Middle school softball in Ohio

H e r bH e r b Registered Users Posts: 39 Big grins
edited April 22, 2007 in Sports
Still trying to get "the" shot. Got crazy and shot 150 shots in a 4 inning game. Kept maybe 30, is that unusual? These I rate as OK, still trying hard. C&C to help a novice out.
As always, thanks for the help

Herb
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Comments

  • dbaker1221dbaker1221 Registered Users Posts: 4,482 Major grins
    edited April 20, 2007
    good shots.thumb.gif ..you might want try to shoot more open appature to blur the background some.
    **If I keep shooting, I'm bound to hit something**
    Dave
  • H e r bH e r b Registered Users Posts: 39 Big grins
    edited April 21, 2007
    I was fooling around with the manual setting on these. Had the shutter speed cranked up (1250-1600) but the lens only gives me f4.0 at the best setting. Can't afford the big dog f2.8 yet. Any thoughts on maximizing what limited aperture I have?

    Thanks
    Herb
  • donekdonek Registered Users Posts: 655 Major grins
    edited April 22, 2007
    H e r b wrote:
    I was fooling around with the manual setting on these. Had the shutter speed cranked up (1250-1600) but the lens only gives me f4.0 at the best setting. Can't afford the big dog f2.8 yet. Any thoughts on maximizing what limited aperture I have?

    Thanks
    Herb

    Shoot in Aperature priority rather than shutter priority. Watch your resulting shutter speed and adjust iso to keep your shutter speed up where you want it. Do as much of your cropping with the zoom lens as possible. This takes practice, but will make a huge difference. Based on what I see in your smugmug gallery, the last image in this series is a significant crop done on the computer. Doing this will increase your depth of field or bring things in the background into sharper focus. This is primarily due to the fact that shorter focal lengths result in greater depth of field the further away from the camera your subject gets.

    Image 33 in your gallery has better bokeh and is shot at f4.5. You're zoomed in tight though. Another realy good technique is to shoot from a lower vantage point (sit on the ground). This puts more distant objects behind your subject, throwing them out of focus.

    You'll find that f4 is recommended for sports like softball and baseball as f2.8 can result in too shallow a depth of field to capture all the action. Shooting a lens wide open produces slightly lower image quality than if you stop down a bit. A lot of guys will shoot an f2.8 lens at f4 because the optics are a bit better there. This doesn't mean you need to stop your lens down. Keep it wide open.
    Sean Martin
    www.seanmartinphoto.com

    __________________________________________________
    it's not the size of the lens that matters... It's how you focus it.

    aaaaa.... who am I kidding!

    whoever dies with the biggest coolest piece of glass, wins!
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