[gti5notrkt]

U9 boys soccer, Lebanon OH. Needing a win to avoid relegation to lower division.

Attached Images

 

[Miguel]

There's a lot to like in this photo. The movement of the players across the frame; their body contact is always fun; the ball is visible; and your shooting perspective is level with the players--that's excellent. And as a whole it reflects the boys' energy nicely.

Some improvements:
-It's not all that sharp. How was this processed? I'd up the sharpening. You did use a monopod or tripod right? I would think that the shutter speed would be sufficient as is.
If you did all the right things, then I'm assuming that the problem is with the lousy Pentax continuous focusing. That's why I switched to the Canon 7D for sports. Hopefully the K-5 will fix matters.
-It's fairly flat. I'd increase the pop, by using curves to up the contrast.
-These shots are better if you can get both of their faces aimed at the camera with a better shooting position, if possible. It would allow the intensity to come through even more.

I say if possible because some youth leagues don't allow photographers to get closer than the 18-yard line on the side, let alone setup behind the goal. I ran into this today, did a quick burn on the sideline and got on with it. But if you can, behind the goal 2/3 to the right or left is a nice vantage point.

Overall a fine shot.

M

[gti5notrkt]

There's a lot to like in this photo. The movement of the players across the frame; their body contact is always fun; the ball is visible; and your shooting perspective is level with the players--that's excellent. And as a whole it reflects the boys' energy nicely.

Some improvements:
-It's not all that sharp. How was this processed? I'd up the sharpening. You did use a monopod or tripod right? I would think that the shutter speed would be sufficient as is.
If you did all the right things, then I'm assuming that the problem is with the lousy Pentax continuous focusing. That's why I switched to the Canon 7D for sports. Hopefully the K-5 will fix matters.
-It's fairly flat. I'd increase the pop, by using curves to up the contrast.
-These shots are better if you can get both of their faces aimed at the camera with a better shooting position, if possible. It would allow the intensity to come through even more.

I say if possible because some youth leagues don't allow photographers to get closer than the 18-yard line on the side, let alone setup behind the goal. I ran into this today, did a quick burn on the sideline and got on with it. But if you can, behind the goal 2/3 to the right or left is a nice vantage point.

Overall a fine shot.

M

Thanks for the feedback.

> Post processing - nothing I'm a raw novice and don't really know what to alter to enhance a shot yet, hence posting here.
> Yes, monopod with anti-shake off.
> Position - I'm actually behind the goal about 10yds offset. The player is making diagonal run into the box from the sideline. I know what you mean about refs not liking parents behind goals, however my exp is if you ask first and make sure you do not coach or yell from that location they don't care.
> Contrast curves - Mmm will have to read up on that

[hcarvalhoalves]

Some improvements:
-It's not all that sharp. How was this processed? I'd up the sharpening. You did use a monopod or tripod right? I would think that the shutter speed would be sufficient as is.
If you did all the right things, then I'm assuming that the problem is with the lousy Pentax continuous focusing. That's why I switched to the Canon 7D for sports.

There's no reason to blame the gear. This was shot at f5.6, so DOF is thinner, and those lens are known to be soft at this aperture. Simply shooting at f8-f11 would improve the sharpness.

Otherwise, sharpen it in PP.

[Miguel]

Let's put aside that the actual problem here is that the OP didn't understand (yet) that RAW images require a healthy amount of sharpening.

For sports and wildlife there are plenty of reasons to suspect that blurry or soft shots are due to both inferior Pentax AF and FPS subsystems, and slow mechanics of most telephoto lenses offered for the K-mount.

I shot sports for five years using Pentax bodies and Pentax, Tamron, and Sigma long lenses. Earlier this year it became apparent that my skills were surpassing the capabilities of my Pentax gear. So I switched to a Canon 7D and a 100-400mm f4.5-5.6 (not fast) L telephoto zoom.

The improvement in the results was quickly noticed: by my employer, and my outside clients and me. It's a lot more fun now too.

After shooting for 40 years, I'm often a strong supporter of the "it's the photographer's skills and not the gear that matters" perspective. But this holds true far far less with sports and wildlife. Fast gear matters. Smart gear matters. And in my personal case (I try to speak from experience) the 7D and the Canon infrastructure is exponentially more capable for sports than anything Pentax has on the market today.

Hopefully the K-5 will improve matters, but finding a competent long zoom is the problematic other half of the solution.


Getting back to the shot here, shooting at a smaller aperture may improve the sharpness, but it would not improve the shot. The preferred approach to 1-on-1 shots like these is to isolate the action so that the often ugly distracting backgrounds are diminished. That means shooting more wide open. This shot at f5.6 has a fairly strong DOF; the definition of the parents sitting in the background is unfortunate, but our standards here are not SI. Increasing the DOF would merely increase their presence more than any improvement to the action in the foreground.

