[epa4wd]

Few from yesterday

[dadipentak]

K-5 & Sigma 50-150/2.8.

[dosdan]

My first K-5 swimming shots. Kaiea, my 10 y.o. son, has done well in internal school swimming, so he got a spot representing his school in a district swim meet. I've never been able to shoot any kids swimming due to restrictions we face getting permission, particularly at school and club junior mixed swimming events. I got the day off so I could attend the district meet and decided to take my camera, not expecting to be able to use it. I took the DA 60-300/F4-F5.8 instead of the DA* 60-250/F4 as I wanted a discrete lens and this was an outdoors event on a sunny day.

Anyway when the event started I saw a number of P&S shooters and one Nikon DSLR shooter so I go my camera out and prepared to shoot. I noticed after a while that my early shots were blurred. I tried remounting the lens a few times and the manual focus override (this is the full version of the DA 55-300) was very tight. So I think at some stage the lens barrel was jammed. Eventually I got lens working again (it was fine next day and I've shot jet ski action with this combo successfully before). So either the screw mechanism was jammed or the barrel was.

I was shooting TAv with 1/1000s & f/7.1. In the process of trying to get the lens working I must have accidentally changed the shutter settings to 1/500s, 1/400s & 1/200s - far too slow for this action stuff.

I found shooting swimming very interesting and I've got a lot to learn about getting the right angles and the dynamics. I hope I get an opportunity to shoot junior swimming again. I'd love to shot a butterfly event. I was very hesitant about pointing my camera anywhere else except at my son. Only towards the end did I include two swimmers in a few shots.

Kaiea won two events and came 3rd in another so he's qualified for 2, possibly 3 events representing his district at the regional level. It was good to see that he is competitive against kids from other schools.

1/1000s


1/1000s



1/500s


1/400s


1/400s


1/400s


1/400s


1/400s



1/200s. Coming in for a win in the 50m breaststroke event. It would have looked better with the heads of the timekeepers inframe. I'd like more dramatic tension. I had to use a strong application of Focus Magic to reduce the amount of motion blur of my son's body above the water.



1/200s. Face was too OOF to successfully adjust with FM, but otherwise I liked the shot and there is a nice golden glint on the water. So I decided to use a cross-processing effect in PaintShop Pro X4 to make the image more abstract so sharpness would be less necessary.



Dan.

[RonHendriks1966]

I love a some of the basketbal shots. Great work and very nice light to work with. Good skintones on them.

Dan, you have some focus issues I would say. But in the water AF can be distracted by things getting in your way like watersplash. I did swimming with 1/320th up to 1/800th wich would be sufficient to freese some action or to leave some movement in them. Water is always a little unpredictable.

P.S. read it again and next time take the DA*60-250mm. It's better to be noticed and have great pictures then being anonymus and pictures with some issues. You can use f5.0 or so and have some background blurring.

[VisualDarkness]

I've never been able to shoot any kids swimming due to restrictions we face getting permission, particularly at school and club junior mixed swimming events.
I was very hesitant about pointing my camera anywhere else except at my son. Only towards the end did I include two swimmers in a few shots.

I haven't yet found any real restrictions in my short history of shooting amature sports, either people doesn't care here or are positive about it. I've had teams asking me to shoot special players, a woman wanting to buy pics of her son and got invited to the (sadly too crammed) bench shooting the local hockey team. What restrictions do you face that hinders you from taking pics of athletes?

[dadipentak]

Thanks Ron! You're right about

very nice light to work with.

It makes all the difference: fortunately, it's the home court.

I think you did well despite the malfunction, Dan--I especially like the first and last.

[diawollo]

Few of my basketball shots with K-5 under quite difficult light conditions. As I currently don't own any telephoto lens, I had to shoot with what I got, which is Pentax 55mm and Tamron 90mm. Pentax 55mm SDM is one of the slowest focusing lenses around. It is possible to use autofocus, but sometimes you can miss some good episodes. For comparison , I have also tried D7000 Sigma 70-200 combo, which seemed lightning fast and it was so much easier to get the right shot after the 55mm. Not sure how fast Sigma's autofocus would be on the K-5...


Pentax 55mm 1.4 SDM



Tamron 90mm 2.8 macro

[noaslplease]

WIth lackluster continuous AF performance on my K-x, I never thought it would be easy to get decent pictures with the K-5, esp in low light sports,
but you guys have all proved me wrong!

Good to know!

[dosdan]

What restrictions do you face that hinders you from taking pics of athletes?

Athletes, in general - no problems. With kids at swimming pools & the beach it becomes difficult due to social pressure or restrictions from the organisers, due to the fear of paedophiles.

