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Forum: Photographic Technique
01-14-2024, 07:37 AM
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I tried shooting some fustal last night. I don't really have an appropriate indoor sports lens. So with the K-3 Mark III I tried:
1. The 20-40mm LTD, which worked okay. That's the middle shot.
2. An Auto Chinon 50mm f/1.9 manual focus lens. Which was very poor, my in-focus rate approached 0%, except for one odd head shot of my kid (bottom photo). But ISO was relatively low for all the out-of-focus shots now in the trash...
3. The 55-300 PLM, which has a max aperture that results in ISOs of 10k+ in almost all indoor sports venues. That's the top photo in the three below.
All processed in RawTherapee 5.9, and the top two also run through Neat Image 9.2 for further noise reduction. The top photo was at ISO 12800, the middle 8000, apparently Neat Image strips the EXIF information.
So my conclusion is that I need Pentax to make something like an 18-150mm f/1.8 lens with super-fast autofocus. I'll send them a message to that effect, and expect the engineers to proceed with the design immediately. More seriously, I previously thought an updated 50-135mm f/2.8 with a DC or PLM motor would be perfect for this application. But after these tests I think that the 16-50mm f/2.8 PLM or the 24-70mm f/2.8 would be better. When you're usually no further than 10' from the side or endlines 50mm is pretty long. The problem is that, aside from futsal, I don't have much need for either of those lenses and new they're both around $1000, and even used they're not cheap.
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Forum: Photographic Technique
09-04-2023, 07:41 AM
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My 15-year-old's team had a tournament in Fredericksburg, VA the past two days.
K-3 Mark III, 55-300 PLM.
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Forum: Photographic Technique
09-11-2022, 10:29 AM
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Beginning of the fall soccer season, and my kid's U15 team won their bracket at the OGBC Capital Cup outside of DC.
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Forum: Photographic Technique
05-30-2022, 05:05 AM
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This might look like kind of a nothing picture. Just some kids on a soccer field. But the kid on the right with the headband is my kid. This past weekend his team played in a tournament in Columbia, Maryland. They lost all three of their games. This particular game they were up 3-1, with my kid scoring the third goal. Of course I missed taking a photo of his goal, this is a few seconds later. It was, by far, the peak moment of the weekend. At that point it looked like they'd salvage a bit of pride and dignity with a win in the last match. But the other team came back and scored four goals in fairly short order, and everyone went home a little disappointed.
So I'm sure I have a few dozen great action shots from the weekend, even with the poor on-field results. But this is the really the only one I care about.
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Forum: Photographic Technique
03-31-2022, 04:44 AM
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Excellent shots. The woman pole vaulting with regular glasses is surprising. Even in youth soccer sports glasses are almost a requirement, and at least a strap to keep them on your head is definitely a requirement. I'd be afraid of falling from great heights and getting some body part impaled on unsecured glasses.
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Forum: Photographic Technique
03-12-2022, 07:34 AM
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Oh, okay, that's very good. I don't have a KP but have heard it's a stop or two better than the K-3/II, and the Mark III is maybe a stop better than that.
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Forum: Photographic Technique
03-12-2022, 07:07 AM
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Is this the K-3 Mark III? I've found that ISO 25600 is probably better on the Mark III than 12800 or even 6400 usually is on the K-3 II. Maybe you could get similar results with something like Topaz, but it's nice to have out of the camera. Especially since Topaz won't run on Linux and I'm not getting a Windows machine.
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Forum: Photographic Technique
03-07-2022, 05:58 AM
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After taking thousands of pictures and trying to get two eyes and a ball in every frame and tightly cropping to the players, doing something a little different can be rewarding. It can be a moody shot of the environment, or something funny. These are from some of my two kids' games at a season-opening tournament in Northern Virginia this weekend.
All with the K-3 Mark III and the 55-300 PLM. The one with the light standard says ISO 250, but I had it on highlight-weighted metering and I think it exposed for the field lighting so I had to push it at least three stops to get this exposure.