That all being said, there's still a lot to like in this photograph.

M

There's no reason to blame the gear. This was shot at f5.6, so DOF is thinner, and those lens are known to be soft at this aperture. Simply shooting at f8-f11 would improve the sharpness.

Otherwise, sharpen it in PP.

[Miguel]

You are welcome.

Here's my free advice to you being a new RAW shooter taking sports shots:
-In general, pursuing RAW is a good move.
- For sports right now, however, take jpegs until you learn the basic post processing steps for working RAW images. I'm tempted to suggest shooting in RAW+jpeg, but the added processing burden on the camera would just slow you down. Pentax fast-shooting is slow enough.
The benefits are that jpeg shooting is faster for the camera to process and you get sharpened shots. On midwestern Fall days the benefits of RAW won't be all that great.
-Shoot RAW on static shots and allow yourself a couple of months to figure the basics out. For most purposes, RAW rocks. But it takes time to master.
-I don't know what software you are using, but I always recommend Lightroom. It is a process-based approach to managing and developing images. Takes a couple of weeks for most folks to figure out the workflow, but after that it is a joy. And you can process a lot of images very quickly.
-Regarding sharpening, just about all RAW images require serious sharpening, especially for printed output. Even images created with my sharpest lenses get some added juice. Telephotos certainly.

Proper sharpening is a distinct skill itself that takes practice and time. I recommend Real World Image Sharpening by the late Bruce Fraser and Jeff Schewe if you want the most authoritative writings.

Hope this helps, keep shooting.

M

Thanks for the feedback.

> Post processing - nothing I'm a raw novice and don't really know what to alter to enhance a shot yet, hence posting here.
> Yes, monopod with anti-shake off.
> Position - I'm actually behind the goal about 10yds offset. The player is making diagonal run into the box from the sideline. I know what you mean about refs not liking parents behind goals, however my exp is if you ask first and make sure you do not coach or yell from that location they don't care.
> Contrast curves - Mmm will have to read up on that

[hcarvalhoalves]

For effect of comparison, here's an action pic, taken with a K20D in the 300mm range, but at f/11:



I have no reason to believe a surfer moves slower than the kids on the soccer field, right?

Just to point out that, if you want sharpness, before blaming the AF system, start with the basics: use the lens sweet spot (with your DA L 55-300, it's shooting at f/8-f/11).

Then, once you want more creative power with a shallow DOF, and discover you're unable to nail those action shots with a sharp focus because Pentax's AF sucks... then you can go like Miguel, blame the gear and acquire a 4 times more expensive one. Until then, enjoy your K-x and master the basics first

Also, get some Adobe Elements, or if you own a Mac, use iPhoto. Those two are great tools for post-processing and easy enough to use.

Let's put aside that the actual problem here is that the OP didn't understand (yet) that RAW images require a healthy amount of sharpening.

For sports and wildlife there are plenty of reasons to suspect that blurry or soft shots are due to both inferior Pentax AF and FPS subsystems, and slow mechanics of most telephoto lenses offered for the K-mount.

I shot sports for five years using Pentax bodies and Pentax, Tamron, and Sigma long lenses. Earlier this year it became apparent that my skills were surpassing the capabilities of my Pentax gear. So I switched to a Canon 7D and a 100-400mm f4.5-5.6 (not fast) L telephoto zoom.

The improvement in the results was quickly noticed: by my employer, and my outside clients and me. It's a lot more fun now too.

After shooting for 40 years, I'm often a strong supporter of the "it's the photographer's skills and not the gear that matters" perspective. But this holds true far far less with sports and wildlife. Fast gear matters. Smart gear matters. And in my personal case (I try to speak from experience) the 7D and the Canon infrastructure is exponentially more capable for sports than anything Pentax has on the market today.

Hopefully the K-5 will improve matters, but finding a competent long zoom is the problematic other half of the solution.


Getting back to the shot here, shooting at a smaller aperture may improve the sharpness, but it would not improve the shot. The preferred approach to 1-on-1 shots like these is to isolate the action so that the often ugly distracting backgrounds are diminished. That means shooting more wide open. This shot at f5.6 has a fairly strong DOF; the definition of the parents sitting in the background is unfortunate, but our standards here are not SI. Increasing the DOF would merely increase their presence more than any improvement to the action in the foreground.

That all being said, there's still a lot to like in this photograph.

M

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Last edited by hcarvalhoalves; 09-26-2010 at 12:29 AM.

