Rookie Short Season Ball

Had a chance to shoot the Spokane Indians for fourseamimages.com and here are a few of the images, enjoy.

1.

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Some nice shots there.

Matt - Get rid of the 1.4 TC and up your shutter speeds. Watch your backgrounds too. It's obvious that #2 was shot during the pre-game warmups and the player in the bg is too distracting. All of them seem too soft to me.

Chris:

Are you meaning that the 1.4TC makes these a little softer in this case? I have been struggling with the same thing lately in that I notice a definite difference in IQ with and without the TC (on 70-200f2.8L).

Matt, other than the softness that Chris mentions, I personally would crop the bottom edge a bit tighter to remove the OOF grass and dirt below the players feet as I find this distracting.

Cheers!

Chris

Matt, I don't think they all look soft, in fact a few seem quite sharp. watch the horizon on 5. Colors look very nice as does the exposure. I know you love that Siggy but I can't help but think these would be just that mauch better with the Canon 300.

All in all, I think they are quite nice. Bottom line, were Mike and the crew happy with them? You should be thrilled that they are using your stuff, they are pretty selective about outsiders so I'd take it a big compliment to the work you've been turning out.

Thanks for the comments. Well I have done some more testing today at home and without a doubt this lens (sigma 120-300) is badly backfocusing. In my mark III I have to set it to 20 to get it sharp.

Even then F2.8 is extremely soft while F3.5 and up is extremely sharp. That isn't acceptable to me. Even on my Mark II after inspecting the images closely I can see it is pretty bad backfocusing.

oh well, any advice on which sigma service center to send it to?

namasste wrote in post #5953932
Matt, I don't think they all look soft, in fact a few seem quite sharp. watch the horizon on 5. Colors look very nice as does the exposure. I know you love that Siggy but I can't help but think these would be just that mauch better with the Canon 300.

All in all, I think they are quite nice. Bottom line, were Mike and the crew happy with them? You should be thrilled that they are using your stuff, they are pretty selective about outsiders so I'd take it a big compliment to the work you've been turning out.

Read my post below yours lol I am going to send it in and see if they can fix it. I will at least give them that chance because I really do love the versatility this lens offers. I use the zoom often.

Sledhed wrote in post #5953384
Matt - Get rid of the 1.4 TC and up your shutter speeds. Watch your backgrounds too. It's obvious that #2 was shot during the pre-game warmups and the player in the bg is too distracting. All of them seem too soft to me.

yeah I just threw in number 2 because I liked the image.

Thanks for the advice, I am going to dump the tc and try and get closer if possible.

AthleticsPhotog wrote in post #5954027
Read my post below yours lol I am going to send it in and see if they can fix it. I will at least give them that chance because I really do love the versatility this lens offers. I use the zoom often.

I know. I WANT to love it so bad and the versatility is great but I know it's not the lens for me. My next move is to sell the Siggy and get a 300 f2.8.

Matt:
Can I ask what you did to test the lens, set up etc.? I'd like to try it with mine and the TC to see if my focus issues are the camera/lens/TC or just plain old user error!

Cheers!

Chris

cstewart wrote in post #5953719
Chris:

Are you meaning that the 1.4TC makes these a little softer in this case? I have been struggling with the same thing lately in that I notice a definite difference in IQ with and without the TC (on 70-200f2.8L).

Matt, other than the softness that Chris mentions, I personally would crop the bottom edge a bit tighter to remove the OOF grass and dirt below the players feet as I find this distracting.

Cheers!

Chris

I don't think it's the 1.4, but I also don't know which one Matt has. I've never used the 1.4 on my 70-200 but I've used it on the 300/2.8 and 400/2.8 with no loss in IQ. Although I don't use it very often, I would rather have the extra stop of light. I think Matt's issue here is partly the lens and the shutter speeds are lower than I like to use. If I get down to 1/640th I'm usually packing it up and heading for home.

I am using the sigma 1.4 and on my canon 70-200 it works great. But on my sigma 120-300 it is still to soft for me.

As I said at F2.8 it just isn't sharp enough (I posted in another thread in the lens section with two examples) but at 3.5 and up it is super sharp but I have to have the microadjustment at 20!

AthleticsPhotog wrote in post #5954272
I am using the sigma 1.4 and on my canon 70-200 it works great. But on my sigma 120-300 it is still to soft for me.

As I said at F2.8 it just isn't sharp enough (I posted in another thread in the lens section with two examples) but at 3.5 and up it is super sharp but I have to have the microadjustment at 20!

fwiw, I've run the Canon 1.4 tc on both the Canon 70-200 and Sigma 120-300 with no real IQ issues that are directly related to the TC as far as I can tell. No testing done but I can tell you that my 120-300 cannot produce the images my 70-200 does and it's the same user on both.

These all look too soft for me.
Id definitely say to ixnay the TC or use a higher f stop.