Please comment on my AHL photos

[Hockeyshots]

This is the first time I've uploaded any photos of mine for critique or other comment.

These two photos were shot at the Manchester, NH, Verizon Wireless Arena under the arena lights (tungsten?), no strobes, on Friday, February 11, 2006. My camera, a Nikon D70, was configured for ISO1250, Auto WB, AF-S (single-servo as opposed to continuous), 3D color matrix metering, no EV tweaking. My lens for this particular shoot was a Nikkor 18-70mm 1:3.5-4.5 G ED lens. The teams were the Houston Aeros visiting the Manchester Monarchs. The Monarchs (in white) are the AHL affiliate of the NHL LA Kings.

The photo with the two skaters cutting behind the net was shot at 1/320 sec, f/4.5, 50mm. The photo with the wing taking a shot on the goalie was shot at 1/400 sec, f/4.5, 50mm. I captured the images as NEF (RAW) files, and my workflow was/is Adobe DNG conversion and Photoshop CS using the Noise Ninja plug-in.

[JSPhoto]

Both Ok shots. Top: clone out the bottom left or crop Bottom: clone out extra stick. Good timing on both

JS

[jorgemonkey]

They both look like great captures & great times, but the colors look a little dull on my monitor. You should pick up either the Nikon 70-200 F2.8 or the Sigma version for shooting in there. I'd use mine when I goto the SJ SHarks games but they wouldn't let me in with it

[swmdrayfan]

Quite nice, but I agree that they seem a little dull as far as brightness goes.
John

[Hockeyshots]

Thank all of you for the comments. I agree that they seem dull in the forum. They look much better in Photoshop and when viewed as JPEGs using Windows Explorer on my PC. When I view them on the web, they appear dull. I think this is related to my workflow, and I'm experimenting with that.

As I mentioned, right now I convert RAW to DNG and I use the ACR plug-in to process the DNG and Photoshop to process the image output from ACR. This seems to provide a duller finished product than if I read the RAW image right into Photoshop (I think PS uses a Nikon RAW converter plug-in to read it) and then process it. I'm not quite sure what is going on, but I think it's somehow related to how the color space gets represented in the finished file. I'll know more as I try different things.

The cropping suggestions sound good, too. I'll likely try those when I get the chance.

Thanks again. HS

[SmartWombat]

How's the exposure in the original?
Did you have to compensate for the metering with the lighness of the ice?
You could under-expose a bit if you don't take it into account.

Sounds like at some point in your processing you may be using Adobe colour space not sRGB?

[Hockeyshots]

How's the exposure in the original?
Did you have to compensate for the metering with the lighness of the ice?
You could under-expose a bit if you don't take it into account.

Sounds like at some point in your processing you may be using Adobe colour space not sRGB?

The exposure is about a 1/3 to 1/2 stop underexposed. However, with digital I've been led to believe (through books, mostly) that underexposure isn't necessarily a bad thing; detail is maintained and can be coaxed out. So I'm going on the assumption that a 1/3 to a 1/2 stop, since it's fairly minor, is probably acceptable.

Your next point about the RGB space is correct. Again, I've been led to believe that the sRGB space is so small that it's best to avoid it, and I have. When I first started processing RAW, I'd process with the ACR plug-in in the ProPhoto RGB color space. Then, when I moved into Photoshop I'd convert to Adobe RGB. This is when I noticed the drab colors. I'd go back to the JPEGs that I had shot prior to moving to RAW and the colors were fine. Then, after some discussion in another forum on this board, I started processing in the Adobe RGB space in ACR, continued in PS in the same space, and finished my photos for the web in File -> Save for the Web, which gave me better color but still not as good as I'd gotten before.

So, last night I read the RAW file right into Photoshop using a Nikon RAW converter plug-in and saw better color. I'm going to experiment with that some more this evening and hoping to get much better results. However, that presents me with a bit of a problem. The Nikon RAW converter isn't nearly as flexible or powerful as the ACR converter, but the color output seems to be better. And I think the color output problem is a solvable problem using ACR, I just don't know how to get to that solution yet.

Any suggestions in this area would be received well...maybe. ;)

[Hockeyshots]

Here's one of those images processed using a different workflow. This is the RAW file read right into Photoshop and then processed using very similar modifications. All the little raw converter allows me to do is primitive WB and some exposure tweaking.

[SmartWombat]

I hacen't used ACR, so I can't comment.
But the new and improved Canon Digital Photo Professional 2 is rubbish at colours.
Who ever heard of a cerise Ferrari?
It's rubbish compared to the previous version.

[JSPhoto]

Keep in mind you lose 1 stop shooting through the glass. Also, set your WB off the ice, not the boards.

JS

[Hockeyshots]

Also, set your WB off the ice, not the boards.

The reason for the red cast was a bit of a rushed effort at producing an image with some color saturation to compare against the images in my first post. The lack of WB control in the little RAW converter and the rushed PS processing gave me a more richly saturated photo with a bogus color cast.

Last night though I think I've finally determined where my processing went off the tracks. I spent some time on the Adobe User-to-user Forum, in their Camera Raw discussion area, and found some threads on dull colors resulting from using ACR and Photoshop to generate JPEGs. The solution is to convert to an sRGB profile before saving the JPEG. I had just enough time last night to try it out and produced a quite presentable (and much better white balanced photo) using the ACR plug-in and Photoshop. I'll post another image here later this evening if you wish to see the result. It's head-and-shoulders above the other images.

HS

[Hockeyshots]

OK. Here's my image with my color management issues resolved. Whatever might be wrong with the photo, it isn't color space stuff.

[masdog]

Hi Hockeyshots.

These images seem very dull on my laptop screen.

Contrary to what you have read, exposure in digital needs to be near perfect. A slight under or over-exposure can be corrected, but it will also introduce noise into the image. While I have never worked with slide film, the principle is supposedly the same.

With ice, you're going to want to over-expose by about 1-2 stops. This will make the ice whiter.