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Forum: Photographic Technique
03-02-2022, 05:49 AM
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Forum: Photographic Technique
02-28-2022, 09:25 AM
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No, I haven't. I'll have to try that. I always go back and forth on whether a particular scene from a game benefits more from a really tight crop, or something that gives more context to what's happening.
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Forum: Photographic Technique
02-20-2022, 10:40 AM
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Winter scrimmages for my two boys' teams yesterday morning.
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Forum: Photographic Technique
11-16-2021, 06:46 AM
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I swear that the kid on the left didn't kick the smaller boy in the butt, causing him to fly up in the air. It's just an optical illusion.:D
With K-3 Mark III, 55-300 PLM, in a steady, cold rain on Saturday.
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Forum: Photographic Technique
11-08-2021, 01:20 PM
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Here's my K-3 Mark III stress test. Saturday night game, 6:30 pm kickoff, poor lighting on the WT Woodson high school auxiliary field in Fairfax. 55-300PLM, so a max aperture of f/4.5, f/6.3 on the long end. Yes, I'd get better results with a 70-200 f/2.8. TAv, and keeping shutter at least at 1/500th to control motion blur. End result was ISOs in the 12800+ range. For those conditions I think the results are pretty good. Comparable to the K-3 II at 3200 or 6400. All processed to taste in RawTherapee on Linux.
Some of them I turned black and white, the noise looks a little more like film grain, a little less objectionable.
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Forum: Photographic Technique
10-15-2021, 09:41 AM
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NVSC Battlefield Tournament in Woodbridge, VA.
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Forum: Photographic Technique
09-07-2021, 03:27 PM
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I'm very much a fan of the K-3 Mark III's ability to pick out the subject of interest and keep that in focus. Several of these were picked out of sequences where the AF-C tracked the player in question and I was able to zoom and then crop in post and it's still very sharp. Also a lot of leeway in the RAW files to compensate for high contrast, backlit scenes like the first one here. All with the 55-300 PLM. Processed to taste with RawTherapee in Linux.
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Forum: Photographic Technique
06-01-2021, 03:57 AM
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Thanks. Was a very strange weekend for the mid-Atlantic with not only rain but also very chilly. Last week we had a day that touched 90 and humid, Saturday's games were in the 50s and one of them was my younger son's team in a 7-0 loss in a steady rain. That wasn't fun. But made for a few good pictures.
The photo was of my other son's team that got to the championship before losing to a much higher ranked team, that just happened to be the home club that has 3, 4, 5 teams in every age group. I suppose 13-14 is the age where a few kids have hit puberty and their growth spurts. My boys are under 5' and 80 pounds. The opposing goalie in the championship had to have been 5' 11, 175, essentially an adult. And when you're from Northern Virginia you have a lot of kids to cull through to find the 13-year-old adults.
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Forum: Photographic Technique
05-31-2021, 08:19 AM
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So I took some cues from @Sidney Porter and brought the Rokinon 8mm fisheye to the weekend's soccer tournament in Northern Virginia. This one is a three-shot HDR processed in Photomatix for Linux, shot with the K-3 Mark III.
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Forum: Photographic Technique
04-28-2021, 12:57 PM
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I like it. I'm a fan of my Rokinon fisheye, and never think to take it to sporting events. It's a good change of pace from all the telephoto shots. Just don't expect to identify the 5-pixel high individual players.
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Forum: Photographic Technique
04-20-2021, 07:48 AM
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It's probably somewhat similar to soccer, where you end up with a lot more (and better quality) photos of the kids who have either positions or skills that lend themselves to isolation and more touches on the ball. Strikers, forwards, wings... they end up in better spots with the ball, isolated on a defender or two, and that makes for more compelling photography. Central midfielders and defenders are more challenging.
I'll usually put myself on an endline by a goal, with my team attacking in that direction so I get more faces. But that means the defenders and our goalie are often a long way off. My 12-year-old is usually in an attacking position, so he gets a lot of shots. My 14-year-old is more of a defensive midfielder or defender, so I have to really take advantages of games like Sunday where the coach pushed him up to striker for a half.
