The Official Head-Case Photography Thread.

[swt61]

^

Are you referring to the testicles in the last picture?

[tyrion]

Very nice Mike. Are those handheld?

They were all handheld but the lens has IS. At some of the tournaments, like this one, my ability to get close is limited.

^

Are you referring to the testicles in the last picture?

Not sure it was testicles he had in his hand in that last one.

[laxx]

I personally like the no flash pic better. I think they are pretty good, but could use a little touching up, mainly white balance and a little contrast tweaking.

[tyrion]

I personally like the no flash pic better. I think they are pretty good, but could use a little touching up, mainly white balance and a little contrast tweaking.

Thanks. They are all pretty weak compared to some I've seen taken, although those were usually done with strobes set up and more experienced photographers. I'm trying to learn to take the pics first then worry about touch ups. I was just happy I was able to stop the action as my last pics were blurry on the edges of the wrestlers.

[morphsci]

That lens has some nice IS as those pictures are very clear and sharp for handheld pictures. That is not something that can be effectively increased later. And just for the record, I was not referring to testicles.

[tyrion]

And the lens is pretty large and heavy so the IS is very good.

I was hoping to get out and take pics today but it's rainy and 44 degrees.

[tyrion]

I fought the bitter cold and a bit of vertigo to take some pics with the 70-200:

Posted this one because it would have been great had I got the exposure right:

[aerius]

I fought the bitter cold and a bit of vertigo to take some pics with the 70-200:

Bitter cold? How could it be "bitter cold" when there's cactus and palm trees outside?

[Dusty Chalk]

The sarcasm detection is weak in this one...

[Iron_Dreamer]

The wrestling shots all look quite underexposed to me. IS shouldn't even be coming into play for that sort of sports shooting, as your shutter speeds should be sufficiently high to avoid motion blur (1/500+), thus rendering IS moot. FWIW the lighting in that gym looks pretty horrible, as evidenced by your need to use f/2.8 and ISO1600 to attain 1/160ss. Next time, I'd try a custom WB, and using a higher shutter speed (increase ISO as needed).

[penger]

The wrestling shots all look quite underexposed to me. IS shouldn't even be coming into play for that sort of sports shooting, as your shutter speeds should be sufficiently high to avoid motion blur (1/500+), thus rendering IS moot. FWIW the lighting in that gym looks pretty horrible, as evidenced by your need to use f/2.8 and ISO1600 to attain 1/160ss. Next time, I'd try a custom WB, and using a higher shutter speed (increase ISO as needed).

By custom WB, would you mean the one that's built into a camera? ie take a shot of something that should be white for your camera to use as a reference?

[tyrion]

The wrestling shots all look quite underexposed to me. IS shouldn't even be coming into play for that sort of sports shooting, as your shutter speeds should be sufficiently high to avoid motion blur (1/500+), thus rendering IS moot. FWIW the lighting in that gym looks pretty horrible, as evidenced by your need to use f/2.8 and ISO1600 to attain 1/160ss. Next time, I'd try a custom WB, and using a higher shutter speed (increase ISO as needed).

Peter, thanks. I was hoping for some pointers since this is all so new to me. The gym lighting did suck and I was not able, on most occasions to get closer than 100' to the object I was shooting. Good point about the IS. I read this on one of the forums over the weekend. I haven't messed with the WB yet so I will read up on it.

[oogabooga]

If you're shooting RAW there's no point worrying about the WB, IMO. White Balance is a "correction" applied to the RAW data before a JPEG is made (mostly dependant on the primary light source - tungsten light, sunlight, flash etc.) When you shoot RAW, the actual pixel data (e.g. lossless) is stored along with the suggested WB profile to use - when you view the picture on the computer it will process the RAW data then apply the suggested WB. Since you have lossless data, it's trivial to adjust the WB in your favourite editing program - I do this all the time in Lightroom when my camera has selected an incorrect WB.

If you shot those wrestling photos in RAW mode, you need only identify a true white (or a colourless grey) in your image and tell Lightroom/Aperture/whatever to use that to set the WB.