[jbinpg]

I like it. Looks like the defender is already perfecting the art of tripping the one that got away

[Miguel]

So hcarvalhoalves, please allow me to ask you a question:
Is the subject of your example photo the surfer or the ocean?

thanks,

with apologies to gti5notrkt for hijacking his thread; hopefully we'll continue the relevance.
M

[deleted]
.

[hcarvalhoalves]

So hcarvalhoalves, please allow me to ask you a question:
Is the subject of your example photo the surfer or the ocean?

thanks,

with apologies to gti5notrkt for hijacking his thread; hopefully we'll continue the relevance.
M

This photo wasn't taken by me, it was posted on Flickr's Pentax group.

From what I can see on it, the focus plane is at her left hand, cutting across and also putting some water splashes at the left in focus.

Now, I think the aperture used is what saved this photo. If it was f/5.6, I wouldn't expect the surfer to come out sharp. With such thinner DOFs, one would need faster AF, and the default softness of a DA L at that aperture doesn't help either.

I'm just humbly pointing out that are basics to try first with the gear at hand, and still nail action shots. To me it's uninspiring for an enthusiast to ask for feedback here on the forum, and the first thing they get is it's gear being bashed.

[Miguel]

Besides giving poor advice for sports shooting as well as posting someone else's unattributed snapshot that had little content or technical relationship to the OP's shot, you seem to have little else of value to add here. And please spare me the "humble" nonsense.

Perhaps you overlooked that my comments were conditional and forthright in calling out an assumption:
If you did all the right things, then I'm assuming

I don't think the OP would have thanked me if I didn't give substantive feedback that went beyond a gear-centric perspective. As previously noted, without knowing that the OP wasn't PP savvy, I could only articulate a few assumptions based on my own experience and practice standards of sports photography.

And one of those is preference for separation of subjects in the foreground from those in the background. I really don't think the OP wanted to give equal visual weight to the spectators in the background, even though I am sure they are all loving parents and friends. And unlike you, I think the OP understands this because f5.6 was used. If the lens was able to work well at f4.5 I'd suggest using that too.

Your suggestion to shoot at a smaller aperture in the context of the OP's shot is simply wrong-headed.

Perhaps you have never taken a photograph at a soccer match, but it is easy to see that the two boys in the photograph were about on the same focusing plane. Using f5.6 should have rendered them both equally in focus. After applying reasonable sharpening to a screen grab in Lightroom I found this to be true, so the issue was not image blur.

And yes, I think the OP should be aware of equipment alternatives. My assumption is that he/she is a parent and will be taking similar sports shots like these for many moons into the future. As kids get older the speed of the game increases as well as the number of players on the field and the size of the field. Pentax offers too few good tools for obtaining consistently good results in this kind of photography.

M

[deleted]
I'm just humbly pointing out that are basics to try first with the gear at hand, and still nail action shots. To me it's uninspiring for an enthusiast to ask for feedback here on the forum, and the first thing they get is it's gear being bashed.

[hcarvalhoalves]

I'm not disputing the fact one doesn't desire a shallow DOF for this kind of shot, neither disputing that the picture softness is a lack of PP work.

I'm just stating a well-known, basic aspect of his lens - that it's soft at f/5.6, and sharper at f/8-f/11 - just in case he didn't knew yet. On top of it, that with a bigger DOF, is more likely to save a shot if the AF can't keep up with the subject.

But... feel free to disagree. You're are the sports photographer with years of experience here after all, and as pointed out, I probably have nothing to contribute to the thread. By the way, I wasn't being sarcastic by saying "humbly. Thanks for the insult.

[Parallax]

left in focus.

Now, I think the aperture used is what saved this photo. If it was f/5.6, I wouldn't expect the surfer to come out sharp. With such thinner DOFs, one would need faster AF, and the default softness of a DA L at that aperture doesn't help either.

I would expect it to be essentially the same. At the distance that the photo was taken, the distance difference in the plane of the hand and the rest of the surfer would be well within the DOF of f5.6. If that picture was taken at 300mm the subject was obviously quite a distance away. Assuming that the photographer was say, as close as 30 yards (which is doubtful) away and a FL of 300mm the DOF would be over 6 feet at f5.6.
Online DOF Calculator

[hcarvalhoalves]

I would expect it to be essentially the same. At the distance that the photo was taken, the distance difference in the plane of the hand and the rest of the surfer would be well within the DOF of f5.6. If that picture was taken at 300mm the subject was obviously quite a distance away. Assuming that the photographer was say, as close as 30 yards (which is doubtful) away and a FL of 300mm the DOF would be over 6 feet at f5.6.
Online DOF Calculator

Now, that's instructional. Thanks!

How much one can expect the natural DA L softness at f/5.6 to affect a shot like this, though?