This was the first time I was able to get out and actually shoot something so I wanted to post some samples and get some feedback. Overall I'm pretty happy with the results. The only PP I did was to adjust the WB, I used a Whibal card to shoot a reference shot, and then crop and/or resize them as indicated. The main thing I was dissapointed with was that none of the photos I took were tack sharp. I used my 28-135mm without a filter, but with a hood. Do you think this is just a case of the subject just not being in perfect focus or is this the best I can expect from this lens? Would I get better results when I get my 50mm f1.8? I'm using CF4 #3 and the camera set to AI Servo. I'm still not clear on what the effective difference is between #1 & #3. Other than not being as sharp as I'd hoped, I'm pretty happy with 1-6. Number 8 is where I really went wrong. I shot manual and metered off my hand and opened up 1 stop. Clearly I was not in the same light however as they were all at least 2 stops under exposed. They did look better exposure wise once I adjusted the WB, but they still look really poor. I assume that grainy look is just a ton of noise from a poor exposure right? My reference shot was shot in the same light as where I metered off my hand so I assume that's they looked so much brighter after adjusting the WB. I metered off of the grass for 1-6 and that appears to have worked well. I opted to stick with one focal length for each rider so I wouldn't need to worry about the exposure changing as I zoomed. I did have to keep an eye out for changing light as some thin clouds kept moving in front of the sun. #8 just looked bad period. There were several soccer games being played so I spent about a half an hour shooting one before the cyclocross races stared. I metered off the grass here as well, but they all seemed to be a bit overexposed which I believe led to the noise in number 7. If I resized #7 it looked as good as the rest did as far as the noise goes, but the others looked that good full size. This was around 11:00 am or so and the sun seemed fairly harsh at the time. Is that a bad condition to meter off of the grass? The first thing I realized was how hard it was to follow the action. I couldn't shoot too tight with my small lens until they got really close, but even then I didn't end up shooting as tight as I could've as I simply couldn't follow the action well enough. Practice, practice, practice. I ended up shooting mostly in Av mode due the variable aperature lens I have. I was wondering afterwards if a monopod would make it easier to follow the action. I don't have one yet as I don't have a big lens yet? Feel free to do any editing you want as loing as you repost them and tell me what you did.




1 Resized
http://home.comcast.net/~tadrscin/sample1.jpg
2 Resized
http://home.comcast.net/~tadrscin/sample2.jpg
3 Resized
http://home.comcast.net/~tadrscin/sample3.jpg
4 Resized
http://home.comcast.net/~tadrscin/sample4.jpg
5 Cropped and resized
http://home.comcast.net/~tadrscin/sample5.jpg
6 Resized
http://home.comcast.net/~tadrscin/sample6.jpg
7 Cropped. Please ignore the bad cropping as I just wanted to show what a full sized section looked like.
http://home.comcast.net/~tadrscin/sample7.jpg
8 Cropped
http://home.comcast.net/~tadrscin/sample8.jpg

With digital sharpness can be set in the camera as well as adjusted in post processing. Even Canon suggests using post processing of the sharpness as digital is normally short on sharpness straight out of the camera.Your photos look pretty good for the 28-135, a bit of unsharp mask in PS would take care of the softness. Canon has tips for each body and what unsharp mask setting work best with that camera.
I used 28-135 for basketball for several years, but after breaking 3 of them gave up on them. Now I use only L-glass, and they (knock on wood) haven't been broken yet by having a basketball bounce off them :) The 28-135 isn't the sharpest lens Canon makes, but it's very adequate.

JS

Thanks for the info. I forgot to mention that I was shooting RAW so the in-camera settings won't have any effect. I guess it would be nice to know how much sharpening I should expect to have to do PP. Something else I noticed is that even though I was using my 430EX for fill flash, and I'm almost positive it was going off, it doesn't appear as though it had any effect. The Exif data says it didn't fire on these shots so perhaps I forgot to turn it back on after taking a short break. Oops. I'll have to check the earlier ones tonight. I've been through Canon's digital learning center and I don't remember seeing any PP sharpening recommendations, or any for in-camera use either. Could you point in the right direction? I will play around with the PP tonight if I have time. I mainly wanted some feedback based on what I was getting straight out of the camera. I was extremely dissapointed with what I saw in the LCD, but then when I got them on the computer they looked much better. Obviously this is why you guys say not to rely on the LCD.

OK here's the first one with some PP in PS. I used Noise Ninja with a profile for the XT at 400 iso, resized, unsharpen mask and some slight tweaking with the levels and saturation.
http://home.comcast.net/~tadrscin/sample1-2.jpg

I also figured out what was going on with my flash. It did go off for the first shot of each rider but apparently didn't recharge in time for the subsequent shots. Unfortunately I had some cheapo batteries and they just didn't cut it. Plus I had my ultrabounce diffuser on it. With good batteries and without the diffuser I can take the same series and get it to fire each time. I was waiting about a second between shots.

Here is the Canon statement on edge sharpness from their website:
http://alpha02u.c-wss.com/inc/ApplServlet?SV=WWUCA900 (not sure if that will bring it up though.

If not go to Canon USA, the to the XT then to the troubleshooting section. There are two pages you should look at, one on AF & and the one on Edge Sharpening
They may have changed it and may now only have the unsharpmask settings for the 1D series.
You may also want to look through the manuals for the software, it may be in there. I know I saw it somewhere for the XT.


JS

Thanks for the info. That link didn't work, but I found the other pages you mentioned and that was some good information. I didn't find any specifc sharpening settings for the XT, but that's no biggie as I can experiment and will probably learn better that way anyway. I'm just starting to really learn how to use PS right now so that's just one more thing to work on. It's been over 15 years since I was in school shooting anything so this is my first time with a DSLR, autofocus and digital PP. So much to learn, but at least it's fun learning.

Here's what I was able to do with some more PP using Noise Ninja and PS on #8. I'm amazed that it looks this good now.
http://home.comcast.net/~tadrscin/sample8-2.jpg

Post processing is a pain, but as you get better doing it you also learn to shoot better and then both take less time. It took a while to figure out one of the tricks to the MK II N and it's color temp, but once I did the color made a huge jump. Now I rarely alter the color from the camera, and neither does the paper. They simply do some sharpening to nmatch their printers system and run them.

JS

Yeah I guess that's one benefit of this being a hobby for me, no deadlines. Of course it's not like I have a ton of free time to play with this though :(