While I've shot Kaiea for the last 3 years in junor soccer, I was never able to shoot my daughter Uma when she played as a 8 y.o. & 10 y.o. in girls netball (she missed a year). It was the club's policy: no video or stills photography. I suppose they were worried about people photographing young girls in short skirts. I know not been able to photograph her spoiled it for me, as I noticed so much more in reviewing my son's soccer photos then I was ever aware of during the live action.

You pull a camera with a big lens out at the beach here when young kids are swimming & frolicking, and people stare are you. When I've done it, I've been very careful to keep the camera pointed either at my kids only or at the gulls landing or taking off.

Same with kids in a public playground. I'm careful not to include young kids of people I don't know in shots of my kids playing.

In some junior team sports, they will allow you to shoot if you can get written permission from all the parents in both teams. Luckily, that has not been the case with junior soccer. I hand out slips to all the parents at the match with this written on it:

You will find photos from this game tomorrow at
http://picasaweb.google.com.au/dosdan

If you would like any photos removed, please send an email to xxx@xxxxx.xxx

Dan Bridges (father of Kaiea, Sunnybank Saints U9 Cyclones).

I've never had a request to remove a soccer photo from my website.

Dan.

[VisualDarkness]

Wow, that sounds bad and utterly ridiculous. I feel a bit uncomfortable shooting people outside of the sports buildings but when I've pointed the lens at people in arenas no-one seem to care. Though I'm almost certain that shooting at the beach or at the playground would attract a few questioning looks.

If I remember correctly Australia filed some kind of law against too small breast size in porn "to counter pedophiles", correct? This has gone way too far (just like anti-terrorism) and it's because people tend to get frightened up by media, commercial media is there to sell not to help you with your life. The risk of even getting in contact with an abusive pedophile (not all harm people, it's a handicap) is really slim also most criminal cases are committed by person close to the child. Too bad I see the same development of unresonable public here too.

[dosdan]

If I remember correctly Australia filed some kind of law against too small breast size in porn "to counter pedophiles", correct?

Never heard about that.

Photographers of young kids have to be very careful here. There's threads about this on many websites. Anyone here who works with kids (sports, church, childcare, education) is required to have a "blue card" which means you passed a police background check. I think I'll apply for one as it will probably turn out to be useful in the future. (I've been thinking about shooting other junior soccer teams, besides my son's.)

Dan.





.

[RonHendriks1966]

Never payed notion on that, but then I only did sports from children only a few times. Swimming of my niece, but then I do shoot the whole pool and everyone attending. Fieldhockey also a few times of juniors. Mostly I first see the organising club or chief refferee.

[jppp]

Few of my basketball shots with K-5 under quite difficult light conditions.

I see nothing wrong with your pictures, they're actually quite good. I've never shoot basketball, so there may be one of my next personal challenges.

Talking about poor lighting and challenges... Our U17 boys continue with their quest for the Finnish championship in football. The season has just started and it lasts until October, so there may be some obstacles in the way before that happens ;D
This time I had to shoot in BAD lighting conditions. You know those yellow natrium sorry excuse for lamps type things? Everybody looks sick and the snow arround looks like it's been attacked by a hoard of dogs. My WB was way off on site, but because I shot RAW that could be fixed in PP. I don't think I'm ever going back to JPEG anymore...









K-5 and Tamron 70-200 f2.8 again. 1/400 is slow to my liking but I didn't want to boost the ISO any higher than 5000. I think the pictures are ok, and I know that the lighting won't get any worse than this, except maybe in one football hall in a couple of weeks. Can't wait for the summer, though.

[RonHendriks1966]

K-5 and Tamron 70-200 f2.8 again. 1/400 is slow to my liking but I didn't want to boost the ISO any higher than 5000. I think the pictures are ok, and I know that the lighting won't get any worse than this, except maybe in one football hall in a couple of weeks. Can't wait for the summer, though.

Your boys are a little bit overexposed when I look at the white shirts. Just by 1/2 a stop or so. Good shots. In those conditions our competitions are down due to the wheater.

For those lights I use my ExpoDisc to make a manual white balance preset.

[jppp]

Your boys are a little bit overexposed

Yeah, especially in the last one. That's a PP accident, I was mainly concentrating on getting rid of the yellow tone. And ExpoDisc is on my never ending shopping list ;D

In those conditions our competitions are down due to the wheater.

The conditions were actually quite ok because it was only about -3°C and just a tiny bit of snowing. The first game of the season a couple of weeks ago was played at -10°C and one practice match -16°C. With proper clothing it's quite ok, but the problem is that the ball becomes like a rock - nice to kick, even nicer to do headers :-)