564
no biggie =

dupe the layer using a quick mask on the batter to select him

working on the background layer apply a gaussian blur

working on the top layer that has only the batter apply your sharpening technique

end of problem

He looks oversharpened here to me.

Yeah, with the busy background, and your not having an f/2.8 lens, this is the only way to minimize the background clutter - unless you move to another location.

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By tighter crop, are you suggesting that it should be tighter on the camera when I take the shot, or that I should crop more in pp? If it's the former, should I be taking these shots in a vertical orientation?

These are straight off the camera, and I gave them space in the frame, since the players tended to move forward a fair amount during their swing.

alphonsis wrote in post #5834912
By tighter crop, are you suggesting that it should be tighter on the camera when I take the shot, or that I should crop more in pp? If it's the former, should I be taking these shots in a vertical orientation?

These are straight off the camera, and I gave them space in the frame, since the players tended to move forward a fair amount during their swing.

Both, but definitely get tighter in camera if you can. That's a lot of room with nothing going on!

alphonsis wrote in post #5834912
By tighter crop, are you suggesting that it should be tighter on the camera when I take the shot, or that I should crop more in pp? If it's the former, should I be taking these shots in a vertical orientation?

These are straight off the camera, and I gave them space in the frame, since the players tended to move forward a fair amount during their swing.

Um, well, my reply actually included a tighter crop, so I thought that was pretty sef-explanatory, but since you asked, IMO it's always better to crop in camera. If you are using a zoom (which I believe you are), zoom until you crop appropriately. If you shoot with a prime, then you "zoom with your feet".

Regarding Vertical VS Horizontal for batters: I shoot 80%+ of my batter shots vertical (actually, I shoot 80%+ of ALL my sports shots vertical) because batters are mostly vertical beings.

This is full-frame with a 400mm lens on a MkIIn:

dmwierz,

Those are some awesome full-frame shots! Do you search wider, and tighten in as you see a shot you want? Perhaps you just keep it tight and follow the motion?

I was so concerned with lopping off limbs, bats or balls, I kept it pretty wide. I'll definetly be trying vertical shots and keeping it tighter next week.