Baseball Photos

Oldaker

Hello all,
I am new at doing sports stuff, i have seen some really nice baseball shots on here and trying to get my pics to look really good
can you please look at my sports gallery under Hawks Baseball and give me some advice as to what i need to be doing, these are directly out of the camera with nothing done to them, just wondering what everyone thought of how they look?
i use a Nikon D80, with a 55-200 kit lens, and try to shoot on shutter priority so i can capture swings and running, etc...
is it my lens holding me back? what can i be doing to make them better,

also another question i have, when i try to put my sb800 speedlight on, the fastest shutter speed i can adjust to is 200, why is that?
i was told to use the flash even in the daylight to fill the faces and stuff of people, but i cant get a fast shutter speed with it

thanks

bendruckerphoto

Please post a link to the gallery you want us to look at as well as embed a few photos in your post.

Oldaker

baseballboy828 wrote:

Please post a link to the gallery you want us to look at as well as embed a few photos in your post.

Here is a link to the gallery i wanted you to look at
http://www.oldakerphotography.com/gallery/8163873_MQuuF#532911149_RLoLe

bendruckerphoto

You also seem to be hiding the exif in that gallery. It would be helpful if you'd show it so we could analyze what's going wrong.

Regarding the flash, that is called sync speed. Because of the way your shutter works, your flash has a maximum speed it will expose the entire frame. You can increase this slightly by switching to the high speed sync mode (called Auto FP). However, there is an upper limit. For my camera, I believe it's 1/320.

zack75144

One thing that screams to me is that there isn't a ball in any of the shots.
A common rule is you must have either the ball or faces in shots preferably both. Furthermore, if you only have a face, it better have some emotion or drama to it.

Also:
watch your horizons
shoot tighter or at least crop tighter
mind your place on the field, don't shoot right handers batting from the 3rd base side unless you are up the line and can catch the ball leaving the bat or wait longer for the follow through. (which was your best shot IMO)

Best of luck, you'll get there!

Sledhed

First off a flash is NOT used for baseball photography, they are allowed for some sports but baseball is not one of them. It's also one of the few sports where you don't have to have the ball in the frame but you do need a face, that's very important. One of my all time favorite shots is the batter coming out of the box.

Shoot in aperture priority or manual with as wide open of an aperture as possible, adjust the ISO to gain the required shutter speed. I try to stay above 1/2000th of a second (even at that young of an age). Watch your backgrounds, you want them as clean as possible. Shoot tight and crop tighter.

Good luck,

Oldaker

Thanks for the tips on the sports shooting,
you say to shoot in aperature priority?
i cant get any kind of shutter speed out of it when i try that, when i shoot in aperature, the meter in the camera, do i always want to make sure that is in the middle? or is it ok to let it drift off to the left or right?

sorry for being a total noob when it comes to this, im just getting started, and figured this is the best place for answershttp://oldaker.smugmug.com/photos/newexif.mg?ImageID=533262167&ImageKey=Sgxdj

Sledhed

Oldaker wrote:

Thanks for the tips on the sports shooting,
you say to shoot in aperature priority?
i cant get any kind of shutter speed out of it when i try that, when i shoot in aperature, the meter in the camera, do i always want to make sure that is in the middle? or is it ok to let it drift off to the left or right?

Usually when shooting in aperture mode you have to dial in some exposure compensation, this will also help with cap bill shadows. If your not getting the shutter speeds you want, raise your ISO. Personally I shoot about 99% of the time in manual and almost always over expose some.

bendruckerphoto

By the way, the combination of the relatively poor (by modern standards) high ISO performance of the D80 and the slow aperture of your lens will mean night sports or even sports when there is limited light will be virtually impossible. You just won't be able to get the shutter speed to hold the camera still, let along a fast enough shutter speed to freeze action.