# New Lens! 6th Grade VolleyBall Tourney C&C welcome



## CMfromIL (Feb 12, 2012)

Talked the wife into letting me get the Canon 70-200 F/2.8 IS II.  What a difference in low light gyms!  Got my ISO down to 3200, able to maintain shutter speeds of 1/500.  It was a different gym than I normally shoot in, and the light was even WORSE than normal, but the shots came out very well.

I need to work more on the much shallower DOF with the 2.8.  This was the first time I had taken the lens out.  Got a few ooooh's and aaaahhh's from other folks taking pictures.  And I had several parents tell me that they appreciate the pictures I take of the team for them.  :blushing:

So here are some of my favorites from the tourney (that we lost. )

1.  Blocked!







2.  Eye on the ball.  (I was fortunate to get her shoes in the shot.  Been working hard to not chop off the feet!)






3.  Reach that ball.






4.  Right back at you.






5.  Coach says you better not miss this!






6.  Strike a pose....or serve?






7.  You gotta open your eyes to keep your eyes on the ball!






Thanks for looking.


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## imagemaker46 (Feb 12, 2012)

First two are the best ones, after that they drop off. Tighter crops and a little colour correction would make all the difference.  New lens always takes time to get used to, keep at it.


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## CMfromIL (Feb 12, 2012)

Thanks for the comments.  I'll work some on the color, but I'm not a huge crop fan (particularly in sports).  I find that it takes away from the moment, and simply isolating the athlete leads to a sterile image.  I might as well be taking pictures of them practicing alone if I'm going to do that.  I do some cropping before posting, but I appreciate your suggestions.

Secondly, I take these images for fun and the enjoyment of the parents.  If I were to crop out every player not relevant to the particular image, it takes away the fun of seeing their kid in a shot.


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## MLeeK (Feb 12, 2012)

They're INCREDIBLY magenta/warm. You did a great job. I think you are going to find that you are better off raising your ISO up and shooting at about 3.5 at the widest. The sharpness on that lens increases in the extreme when you take just that little step up. 
You did a great job. I JUST started shooting Volleyball this year and it's harder than hell! It is the hardest sport I have ever shot. It's VERY hard to capture the faces and emotion of the game and you did really well with it-I, however SUCKED! LOL!


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## Kombipete (Feb 12, 2012)

Love the face on the coach (?) in 6!!


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## CMfromIL (Feb 12, 2012)

Kombipete said:


> Love the face on the coach (?) in 6!!



Coach is on #5 in the red.  On #6 is just some random person walking behind the server.


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## imagemaker46 (Feb 12, 2012)

CMfromIL said:


> Thanks for the comments. I'll work some on the color, but I'm not a huge crop fan (particularly in sports). I find that it takes away from the moment, and simply isolating the athlete leads to a sterile image. I might as well be taking pictures of them practicing alone if I'm going to do that. I do some cropping before posting, but I appreciate your suggestions.
> 
> Secondly, I take these images for fun and the enjoyment of the parents. If I were to crop out every player not relevant to the particular image, it takes away the fun of seeing their kid in a shot.



It's not so much a matter of cropping everyone else out, it is a matter of making an average image into a much better one.  If there are elements of any photo that take away from the overall composition then it makes sense to make that correction.


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## CMfromIL (Feb 12, 2012)

imagemaker46 said:


> It's not so much a matter of cropping everyone else out, it is a matter of making an average image into a much better one.  If there are elements of any photo that take away from the overall composition then it makes sense to make that correction.



My images are fine to edit.  Show me what you are suggesting.  Otherwise, I'll take your suggestion with a grain of salt.  I've noticed in many of your critiques you suggest cropping (just doing a quick search on your posts).  Let's see what you mean.


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## CMfromIL (Feb 12, 2012)

MLeeK said:


> They're INCREDIBLY magenta/warm. You did a great job. I think you are going to find that you are better off raising your ISO up and shooting at about 3.5 at the widest. The sharpness on that lens increases in the extreme when you take just that little step up.
> You did a great job. I JUST started shooting Volleyball this year and it's harder than hell! It is the hardest sport I have ever shot. It's VERY hard to capture the faces and emotion of the game and you did really well with it-I, however SUCKED! LOL!



