Womens College Soccer

[masdog]

I shot my first women's college soccer match for my school paper last night. The game started at 7:00PM on a poorly lit field, and I had to stop shooting before the end of the first half because it was getting so dark.

I did all the shooting on fully manual mode with a custom White Balance. I used the 800 and 1600 ISO settings on my camera as light allowed.

These images have been cropped, slightly sharpened, and had Noise Ninja applied to them.

1. 1/400th @ f/2.8, ISO 1600


2. 1/500th @ f/2.8, ISO 800


3. 1/250th @ f/2.8, ISO 1600


4. 1/500th @ f/2.8, ISO 1600

[JSPhoto]

Not bad, my only problem is with two shots that have no ball in them. Guess I'm a stickler for ball sports to have the ball in the shot, unless I'm asked by the editor for a headshot, but that is rare.

Oh, you may want to use something like Elements to save photos for upload, these took a while on slow dialup.

You can go as slow as 160 on the shutter, gives the ball some interesting shapes at times.

Keep up the good work!

I'll be shooting boys high school soccer tonight

JS

[masdog]

Not bad, my only problem is with two shots that have no ball in them. Guess I'm a stickler for ball sports to have the ball in the shot, unless I'm asked by the editor for a headshot, but that is rare.

Oh, you may want to use something like Elements to save photos for upload, these took a while on slow dialup.

You can go as slow as 160 on the shutter, gives the ball some interesting shapes at times.

Keep up the good work!

I'll be shooting boys high school soccer tonight

JS

Sorry, JSP. I should have put a dialup warning on this post. I decided to upload the full images for when I redo the galleries on my website, which should be in the near future.

Thank you for the tip about the shutter speed. I'll be sure to give it a try in the near future.

[livin4lax09]

nice shots, but I must ask...were you using any noise reduction software? It gives the soft look that I got when I was running the photos through noise ninja.

[masdog]

Yes, I used noise ninja on them. I probably shouldn't have because the originals didn't have as much noise as I thought they did.

[livin4lax09]

yeah, NN gives the photos a very definite look. It also looks like you may be over-sharpening them. It's what I used to do before I found a sweet spot for sharpening. Try using an unsharp mask of amount 100% and set the radius at .9 pixels with a threshold of 0. of course you can increase the amount to what suits the picture, but I find that works to sharpen well without ghosting for a good 90% of the pictures that I have. I'd love to see the originals though. I find ISO 1600 actually yields pretty decent results unless you underexpose then try and compensate with post processing. Brightening dark images really brings out the noise.

[JSPhoto]

For noise reduction, if Elements can't handle it I use NeatImage. They have a plugin version for Photoshop, and also have various plugins for different camera makes/models. It works great and is the best noise reduction I have found so far.

Just thought I'd throw that in if anyone wanted to check it out.

JS

[masdog]

I don't use Elements. I use CS2. That is what is on the school computers, and I have the 30-day free trial. I know there isn't much drop-off between the full-blown Photoshop and Elements, but you use what's there and free, right?

I have every intention of buying a copy of Elements when I have the money available for it.

As for the originals, here they are in all of their original glory. They are completely unedited, except for cropping. I'm thinking that #4 is the only portfolio worthy shot and is definitely ones that I am considering selling to my school.

[JSPhoto]

The top shot would be ok if it were not so soft.

#3 could actually be used for some type of advertising for the team, just float a ball into the bottom of the shot so it looks as though she is looking down at it, even if it is just a quarter of the ball. make sure the ball has a little motion to it to make it more realistic.
Just an idea to save an otherwise great shot.

JS

[livin4lax09]

maybe a little too much sharpening...