HTH

[tyrion]

I'm not shooting RAW yet but thanks for the tip.

[penger]

Sorry about piggybacking on here, but what's better? Using your camera's WB or software on a computer?

[oogabooga]

Sorry about piggybacking on here, but what's better? Using your camera's WB or software on a computer?

IMO, depends on the camera, but for the most part I will use the auto WB my Nikon D300 selects, and only change it in post-processing if I feel that it looks "off". I don't use any of the presets, either on the Nikon or in post-processing. In post, I will just tell Lightroom to WB off of some white or grey object in the scene, until the tones (usually skin tones) look right.

Of course, all this is moot if your monitor is significantly colour mis-calibrated (as most are, out of the box, IMO). If you can borrow a friends calibrator (I use a Spyder3) you can get much more accurate colour - you can also calibrate somewhat by eye (on my Mac, the Display system preference has a Colour tab that allows you to calibrate the monitor).

HTH

[Iron_Dreamer]

Sorry about piggybacking on here, but what's better? Using your camera's WB or software on a computer?

Well, if you get WB in-camera close enough to "right"/correct then it is less PP work to do. On the other hand, RAW allowing for setting WB on each shot has more creative possiblities than having WB baked-in to JPEG files.

Auto-WB usually works pretty well outdoors in daylight. Nightime and indoor, or, more specifically, man-made light sources usually trip up auto WB systems. If you want to be sure, use a custom WB setting. By that I mean, use the capability of the camera to measure WB off a grey card, expodisc, or even a white tablecloth, shirt, or napkin, to get the correct WB for your setting.

Or just shoot RAW and fix it all later. Whatever floats your boat.

[aerius]

Sorry about piggybacking on here, but what's better? Using your camera's WB or software on a computer?

None of the above. Shoot in black & white and you don't need to do white balance.

Personally I use the camera to get a rough colour balance then use Photoshop to fine tune it to my liking.

[episiarch]

Well, if you get WB in-camera close enough to "right"/correct then it is less PP work to do.

Amen to this. We shoot RAW+JPEG - that is, camera stores both - and usually the camera's white balance is excellent. But for those occasions where the shot is genuinely worth the time to tweak carefully, it's great to have raw.

I shoot with a D90 and besides very good auto-WB it also does some highlight/shadow correction that seems to work really well. Also I tend to switch among saturation profiles depending on what I'm shooting. Having this stuff applied in-camera saves me some effort. Possibly more importantly, because the results are usually very good already, it helps protect me from the temptation to waste time trying to tweak the hell out of every usable picture, which was something of a temptation when I was shooting RAW only.

[penger]

Amen to this. We shoot RAW+JPEG - that is, camera stores both - and usually the camera's white balance is excellent. But for those occasions where the shot is genuinely worth the time to tweak carefully, it's great to have raw.

Ah, that's what I was going to bring up next. Shooting RAW + JPEG would allow one to do some PP if the JPEG didn't turn out so great.

[Iron_Dreamer]

Yeah, Nikon's models which have come out since the launch of the "Exspeed" processor (from the D3 onward) have had much better in-camera processing. It used to be that I shot RAW-only 90% of the time with the D200. Since moving to the D700, I only rarely feel the need to RAW process, the JPEG's are usually close enough to what I want, assuming I use the right color profile.

[oogabooga]

I just shoot RAW - all the WB and other information is carried over in the metadata, and I can easily make JPEG's in Lightroom on demand. The benefit for me is in saving space - since I don't need the JPEG's, I can eke out a few more photos on the CF card (and my HD).

I agree the EXPEED processor does a nice job of choosing the WB - I have to tweak WB far less often on my D300 than I did with the D40!

[Knuckledragger]

More fun with IR:

Moar later. Probably some visible spectrum pix as well. I can't remember what photos I have and have not posted to H-C.

[swt61]

Wow! That's really beautiful!

[Knuckledragger]

Well, that sucks, but it's not really surprising.

The Online Photographer: Kodak Tri-X Professional (TXP) Discontinued in 120 and 220