Thanks for your kind words.  It is a challenging sport for sure!  I've found it's easiest to concentrate on 1 team.  I typically try to have my camera 'ready' on the side I'm shooting on, and visually watch the server set the ball.  You then have to kinda guess where the ball is going to go, but it's not too hard to guess.  It gets signifigantly more difficult if it gets into a volley situation!  If you are up for more of a challenge, take 95% of your shots in portrait mode.  I find it's easier to get the entire athlete, but much harder to compose the shot properly.  But in the end I'm personally satisifed with my images.

Zooming during the composition is another challenge.  In these shots I had to struggle because I kept adjusting the wrong part of the lens!  I'll get better....just need more games.


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## imagemaker46 (Feb 13, 2012)

CMfromIL said:


> imagemaker46 said:
> 
> 
> > It's not so much a matter of cropping everyone else out, it is a matter of making an average image into a much better one. If there are elements of any photo that take away from the overall composition then it makes sense to make that correction.
> ...



I do suggest cropping images that I feel could be made stronger. To be honest I don't really have the time to crop all the photos I look at and make comments about. I will download a few of these and make the crops that I think would make them better images.   Volleyball is a challenging sport to shoot, but like anything, the more you do it, the easier it becomes.


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## o hey tyler (Feb 13, 2012)

CMfromIL said:


> I find that it takes away from the moment, and simply isolating the athlete leads to a sterile image.  I might as well be taking pictures of them practicing alone if I'm going to do that.



Hmmmmmmm... Okay... If you say so. 

Did you shoot these in RAW?


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## CMfromIL (Feb 13, 2012)

o hey tyler said:


> Hmmmmmmm... Okay... If you say so.
> 
> Did you shoot these in RAW?



I'm not anti-cropping. I just don't like to have single pictures of players all the time. I like to also see the action around them. I take lots of sports pictures, and do plenty of cropping. I have ok'd pictures to edit. If you see an image that would benefit from cropping, show me. I'm trying to get better. 

But I'm not also on the 'crop it all' bandwagon.

As for RAW, I tried that a couple of times. Frankly, it's quite time consuming to shoot that way, as I like to post them up for the parents to view within a day or so. If I shoot 200 images, that's A LOT of pictures I have to convert for uploading. Much too labor intensive for a non-paying gig!

I might try to shoot RAW + Jpeg, but not sure how much time that takes between photos to write the info to the card. With VBall in particular I don't have much time between shots, and if the camera is writing to the card, I will miss more than I capture.

Lastly, did you have any C&C on the pictures posted, or were you just driving by?


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## CMfromIL (Feb 13, 2012)

imagemaker46 said:


> I do suggest cropping images that I feel could be made stronger. To be honest I don't really have the time to crop all the photos I look at and make comments about. I will download a few of these and make the crops that I think would make them better images. Volleyball is a challenging sport to shoot, but like anything, the more you do it, the easier it becomes.



You don't have to do them all. One would be fine. I could see on #7 where the right side of the picture could be trimmed w/out affecting the tone of the shot. But with the others, I don't have much more to crop w/out losing the ball. And I've got hundreds of VBall pictures w/out the ball in the frame. What fun are those?


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## Derrel (Feb 13, 2012)

This debate goes both ways: "Some" sports photo editors like photos that show a LOT OF background and a LOT OF the setting where the event took place. A good example of that???? Sports Illustrated magazine.

Many photographers shoot a LOT with 300/3.8 and 400/2.8 lenses, and have become so accustomed to ultra-tight,blown-background shots that they cannot understand why photos shot any other way could possibly be any good.

