Hey guys,
Im new to the photography world. I'm still learning a lot but I purchased a canon t3i. Its a good little camera for a relatively cheap price. I've been taking photos of my brother playing all stars baseball for little league. I have a canon efs 55-250mm lens with image stabilizer and all that stuff. It also has a rocket fish uv filter I picked up for cheap. This is the photo I took of a kid on my brothers team rounding first.



It looks better but I took this picture off of my facebook. I did a little editing to it. Cropped it to just his body. I would like to get a relatively cheap lens but with more power to get a clear shot of their facial expressions such as this kid. Any tips or anything would be appreciated. As of good settings, lenses, how to take pictures better. I believe on this photo my shutter speed was at 1/800, Aperature was at 5.6, and ISO was at 100. Thanks I hope I can get some help!

You should be able to get some winners with that combination. You will also get a number of deleters like this one, but that camera can do better than this. It really looks like your shutter speed was nowhere near as fast as 1/800. And at that time of day at ISO 100 and f/5.6, I don't think it would be. Shoot with your lens wide open (in this case f/5.6) and increase your ISO until you get shutter speeds faster than 1/500, at least. 1/1000 is good. Use AI Servo AF for tracking runners. Just use the center AF point and aim for the belt.

Or if they make it to the finals, you could always hire me, I'm near Portland.

Yea I don't think it looks like this was at 1/800 either, there's motion blur on his hands and feet, 1/800 would be more than fast enough to not cause that.
I'm also wondering how much you cropped it down, it looks a little grainy to me, that can either be because you cropped a lot, because facebook compressed the hell out of it, or because I'm seeing things.
Can you upload the original one (not off facebook) with exif data somewhere?

Your ISO is too low for one and the lens you have is a kit lens, but you should still get a sharper image than that. I use a canon 70-200 f/2.8 lens with a 1.4 teleconverter, which puts me at f/4.0 and 280mm. That combination is still too short for some of my baseball shots but it is the longest I have right now. Remember when you crop, you lose image quality. Using a 55-250 kit lens, your image quality loss will be alot worse than say if you had an L-series lens, which are very expensive. I use an unsharp mask in photoshop to try and get some of my sharpness back on the player after I crop. The shot I took below my settings are 1600 SS, ISO 500, F/4.0. I am also using a Canon 1D Mark IV, and a 70-200 L series lens with a 1.4 teleconverter. I also made some minor adjustments in photoshop.

Sorry about the grainy picture. I cropped it a lot and made it so you guys could see the facial expressions better. I don't have the original photo but this was cropped a lot. This was only the second time actually using this camera. But I have gotten better with my shots recently. My brothers goes to the state tournament this coming week and my uncle is letting me borrow some of his lenses to try out. I will post pictures then. But in the meantime, could someone help me out with finding good settings for the games coming up. I find that full auto mode over exposes the picture, so I don't want to use that. But shutter speed, ISO and Aperature. They will mostly be playing in the mid day under good light. Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks guys!

General advice if you want good expressions:

• You cannot crop heavily and maintain quality. You need to frame tightly in-camera. A good rule of thumb - the player should fill 2/3 of the vertical frame. Any less than that and you're too far away for your lens or not zoomed in far enough. Baseball is tough. You need a 300mm lens if you're shooting from on the field. Shooting from outside the fence on a full size field really means you're only going to be able to cover 1/2 the infield with 200-300mm lens and still get consistent quality.
• The 2nd key is you want the exposure set to expose the FACES properly. That is easier said than done. There is no magical settings for doing this when caps are involved. Settings can change due to sun brightness, direction relative to the player and your shooting position, etc. Unless the sun is moving in and out of shade or unless the field is partially shaded I prefer to shoot manual exposure. If sun is moving in and out or there is a shadow (say from press box onto home plate area) you can't shoot manual well. From a given shooting position I'll set my exposure based upon who I care most about capturing - batters or fielders. Unless it's bright sun you still have leeway to make necessary adjustments to the photo in post processing. Without using manual exposure you'll find that uniform colors will completely throw off exposures in bright light. If one team is in white and another a dark color you'll see more than a stop difference in exposure settings the camera chooses (even though the exposure to properly expose for faces under caps remains about the same).
• Angle. The above two don't matter much if you end up shooting the player from behind because you cannot see his face. The impact of this is - it is impossible to get a good photo of everything happening from one shooting position. For example - if you only care about photos of one team and you want a photo of your guy sliding into second base - you need to be sitting on the third baseline to get at least part of his face. Similarly the player running to first - you want to be on first base side. This is very different than if you're shooting for media.
• PLAN: from a given shooting position, figure out what action will be within reach of your lens and will show face of your team - concentrate on taking photos of that action. Don't try to take photos of everything - you'll spend way too much time with camera plastered to your face and you'll end up with 95% throw-aways.

