College Soccer

[fjbyrne]

My son's team is having a pre-season tournament. I'm definitely rusty (it has been a year ) but here are some shots from the 1st game.
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All shot with Sony A700 and 70-300G, 70-200G or 70-200G + 2xTC

[swampler]

Nice job on these. I'll have to get back in the soccer groove shortly.

[fjbyrne]

All taken with Sony A700 and 70-300G or 70-200G:
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[jpwaldron]

Nice set of images

[fjbyrne]

Originally Posted by jpwaldron

Nice set of images

Thanks. It has been a while so I need to get back into the swing of things. I think my 2nd day was better than the 1st so I'm making progress

[fjbyrne]

I'm starting to get my timing down a little better but I'm still learning my new equipment
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[fjbyrne]

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[fjbyrne]

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[digital buddah]

I like this last set, nice color contrast. very well done

[Captn]

Looks like a a good set of come great action.

Good luck the rest of the season.

[fjbyrne]

Originally Posted by digital buddah

I like this last set, nice color contrast. very well done

Thanks! These were the most difficult to shoot since the lighting was so varied. I shot RAW so I had some room to play .

[fjbyrne]

Originally Posted by Captn

Looks like a a good set of come great action.

Good luck the rest of the season.

Thanks! My son is on the Poly team and these are about my only opportunity at the moment to get out and shoot. Work is very busy but I won't complain in the current climate!

[TAFNAP]

Nice job! What technique do you use to focus your shots?

[fjbyrne]

Originally Posted by TAFNAP

Nice job! What technique do you use to focus your shots?

For headers and such I tend to "pre-focus" on an area of interest. On restarts such as goal kicks, free kicks, etc you can usually guess the general area that the ball will be played. I focus on that area and wait for the ball to come into play. Once the ball comes in I try to time the connection of the ball with the players (takes a lot of practice ).

For the shots where players are running with the ball I rely on the camera's AF tracking ability (I use continuous AF). I will shoot a series at max fps and use shutter release priority which will cause the camera to take a shot even if it hasn't confirmed AF. This is usually fine if you get an initial AF at the start of the sequence.

I shoot with a Sony A700 and 70-300G and 70-200G. Both of these lenses have range limiters with help speed up initial focus acquisition.

[fjbyrne]

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[fjbyrne]

Had some very bad lighting this weekend. Had to go to ISO 5000-6400 and wide apertures.

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[swampler]

Nice job given the conditions, though they may be slightly overexposed (hard to tell on my POS laptop).

The soccer I was supposed to shoot got rained out, so will be trying again this Friday.

[fjbyrne]

Even worse lighting than last time. I had to shoot ISO 6400 wide open (f2.. C&C welcome as always.

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[swampler]

Good job on the composition and action. They do look noisy, even at this size. Have you tried in noise reduction?

I tried running that first one of the last post through Nik Dfine to see how it would look. If you don't want it posted, let me know and I'll take it down.

[fjbyrne]

Originally Posted by swampler

Good job on the composition and action. They do look noisy, even at this size. Have you tried in noise reduction?

I tried running that first one of the last post through Nik Dfine to see how it would look. If you don't want it posted, let me know and I'll take it down.

No problem at all - fix up as many as you like . I appreciate your effort. I did run it through Noise Ninja auto profiled with the luminance reduction turned down to try to preserve detail.

I really like the results you got with Nik Dfine. Is it very difficult to use? I'm not the best when it comes to post processing.

Thanks again!