[crewl1]

Some dance competition shots.
Sigma 70-200 HSM OS, ISO 3200 F4 1/400
(I have a K-3 now and I'm looking forward to using it at 2014 competitions.)

[dosdan]

Crewl1, nice photos. I think you were lucky to get the most important part of that 2nd shot unblurred at 1/400s, even with panning. Although the limbs in a leap like this tend to have little relative motion during flight, unlike say a long jump leap where the arms are still swinging forward during the jump.

The shot is clear and clean for ISO2500.

Have just been processing some junior athletics shots. Had problems with panning motion blur at 1/800s with hurdles, shot close from the side and using fast panning to switch between different kids. (Sigma 17-70/F2.8-4.5.)

Also had a DOF issue in these hurdles when using f/7.1 at FLs of 31-53mm. The near runner in a almost side-on group shot was OOF while the outer runner was in focus.


Dan.

[andre-mz5]

@jva59 : thnx for the compliments. I won't have enough time to shoot a number of sport events the coming so I'll stick with the K5 for now. In the mean time I can see and check the resullts of the K3 sport shooters here and watch how the K3 drops in price.

@crew1 : nice shots especially the second one.

@dosdan : if you're to close to the track and use panning the AF may be fooled and could decide to focus on the wrong person whicj seemed to have happened to you. I hope you still got a couple of good shots.

[chile7236]

turns out my lens had mold around the AF motor...af motor being replaced and hopefully, I will be back to shooting surfers soon....

[dosdan]

@dosdan : if you're to close to the track and use panning the AF may be fooled and could decide to focus on the wrong person whicj seemed to have happened to you. I hope you still got a couple of good shots.

Actually I was trying for all the hurdlers. I thought f/7.1 would give enough DOF, but not in this case. I may even have been using centre-point AF, which I've had to use a lot lately in subject-rich environments. Sometimes, an OOF near subject, in a enfilade group shot in running or hurdles, works because it can enhance the sensation of speed. Other times, instead of including all of the 3-6 subjects in a shot, I'll crop to just 1-2 if there's sufficient drama left.

Out of a weekly athletics meet shot with say 1100-1500 raw shots, I usually cull down to 300-400 shots, adjusting each one in SilkyPix Developer Studio Pro 4. Where focus is off, but within limits, and the image is important, I then do the following:

1. Export as 16-bit TIFF, ensuring that no sharpening was applied in SilkyPix.
2. Load into PSP X4
3. Duplicate Layer (unless the image is very straightforward and the background is remote)
4. Load image into FocusMagic Plugin and check the suggested deconvolution radius at multiple sites in one or more subjects. Decide what radius to use and whether or not I need to create more duplicate layers so as to apply different radii in different focal planes. So for example a shot of 3 soccer players & a ball may need 1-4 layers (often a separate layer for the ball). Mostly I use FM to correct for focus, but with a kicked ball, or a fast panning tracking sequence from the ball's travel from a corner kick to the group in front of the goal area, I often use FM to apply motion deblurring.
5. After the application of medium-to-large amounts of deconvolution radii in FM, there will be halo, both on the outside edge, and internally (usually on the edge where pants or shorts meets a limb). Also the radius used in a layer may over- or under-correct other elements which are at different distances. So I than load the layer into Topaz Labs Remask 3, and trace the element(s) I want to include/exclude in this particular layer. As well as removing over/under corrected elements, the masking also removes an external halo.
6. After working on 1 or more layers, I use the Soften brush, radius 3, in PSP to remove any obvious internal halos, or ghost subject remanents after motion deblurring, like the trailing side of a soccer ball or limb.
7. If dealing with multiple layers, I may then do a partial collapse to just a subject and background layer and then often apply a Smarten Sharpen script in PSP which avoids the edges, and allows a lot of sharpening without halos.
8. Then I'll collapse all layers, apply Clarity to improve the contrast, and then decide whether or not I'm going to use Local Tone Mapping (aka local contrast enhancement) to give some visual zing to the image.
9. Finally, I downsize to max. dimensions of 1500(h) x 1000 (v) pixels for online galleries and save as a JPEG. (The resize has a sharpening control, so I usually don't apply a USM after resizing.)

A 2-layer comparison example of this process is shown here:

https://www.pentaxforums.com/forums/115-pentax-k-5/115277-k-5-sports-photogra...ml#post2545652

I recently entered 2 images in a FM processing contest. They wanted significantly OOF examples where a large deconvolution radius was used. One of the images from a K20D made the final 10. You can click on an image to see a bigger, uncropped version:

Focus Magic Competition Entries

In the processing of a recent major athletics meet, 56 out of the 448 final images were worked on in PSP and FM. This took a long time to do. Hopefully, the K-3 will reduce the need to do this, but I'll probably still use it with good images to make them a little better.


Dan.

[dadipentak]

Wow, Dan, that's a pretty elaborate process--no wonder your shots look so good ;~) I only wish I understood half of that recipe. I'd have had to Google "enfilade" too if I hadn't already done so recently, reading a bit of military history.

I've been shooting some high school hoops lately. Even with the K-5 & Topaz de-noise, I lose a lot of detail to noise.

[dosdan]

I've been shooting some high school hoops lately. Even with the K-5 & Topaz de-noise, I lose a lot of detail to noise.

Yes, internal sports is a heart breaker. It's difficult keeping detail with high ISO, and then applying any form of NR. What to do?

1. Go FF so you've got a bigger sensor capturing more photons. Then you get a thinner DOF, making it difficult to get multiple subjects in focus. Also you have no crop-factor "magnification", so you need a 400mm lens to get the framing you previously got with 270mm on APS-C

2. Go fast & close. Main choice, if you can get one, is the FA* 85/F1.4 (really thin DOF fully open). Concentrate more on solo, your-side-of-the-court action, and give up trying to cover the full event.

3. Explore mystically high ISO values. Big values may still look good on internet-sized images. Since anything above ISO1600 is using digital gain and non-defeatable raw NR, unless you want to rely on in-camera JPEG NR, you're better off shooting raw at ISO1600 and boosting in PP. This way you have a better chance of avoiding blown highlights, then say shooting at ISO6400, and you can apply custom NR in PP.

4. Try dangerously low shutter speeds. You may end up get a few decent shots, but you could end up sobbing because all the truly great unique moments, you somehow managed to capture, are blurry.

Dan.

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Last edited by dosdan; 12-23-2013 at 09:18 PM.

[dadipentak]

Interesting commentary, Dan.

Concentrate more on solo, your-side of the court action, and give up trying to cover the full event.

That's pretty much what I do. When I can, I'll park myself at the corner of my team's offensive end (preferably on the same side as the scorer's table--which screws up exposure if it gets in the shot.)

you're better off shooting raw at ISO1600 and boosting in PP

Noted.

[The Kellyboy]

I took some rugby photos today with my plain, old ordinary K5 & a Sigma 70-200mm 2.8.

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=697828916918028&set=a.69782843025141...type=1&theater

[chile7236]

my DA70-300 is fixed...courtesy of Pentax Japan ...some test shots below (wasn't any good surf today)

[bass3587]

my DA70-300 is fixed...courtesy of Pentax Japan ...some test shots below (wasn't any good surf today)

Glad you got it fixed!

[FrancisK7]

How much did it cost to get it repaired?

[chile7236]

How much did it cost to get it repaired?

F-R-E-E...I had bought it used from a local shop and they offer 6 month warranties. just need the surf to pick up now.

[chile7236]

some decent surf today so I took my K5 out...

[chile7236]