Gary Winogrand shot a somewhat famous NFL football photo right from the sidelines, using I believe a 28mm wide-angle on his Leica. All 22 players are in the photo...all of them. http://www.atgetphotography.com/Images/Photos/GarryWinogrand/winogrand_23.jpg

What would that photo be like if one were to crop that down to just the running back and the tackler???


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## o hey tyler (Feb 13, 2012)

CMfromIL said:


> o hey tyler said:
> 
> 
> > Hmmmmmmm... Okay... If you say so.
> ...



No one's saying that you need to crop images so that there's only ONE player in the frame. I think you've got that all wrong. But what you need to do is understand where the strong elements are and why the weak elements need to be cropped. Images 4, 6, and 7 could all benefit from crops. YES the crops will involve cropping out people but it will actually improve the images. I'm not going to download the images to show you, as I think it would be a good learning experience for you to take your images and make crops of them to see what works and what doesn't. 

Your images have a lot of color balance issues. This could be easily fixed if you shot in RAW, not as easily since you shot in JPEG. If you're aim is to get images to other parents without regard for white balance, straight horizons or crops, then by all means continue what you're doing. Especially if the parents like them... But if you want to get the most out of your images, you'dshoot RAW+Jpeg if not just straight RAW all the way, and take the time to process the keepers. 

If you want some general C&C as I was driving by: They're all pretty much underexposed, in addition to the WB, and composition issues as stated above.


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## CMfromIL (Feb 13, 2012)

o hey tyler said:


> No one's saying that you need to crop images so that there's only ONE player in the frame. I think you've got that all wrong. But what you need to do is understand where the strong elements are and why the weak elements need to be cropped. Images 4, 6, and 7 could all benefit from crops. YES the crops will involve cropping out people but it will actually improve the images. I'm not going to download the images to show you, as I think it would be a good learning experience for you to take your images and make crops of them to see what works and what doesn't.
> 
> Your images have a lot of color balance issues. This could be easily fixed if you shot in RAW, not as easily since you shot in JPEG. If you're aim is to get images to other parents without regard for white balance, straight horizons or crops, then by all means continue what you're doing. Especially if the parents like them... But if you want to get the most out of your images, you'dshoot RAW+Jpeg if not just straight RAW all the way, and take the time to process the keepers.
> 
> If you want some general C&C as I was driving by: They're all pretty much underexposed, in addition to the WB, and composition issues as stated above.



Thanks for your comments.  I agree they are a bit underexposed, but that's life with Jr High Gyms...the lighting is terrible.  I hesitate raising the ISO, as I prefer less grain than what I get when I had my settings to 6400.

I'll try the Raw + Jpeg route next time, as I can simply upload the jpeg images, then mess around with the others.  

As for straight horizons, I'll ask the players to go much slower so I'll have time to properly compose the shot.  Maybe I can have them stop motion when I see something good, put the camera on tripod, and use box lights as well.


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## imagemaker46 (Feb 13, 2012)

Here are a few crops and colour corrections and straightened up the backgrounds. 


















Frames 4-5 not much can be done to fix these images. Personally I wouldn't have kept these.  Angles for shooting volleyball is all over the place, I prefer to shoot from the end and under the net for some of it, it's tough unless you have a longer lens, 300mm, it also allows the shooting of blocks at the net. An even higher angle from behind or the side can get you some good angles. Like I said, it's all about practice.


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## CMfromIL (Feb 13, 2012)

imagemaker46 said:


> Here are a few crops and colour corrections and straightened up the backgrounds.
> Frames 4-5 not much can be done to fix these images. Personally I wouldn't have kept these.  Angles for shooting volleyball is all over the place, I prefer to shoot from the end and under the net for some of it, it's tough unless you have a longer lens, 300mm, it also allows the shooting of blocks at the net. An even higher angle from behind or the side can get you some good angles. Like I said, it's all about practice.



Thanks for your suggestions.  Just curious do you have a website with examples of your VBall shooting?  Your technique sounds cool.  Thanks.

Nevermind on the website, looked at your profile and found your stuff.  Some impressive beach volleyball shots.  The 6th grade girls league isn't quite as dramatic as those!  

