Season opener - College football/Marching Band (4 pics)

Some shots from last Thursday's season opener, taken with my new Promaster (Tamron) 70-300. There were a lot of throwaway shots, I still need a lot of practice. Had a few good ones though Now I need to continue working on exposures and shutter speeds at the high end. Overall, I am happy with the lens, it's good for the price I paid1

Our seats are halfway up in the second level of the stadium, so I'm pretty happy with the image quality (it was also a night game, so ended up using higher ISO). The football game sucked, but the band was great (our son's the sousaphone player wearing sunglasses at night...) and that is why we go.

Jim

[ericc]

Hi Jim,

Those show promise, so certainly don't give up. That moon shot is very cool. You might try downloading the free version of Neat Image to clean up the noise and that shot would be very nice.

Living in Nebraska and your son goes to ISU. There's gotta be a story there. But, since your handle is CycloneBandDad, I'm guessing you are Iowan at heart and just live over in the Evil Empire. I felt the same way about living in Texas and I'd certainly not let my children go to school there.

-E

[RoxnDox]

This was the first outing for the new camera and lens in the stadium. Previous 3 years I was using a little Canon A80 P&S - just a little bit of difference!

The moon shot was looking almost directly into one of those banks of stadium lights, so I was amazed it came out as well as it did. I'll try working on it some more. This version was touched up with Corel Photopaint 8's noise removal tool, I'll see about grabbing the other.

Considering I paid under $200 for the lens, I'm pretty happy.

Jim

[RoxnDox]

Oh, and I'm just an import from the west coast (Seattle), courtesy of Uncle Sam and an Air Force assignment to Offutt AFB. I've been an anti-Husker since the day I got here, and I guess we just raised our son right Which is fun considering I work in Lincoln with a bunch of those crazy Husker types...

We don't really care about the football, we go for the band performances. If they sold tickets just for halftime, we'd buy 'em.


Jim

[RoxnDox]

I'm impressed with the output from Neat Image. I'll definitely find a use for that little gem.

Here's the cleaned-up version of the moonrise shot.

Jim

[ericc]

Originally Posted by CycloneBandDad

I'm impressed with the output from Neat Image. I'll definitely find a use for that little gem.

Here's the cleaned-up version of the moonrise shot.

Looks like you don't quite have the profile for your camera set up. There's some ugly mosaic effects going on and the image is blurry. Neat Image can do a better job than that. Part of that is because you are working on a smaller image. Noise reduction should be one of the first steps in the workflow, before resizing. If you want to email me a larger JPG, I'll run it through my purchased version of NeatImage.

I'll do what I can to cheer my Cowboys to victory over those d*mn Huskers this coming Oct. 13. Since they don't play ISU, we won't have any problems this year.

[RoxnDox]

I emailed you the original to play with if you want. I'll play around more with the demo version using the larger file. First time trying to use a noise reduction program, so I appreciate the tips :-). The demo version only looks like it does the automatic noise profiling in the image, at least at first glance. I'll do some more digging in the manuals.

Tomorrow's another night game, so I imagine I'll get some more opportunities to learn stuff on fixing up my images (thinking about shooting RAW and just being more selective on how many to shoot - only 2 1GB cards right now).


Jim

[ericc]

Hi Jim,

I ran the commercial Neat Image on your shot and sent it back. It definitely helps having the correct profile for your camera, ISO, and exposure time. Check you inbox when you get home.

Good luck tomorrow.