I am suprised at how long it's taking me to get used to this monster after shooting with a 40D for my first year of shooting sports. I am starting to get it, and my shots are getting better. Tell me what you think of these. These were from 4 games that I shot over 2 days for a local tourney.
Thanks for your time. The funny thing is that I'm usually pretty hard on myself about the backgrounds not being tilted. I guess I missed a few here. I appreciate your input. I like your crop on the first one you posted. I would have never thought to do that. Thanks again.
Kelly, I can definitely see a difference from these shots you got with the 1D Mark III and the your old shots with the 40D. With the exception of #8, all of these have good sharpness to them. Your white balance has gotten a lot better. I don't see any shots of layups with the rim in the shot. Got any more?
Thanks Will. I'm still working on alot of different things. I didn't expect to be as far along as I am after only shooting sports for one year. I have a very long way to go still, but I'm happy with what I am getting now. I improve every time out. My WB got better when I calibrated my monitor. I have many more here: http://www.kpphoto.net/Sports/664809
The only problem with these galleries (and the samples above) is that I don't edit before I post most of the time. I post so many, and stay so busy, I usually don't edit until a picture gets ordered. These are all proofs, really. The slanted backgrounds in these samples show that. I would never print something like that, I shouldn't even post them here. The next batch I post will be "finished." I also don't crop until the order comes in.....Thanks again Will.
Kelly
Oh, as for the layup shot with rim, there are some on my site but I didn't post them here because I don't really like them....too common I guess. I have a guy trying to dunk.....and missing (should be cropped tighter) http://www.kpphoto.net/photos/439952983_6xw6G-L.jpg
If you don't have Lightroom, you really should consider getting it. I set my white balance by using an Expodisc but still fine tune it in LR. Since basket ball is played indoors with constant and consistent lighting, you don't have to edit much at all. I import all my shots into LR, fine tune the white balance, add a bit of fill, and fine tune the tone curve to one image and sync those settings to the rest of the shots. I usually go with a 5x7 crop on most of my images and you can apply that globally too. Get Lightroom. It makes like easy.
I use expodisc for white balance but it's still a challenge with basketball at times. I also recommend Lightroom. I create 2 presets for basketball, one floor & one wall, where either is dominent in the photo. The floor casts off a lot of reflection/color and if you try and do a single light balance for a set of photos it doesn't work on all. I'm shooting mostly high school gyms where the lighting is less than perfect.
I usually aim the lens with the expodisc on it at the ceiling where the light source is coming from. I do it before the game and at half time when I switch sides.
I don't even think an expodisc would save me in these gyms. Look above at #2. It looks pretty accurate in terms of WB. #3 is off pretty bad. I always shoot with K temp WB, I think it's 3400K in our home gym. Those two shots where taken from the same side of the court during the same game. The lights are that bad. I always have to tweak certain images when I get home because I will have 9 or 10 that look too warm....Next time I post I won't be so damn lazy and I will fix that. I guess for this post I was just wanting to know about composition and sharpness. I wasn't even thinking about color and level backgrounds which is silly looking back because it's all part of the deal.
Kelly, that's precisely what the expodisk is for. It onlt only adjusts the K temp but it adjusts the green/majenta. K temp only adjusts blues and yellows.
I think it has something to do with the way the lights cycle and 10FPS. The WB is different in some shots with the same settings. With the Expodisk, you could get the initial WB setting, but it wouldn't help for cycling lights at 10FPS, correct?
Kelly, you are correct that the problem here is caused by cycling lights. The gross magenta cast in some is a dead giveaway. The Expodisc won't do much of anything for you under these conditions - you'll get maybe one in four or five shots with correct WB, and the rest will still be off by varying amounts of magenta, green, yellow. Hardly worthwhile, and maybe even counter productive. In my experience, by adjusting to one type of color cast, you've then shifted the other frames so drastically that they are even harder to deal with.
What I often do is arrive early and set up a gray card in the area where action is taking place. Then I take an extended burst of frames of the card with the lens I am going to use. This gives a visual record of exactly how those particular lights cycle. After importing into Capture One, I then use the WB dropper (and sometimes a little extra adjustment) to measure the temp in the most common ones. These are saved as custom WB profiles for each of the color casts. For example, for one wrestling facility, I have "light magenta", "dark magenta," "green," etc., profiles. (Usually, the values will remain the same for a season unless someone starts changing lightbulbs!) Processing is much faster: as I go through the photos I just apply the appropriate profile, then tweak if necessary.
When shooting in a venue where I probably won't be back during the season, I may just write down the blue-yellow and green-magenta values from the corrected gray card shots for each shade in the cycle and adjust the shots I want individually. Usually, in this situation I have to give the paper a handful of pictures, so it's just as fast to do them individually.
I've found this much less time-consuming than trying adjust individual photos by eyeballing them. Saves lots of time and frustration. It won't help with those frames where the cycle color changes within the frame, but then not much will help those anyway.
Wow! This is a great idea. I just had this problem a few days ago. As I scrolled throught the photos one by one I could see the WB jumping around. It's very obvious when you scroll quickly one image at a time on a large screen, just kicking the obvious rejects.
Also, the trick of getting one WB just right and then applying them to all the photos doesn't work because of the cycling lights.
I appreciate your input. I like your crop on the first one you posted. I would have never thought to do that. Thanks again.
I have many more here: