My first football game, thoughts? (11 pics)

Hey all,

A friend who plays with a local team regularly enough asked if I wanted to pop along and take photos, which I was happy to.

Now, I know my gear isn't good enough for sports/fast action, but I've always wanted to try it, so I went along and took a chance at it.

I was wondering if anyone has any thoughts or suggestions? A lot of the shots are very soft as the focus isn't really fast enough, and due to the Olympus not being the best in the world at high ISOs, also quite noisy (though I'm sure these issues will help me appreciate better gear, further down the line).

It was raining during the game.

Here are some of the better ones (you can ignore the watermark);


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Cheers

Thecageyone

I wont pretend to know anything about sports photography, but I would say these are a bit dark. Have you tried to brighten them a little in Lightroom/photoshop?

You've sneakily hidden the exif data :P so no idea what ISO you were using? Or shutter speed [can see some blurring in some] - that's where 2.8 lenses shine I guess. You can use faster shutter speeds in low light, and a body with good ISO noise handling would help a lot too.

only other thing besides being too dark, in a lot of them the player's eyes are closed, or appear to be. I'd prefer to see th eyes, see where they're looking/aiming

mrboswell

As you said they are quite noisy and as cagey mentioned they are a little dark.

All equipment has a limit and unless you have lenses that are capable of close to f2.8 then no matter what camera you are using you are going to be under pressure even in stadia with good lighting.

Its hard to judge how sharp they are with so much noise, but there seems little blurring so the shutter was fast enough.
You might be able to slow the shutter a stop or two and lower the iso.

Sorry guys, had to send them via email to one of the players, so I resized them using pixresizer, and it removes the exif by default.

Majority of them were at ISO400, with a small few at 800. Average shutter speed was 1/500th and ISO altered between 3.5 and 4.5 depending on how close they came to me (using a 40-150).


I dropped the shutter speed to 1/320 during the game, to expirement a little, but it seemed to cause blurring on the LCD, so I decided to play it safe and stay with 1/500 (though I thought that 1/250 would have been enough to freeze things?).

One thing I noticed, is that when they came closer, and I'm not sure if this is directly related to the Aperture dropping from 4.5 to 3.5 as I zoom out, but the images became a lot clearer/sharper and ISO noise seemed to not be as troublesome.


Somehow I managed to post this thread twice, but PaulW said in the other thread (which I'm sure a mod will lock/delete) that I should try kneeling, which is something that never crossed my mind. I'll be sure to try it next time.

Regarding post-processing, I've straightened them up and cropped them down, but I haven't sharpened, brightened, etc. any of them. Will have to look into batch processing for this kinda stuff.

Thecageyone

I avoided batch processing for ages, I thought it would be tricky, but it really is very simple once you learn to do it once [I just looked up some youtube clips]. I now have 4 or 5 automate processes saved, dead handy.

I would imagine 1/250 should be well fast enough for football too, using 1/500 probably caused a lot of the darkening?

A bump of fill light and a little noise luminance adjust should clean them up nicely.

Kintarō Hattori

To be honest quite a few of them are well taken but it looks like your equipment is letting you down. They are somewhat underexposed and noisy but 'technically' quite a few of them look alright to me.

Should also probably just point out incase it's at all relevant to anyone, that the group shot was taken on a different camera. That was using my Canon 20D with a 17-85 lens with flashgun (I kept that camera on me, hoping to use it more during the game, as the 20D is a better all-rounder, but alas, i stuck to the E-420 for the whole game, as 85mm is just not enough reach.

Will have to look into batch processing then. Would also like a program that allows me to straighten easily. Took me far too long to straighten the images. They weren't terribly off, but some were noticeably crooked. Does anyone know of a program that lets you skip through each photo, straightening, very quickly? Preferably the way you do with Adobe Camera Raw (draw a line across the image horizontally/vertically, and the image automatically rotates/crops for you)?

Thecageyone

The flash fill was obvious in the first one alright, can't exactly use that during the game though

I find Lightroom's crop tool about the easiest for straightening. As the grid is easier to align than photoshop's. You can copy and past adjustments in LR too, but they would all have to be off by the same angle surely?

Yeahm I'd need one leg shorter than the other, which is why I wanted something that can do them all independently. Apparently Windows Live Photo Gallery lets you flick through the photos like the normal windows gallery, but has a straighten tool that places a grid over the image, so you can straighten, flick to the next image, straighten, flick to the next image, etc. etc. and that's what I really want.

