This weeks LAX shots..

BlueHoseJacket

We finally got a day game ....lighting is much betterwhenit's not dark out:D

SavedByZero

I'd be shooting verticals 95% of the time and cropping them much tighter. But you've got the ball in most of the shots and the behind the net ones are great.

KED

SavedByZero wrote:

I'd be shooting verticals 95% of the time and cropping them much tighter. But you've got the ball in most of the shots and the behind the net ones are great.

Lax (as opposed to hoop, for example) is a horizontal sport; even the ball, when relevant, is rarely more than 6' off the ground. In my experience it's best to shoot horizontal and crop to vertical as called for. I have found that shooting lax vertically is non-productive.

To the OP: there appears to be a lot of noise in that last image; where did it come from? Not a criticism, just curious since you were shooting in sunny conditions.

winger

KED wrote:

Lax (as opposed to hoop, for example) is a horizontal sport; even the ball, when relevant, is rarely more than 6' off the ground. In my experience it's best to shoot horizontal and crop to vertical as called for. I have found that shooting lax vertically is non-productive.

To the OP: there appears to be a lot of noise in that last image; where did it come from? Not a criticism, just curious since you were shooting in sunny conditions.

hehe that is funny, I mostly shoot lax vertical. I almost shoot everything vertical, but then again for a while I was shooting for media relations, which needed the images for publications, which are typicaly 8 x 10 vertical. I currently have to switch to shooting hockey horizontal for the website I am not shooting for.

Anyways. The point of that is sort of, sometimes image perspective changes based on what the ultimate end up of the images will be.

I do agree that the images seem very noisy for what seemed like a beautiful day out.

JohnEBongo

KED wrote:

In my experience it's best to shoot horizontal and crop to vertical as called for. I have found that shooting lax vertically is non-productive.

First of all, if you are going crop vertically, why shoot horizontally?? You are likely to lose alot more picture info by taking a vertical crop out of a horizontal image.

Second, while I have gotten great shots shooting lax horizontally, to say that shooting lax vertically is non-productive is just plain ridiculous. Look at these. Just how "non-productive" are these??

BlueHoseJacket

Yes....I must confess...the shots are very noisy:bash . I have been shooting all of the other games at night....forgot to re-set the ISO and shot the entire game at 1600 ISO :bash

I was not happy....finally game with decent light and I screw it up!

donek

I've never shot LAX, but I do see a couple of things that you might work on. Exposure seems to vary. In the first two shots from behind the net, the net is overexposed. In the last, the net is exposed well, but the players are underexposed. If you're shooting raw, you have the ability to adjust this. You might try to change how you're metering your shot (spot, center weighted, matrix). I find the shots through the net very distracting. If you're trying to give context to the picture, I'd frame the shot so that no more than 1/3 of the frame includes the net/goal.

There does seem to be some noise. Did you forget to bring the ISO down from the night games, or is it dusk? You might look at some noise reduction for some of these.

rwells

Quote:
Originally Posted by KED
In my experience it's best to shoot horizontal and crop to vertical as called for. I have found that shooting lax vertically is non-productive.

JohnEBongo wrote:

First of all, if you are going crop vertically, why shoot horizontally?? You are likely to lose alot more picture info by taking a vertical crop out of a horizontal image.

Second, while I have gotten great shots shooting lax horizontally, to say that shooting lax vertically is non-productive is just plain ridiculous. Look at these. Just how "non-productive" are these??

:lurk

KED

JohnEBongo wrote:

First of all, if you are going crop vertically, why shoot horizontally?? You are likely to lose alot more picture info by taking a vertical crop out of a horizontal image.

Second, while I have gotten great shots shooting lax horizontally, to say that shooting lax vertically is non-productive is just plain ridiculous. Look at these. Just how "non-productive" are these??

I don't know how a picture can be either productive or non-productive (as opposed to the effort that "produced" it), but in any case, I said "in my experience". Your mileage has varied; what can I tell ya . . .?

I guess I can tell you this: I don't shoot youth lacrosse. I am shooting elite prep and college lacrosse, where players run 4.6 40's or better and the ball is shot at 90+ mph. I am also more interested in action shots than in individual portraits divorced from context; in lacrosse, "action" usually means multiple bodies involved, preferably in collision. I crop after the fact to get the best result from the shot; I have found that my odds of getting something to work with are enhanced by shooting horizontally. I would estimate that 80% of my published shots remain in landscape.

KED

JohnEBongo wrote:

First of all, if you are going crop vertically, why shoot horizontally?? You are likely to lose alot more picture info by taking a vertical crop out of a horizontal image.

Second, while I have gotten great shots shooting lax horizontally, to say that shooting lax vertically is non-productive is just plain ridiculous. Look at these. Just how "non-productive" are these??

Here are a couple of vertical crops from horizontal shots that seem to have worked out OK for me. I'm cropped to 1093 x 1397 pixels in the first one, and much larger in the second, and since I don't expect this to end up on a billboard (where are there vertical billboards anyway?), it seems quite sufficient for any print size that would matter.





Again, YMMV. Nothing to get emotional about in any case.