And honestly, I'd be more of a distraction lurking under the net to get some of those shots.  Not to mention there isn't a whole lot of diving going on the hardwood.  And I'd kill to have some of that natural light, sure would help with the whole underexposure issue.  Thanks again.  I like the edits.

As far as ditching shots, I suppose 5 could go.  It was more amusing to see the coach 'giving instruction'.  If the hitter had been in focus, it would have been better.  I'll chalk that up to the new lens.


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## imagemaker46 (Feb 13, 2012)

I've been shooting sports for over 35 years at all levels, indoor volleyball is a difficult one, especially in most gyms. Beach volleyball is pretty easy to shoot, only having to deal with two athletes at a time, I always shoot far court.  All the other sports, well like I said, if you shoot them enough you can get pretty good at it.  I'm looking forward to shooting more beach volleyball at the Olympics this summer in london.


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## o hey tyler (Feb 13, 2012)

You WILL get better photos with less noise by using ISO6400 to properly expose your shots. You get more noise from underexposing at a high iso than you do from exposing properly at a higher one. 

There's always noise reduction as well which can work wonders.


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## Destin (Feb 13, 2012)

Derrel said:


> This debate goes both ways: "Some" sports photo editors like photos that show a LOT OF background and a LOT OF the setting where the event took place. A good example of that???? Sports Illustrated magazine.
> 
> Many photographers shoot a LOT with 300/3.8 and 400/2.8 lenses, and have become so accustomed to ultra-tight,blown-background shots that they cannot understand why photos shot any other way could possibly be any good.
> 
> ...



Honestly that's a terrible photo in my opinion Derrel. You MUST be joking. I could take that shot with a $6 disposable kodak.


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## imagemaker46 (Feb 14, 2012)

Destin said:


> Derrel said:
> 
> 
> > This debate goes both ways: "Some" sports photo editors like photos that show a LOT OF background and a LOT OF the setting where the event took place. A good example of that???? Sports Illustrated magazine.
> ...



Going off topic here a bit. You can use the term "somewhat famous" photo but it was shot during a different era of photography, most of Winogrand's SI images were shot in the mid to late 50's, and most of his images were shot using just a wide angle lens. By today's standards that crooked(which was his style) NFL photo would never be seen. He freelanced for SI, but was better known as a street photographer.

I use a long lens for most everything I shoot, that's just the way I shoot. I have shot using a wide on many occations, but that was back in the film days. When I talked about cropping these basketball shots I wasn't suggesting that everyone but one player be cropped out, it was more about all the empty space around the players.

Personally I don't like the shot, it looks more like some kid was on the sidelines and happened to be loading his camera, this would have been the first frame on the roll as the film advanced, before looking through the camera.


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## MSnowy (Feb 14, 2012)

Destin said:


> Derrel said:
> 
> 
> > This debate goes both ways: "Some" sports photo editors like photos that show a LOT OF background and a LOT OF the setting where the event took place. A good example of that???? Sports Illustrated magazine.
> ...




Oh that would be cool. get in your way back machine and take a disposable Kodak back to the 50'S. I've always liked SI pictures that had a deep DOF. Once you leave the main focus point I find it interesting to see fans reactions in the background.


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## imagemaker46 (Feb 14, 2012)

Here is a wide angle football shot that does work, it was shot around the same time as the "somewhat famous" shot that really doesn't.  There is one thing about this shot that makes it a little more interesting than the average field goal photo, and something that wouldn't be allowed these days. It was shot in 1960.


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## CMfromIL (Feb 14, 2012)

Was the camera man on the field?


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## imagemaker46 (Feb 14, 2012)

Yes he was, my Dad shot this.


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## Kombipete (Mar 2, 2012)

CMfromIL said:


> Kombipete said:
> 
> 
> > Love the face on the coach (?) in 6!!
> ...


   Yeah, sorry.. #5 ..when I say #6 I mean #5  The one with the open mouth that's saying "Good on you girls!"


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