But in order to get that working, i need to get service packs installed and everything. Too much messing about.

I've had lightroom on my pc twice before, but each time I installed it, it goes through a process of adding every photo from my hard drive into it's own little organiser system, and that puts me off it straight away. Both times, I think I deleted it before I even got to use it.

Thecageyone

If you just drag and drop the folder of RAW files into LR it will just open them up without trying to file them automatically for you, sure you can switch that setting off anyhow. I do that, and export the processed jpegs to a new folder, not affecting the original RAWS.

VisionaryP

KKV, get Lightroom. It would transform all of those photos. You must've just had a setting wrong, it shouldn't try and catalogue any image you don't tell it to.

The core of those photos is quite good. Decent framing and action captured well.

They are quite dark though, so it makes me wonder... is your monitor calibrated? It could be a simple case that your monitor is set so bright that the images you output might look fine to you, but dark to the rest of us. But brightness is easily fixed, so if that's the major issue with these images, you're laughing.

Good job.

Cakes.

There is something on your mans face on the third from the left in the front row.

VisionaryP

Cakesofrice wrote: »

There is something on your mans face on the third from the left in the front row.

Raindrop on the lens, I would guess.

VisionaryP

VisionaryP wrote: »

Raindrop on the lens, I would guess.

Actually a raindrop falling in front of the lens. I only noticed it when I got home. I took two group shots. The one I took before this had fairly noticeable raindrops, but I thought i got away raindrop-free til i got home. Silly rain


Visionary, my monitor is calibrated OK. The images are just dark. I think, to be honest, because I've been looking at the images a fair bit since taking them, that I just got used to them like that. I'm currently trying to brighten them In photoshop (all at once, so it's taking me a little while to figure out how to do that watching a youtube video).


I'll update the photos in the OP when I sort my brightness issues out (though I'll leave the dark ones on Pix too, for comparison).

I've gotten too used to Adobe Camera Raw's simple menus.

Right, here are the same images from above, but the newer versions, with a bit o' brightness/contrast/sharpen/noise reduction involved. Only brightness got a heavy use. Contrast, sharpen and noise reduction didn't seem to be making a huge difference so i didn't go mad with them.

The group shot wasn't touched, so I won't post that again.


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I think they look a lot better, but the noise is still pretty terrible.

VisionaryP

Much better. Do you have Photoshop? If so, try Unsharp Mask, 140%, 1.4 on the soft images.

VisionaryP

Oh, and image 7 is handball.

I do have photoshop, but I haven't really used it properly at all. I generally shoot RAW+JPeg, flick through the JPegs, deleting heavily as I go, and then when I have what I want, I edit the RAW files. I've been so use to doing that, that I haven't used anything except Camera Raw in weeks, so I'm still a total beginner with photoshop.

Will have to go looking for unsharp mask and play with it a bit. I'm not gonna do any more with these though. I'll leave it til next time, where I'll play with my settings more and try to keep my ISO to a minimum whilst I save for something more 'luxurious' in the lens department.

Fionn

i had a quick go at one of your pics in PS and they'll clean up pretty good with something that'll take the noise out like Topaz Denoise or Neatimage. Then just do a little bit with unsharp tool and your set.

good pic btw

Thecageyone

They look far better, I wouldn't worry about a bit of noise, it doesn't interfere, gives a nice gritty feel actually. Too many sports images are too clean and crisp. Sport is meant to be muddy and rough and ready. The brightening has helped heaps. The one with the guy with the red boots about to kick the ball though, could probably do with a little more.

NakedDex

Shutter speed is your friend. A rule of thumb I use when shooting sports, especially hand held, is to keep your shutter speed above twice the focal length at the very least. So at 150mm, you want to be shooting at about 1/320th. It helps to freeze the action that bit easier, but also helps to compensate for hand movement.
A monopod makes a huge difference also. It can be a little more awkward getting up and down the lines if you're trying to follow the action, but if you pick a point or two to shoot from and use the monopod to bear the weight, you'll likely find it a lot easier to get sharp images. They're not expensive either, and I find myself grabbing my monopod over my tripods far more often, so you'll get your moneys worth even if you're not going to shoot sports again/often. (I got a Manfrotto one in Gunns for, I think, €45)

Sacrificing increased noise for shutter speed through pushing ISO is unavoidable sometimes, but you can correct a degree of that noise in post at least. LR3 does a cracking job of cleaning it up.