Sports Illustrated HOTSHOTS

[kafin8ed]

I was at a bookstore today and ran across this SI Hotshots 21st Century Sports Photography special. I'm pretty sure it just hit the stands. You can buy a soft cover for $11 or a hardcover for $24. I'm not sure how many pages but it's over 1/2" thick filled with spread after spread of the best sports photos since 2000. Many of them are truly amazing. One thing I enjoyed was examining the different levels of pixilation that they allowed in the photos, in some of them interpolation is quite obvious as I magine they're shot by 4MP cameras, other spreads are completely free of grain, possibly 12MP or medium format drum scan stuff, I wish they gave you photo gear specs, but it's a very good coffee book/magazine anyways. Thought you should at least give it a scan if you see it sitting on your local newstands...

[Sebastian]

Alan,

I saw that the other week, I held off on buying it though. As much as I like sports shooting, I don't like it THAT much. I too noticed the ixelization. I don't think it's from 4mp cameras though, if anything it's because they crop the living hell outof their shots. Very seldom do I see sports shots that are full-frame cropped the weay they are presented. Most of the time the 4mp or 2.7mp files are cropped down even further. There is no way a full file would be as pixelated as some of those were. But it made me realize something, the image is what matters, not the smoothness or sharpness. Yes, some of those guys shoot 11mp 1Ds's. but most use 1Ds and D1H's as well as D2H's. And with those cams the full frames would not look that bad, not at all.

I think I might pick it up if I have enough disposable income, but I think it might be off the shelves by next tax season...

[JDub]

I was at a bookstore today and ran across this SI Hotshots 21st Century Sports Photography special. I'm pretty sure it just hit the stands. You can buy a soft cover for $11 or a hardcover for $24. I'm not sure how many pages but it's over 1/2" thick filled with spread after spread of the best sports photos since 2000. Many of them are truly amazing. One thing I enjoyed was examining the different levels of pixilation that they allowed in the photos, in some of them interpolation is quite obvious as I magine they're shot by 4MP cameras, other spreads are completely free of grain, possibly 12MP or medium format drum scan stuff, I wish they gave you photo gear specs, but it's a very good coffee book/magazine anyways. Thought you should at least give it a scan if you see it sitting on your local newstands...

I picked up a copy this weekend, but I didn't see the soft cover. I was pretty impressed, I figured it would help me with some new ideas on ways to shoot different types of events. There are some truly amazing shots in this book.