I'm not an official photographer, either. So my kids get more than their share of the pixels. But as one of the few parents with a "real" camera I occasionally share with the others, and I feel some responsibility to try to get a few shots of each kid.
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Forum: Photographic Technique
04-20-2021, 05:34 AM
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Yes, yes, and yes. Center-point focus only. 55-300 PLM. And roughly nine years of practice. It's pretty consistent. If I shoot 50 shots of a game 10-20 will be out of focus.
If I switch to 9-point the hit rate goes down. If I switch to 27-point... well, I never really use that because something might be in focus but I'm never quite sure what.
The out-of-focus shots are pretty evenly split between the background being tack-sharp, and nothing really in focus at all. And I don't expect the K-3 Mark III to be magic, some of my shots will be out of focus because I'm watching the game, something develops, I quickly pull the camera up to my eye and start shooting and even my brain hasn't caught up to what I want to shoot. But hopefully it will help with the sequences of players running about and the camera can't adjust fast enough for half the shots.
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Forum: Photographic Technique
04-19-2021, 08:28 AM
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Sometimes go back and forth on framing and cropping. Do I want a more expansive shot of the action and the team, or more of a focus on individuals? Here's the second one from the last post, with a tighter crop, which I think I like better.
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Forum: Photographic Technique
04-19-2021, 04:44 AM
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Both of my boys showing off their hair in matches over the weekend.
Another couple of games confirming that even with my best technique I'll completely miss focus during soccer with the K-3 II and the 55-300 PLM about 25% of the time, and some additional percentage the focus is off, but not enough to really care if you keep the images small and the action is compelling enough. 2-3 weeks to see how much the Mark III improves things. A lot of the misses are with the action coming towards me, it can't keep up back-to-front as the play moves.
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Forum: Photographic Technique
04-12-2021, 04:25 PM
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So I have a rule about shooting sports that you really need the face of the person in question to make the shot worthwhile. It's why I have to get myself out of my seat and go down behind the goal when shooting soccer. But rules are made to be broken, right? This one has that great golden hour lighting, and even though my kid is dribbling the ball away from me and I can't see his face, I can see some of the other players, and I just like how this one worked out. Plus with his crazy hair and the 23 on the back I know it's him.
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Forum: Photographic Technique
03-17-2021, 12:53 PM
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Nice shots. I'm always interested in others who are shooting soccer in somewhat challenging lighting with Pentax gear. It can be a difficult thing at times. I see even with the FF K-1 and some wider-aperture lenses you have some of the same difficulties I do with a K-3ii and a 55-300PLM, mainly being shutter speeds of 1/500 or slower, and ISOs that quickly creep up into the thousands.
It looks like the field you were on had some pretty decent lighting, which helps a lot. My kids play on some fields with pretty abysmal lights, so trying to keep ISO under 10,000 on APS-C is hard. Daytime with the PLM and the K-3ii is fine, but as the sun goes down it pushes the limits of that camera/lens.
I'll post one of mine from the past weekend's tournament, luckily in the daytime. Although full sun also has its difficulties, too. I find myself doing a lot of work in post with high dynamic range situations in games under cloudless skies. I also find that the biggest impact to my keeper rate it to go stand behind the goal my kid's team is attacking so I get a much higher percentage of faces. If not necessarily in-focus faces...
In any case, I'm looking forward to the improved autofocus and high-ISO capabilities of the K-3 III, specifically for shooting soccer matches.
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Forum: Photographic Technique
11-23-2020, 05:55 PM
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Here's pretty close to the absolute limit of the K-3ii with a 55-300 PLM. Night soccer game, 300mm, bad lights, fast action, wide open at f/6.3. Shutter speed slowed all the way to 1/400th to have a fighting chance with the lighting conditions. ISO 12800 and pushed most of a stop, so really more like 25600. And using Squirrel Mafia's most aggressive ISO 12800 profile in RawTherapee. And the end result is okay. Better than not having it, I suppose.
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