Originally Posted by ipatry But in the meantime, could someone help me out with finding good settings for the games coming up. I find that full auto mode over exposes the picture, so I don't want to use that. But shutter speed, ISO and Aperature. They will mostly be playing in the mid day under good light. Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks guys!

What johng said, plus shoot RAW. This will give you more leeway to fix exposure and white balance mistakes after the fact.

When I shot the local district all stars for the little league tourny for a local media outlet, I sat on the first base side and I was on the field. Umpires and coaches gave me permission. I shot in manual and shot in RAW. The sun was in right field and it was an evening game so the batters faces were lit up by the sun, and the fielders faces were not, so I was constantly changing my ISO setting depending on what I was going to shoot, action in the field, or batters. 200 for the batters, 500 for the fielders on the ISO setting. I got there during warm ups so I could take test shots to see were my settings needed to be. I use center point focus and moved it up when I shot vertical for the batters, and kept it in the center during fielding shots. I keep the focus point on the face when shooting batters. I always shoot baseball at at least 1600 on the shutter speed. I went 1000 for one game, and didnt like some of the motion blur I got in the pitchers hands while delivering their pitch. The picture I posted above was heavily cropped so I lost image quality in the face. It was alot sharper in the original picture, but I wasnt zoomed in enough and had too much background, not enough of the subject, so my subject was lost in the background. I also want my aperature at the very least to be f/4.0 so I can get bokeh in the background. The closer you are to your subject, the more bokeh you get. You need to plan out in advance before the game starts, what kind of shots do you want to get. If nothing is going on, get batters, get batters running to first. If runners are on bases, pay attention to what is going on, anticipate whats going to happen. Runner on first, is he going to steal, be ready for it, and you want to be on the third base side for the steal of second. I like being on the first base side with a runner on first, in hopes of a double play attempt with the runner sliding into the shortstop and him jumping in the air just after he releases the ball. Ive played baseball all my life, so I know the game inside and out, and can anticipate what is going to take place, helps me alot. There are times like with this shot I am posting below that being on the first base side was a better angle on the steal attempt of second base, as the runner slid while facing right field, and the shorstop had to make the tag with his back turned toward third base. If I was on the third base side for that, I would have got nothing but backs. I was also outside the fence for this shot, and not as low as I wanted. Remember to get low while shooting, it will make the kids look bigger. I shoot laying and sitting down for most of the game. All this seems like alot, so just keep shooting, practice, and you will discover on your own, where settings need to be, by experimenting and trying different things. Key is to shoot alot, and when you have done that, shoot even more lol. Hope all this advice on this thread helps you out

Thanks a lot! I am 14 and need to learn a lot still! My uncle is lending me some of his lenses to use next week for the allstar states tourny. For the shot of the kid I originally posted, I was positioned in centerfield. I was with some friends so I stayed there most of the time! I did go into the announcers booth where I took theses shots below. A pretty good angle but to high. I wish I could get that angle on the ground! I find that when Im farther away, even though its a great spot I cant reach and get good pictures with my cheap kit lenses that is 55-250mm. But everyday I keep improving and learning more about angles, settings, lighting and just things that you need to know to take good pictures. Im still far from taking amazing pictures but I know with the help of you guys I can do it! Thanks everyone!

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I cant upload in good quality:( this is the best I can do that I know of right now

Your only 14, you have plenty of time to learn. Remember if you can't get on the field, you can still shoot through the fence, shoot through the backstop to get the pitcher. This shot is through the backstop during a game, I got low and shot through the fence.

The field I took the photos at had a green screen on the backstop all the way to the dugouts so I could not go there. Hopefully the field this coming week will have better spots to take photos at!

Check out the new photos! Thanks for the help guys! >>>>>> https://picasaweb.google.com/1120846...2/SacoAllstars

Those photos look very nice! The exposures look very well. I'd say you have improved quite a lot. You captured some awesome facial expressions and body language. Which lens did you use for this shoot? Was it still the kit lens?

it was my uncles older lens. It is a canon Zoom lens EF 75-300 1:4-5.6 IS. Its an older lens but did the job. Ill be picking up a 100-400 zoom canon L lens this winter. Do you guys like it? I shot in raw and edited some of the photos after the games but I was happy with them! I've made a big improvement. Some of the shots also were with an older wide angle lens. It is a tokina, SD 11-16 F2.8 (IF) DX. Older lenses but they get the job done. I also only used iPhoto for editing saturation and stuff like that. Nothing fancy.

Image stabilization is the last thing you want when tracking during sports. Turn it off and see how it goes. Its more than likely blurring any knee-jerk reaction shots.