"True" Action Shots

[trooper5010]

Hey DPS! This is my first post here.. i had no idea where to post first but i'm always looking for more ways to take photos, and for useful tips on better ways to take my photos.. and also, using a non-DSLR camera its difficult as well to come out with good photographs too.

I use a Canon Powershot S5 IS.. it gives me a lot of freedom, but still can't manual focus by turning the lense, or just change the lense in general :/

I don't know what to call them, but i'm dubbing them "True" action shots.. this is the first one I did, and I really like it:

http://fc09.deviantart.net/fs71/i/20...10-d308cwv.jpg

The Dive of Death by ~trooper5010 on deviantART

In order to take the picture you need to set your camera on continuous shooting mode, (1 picture a second or less).. you should get a tripod for this but holding it in your hand is fine too... just make sure its pretty stable.

Once you have the pictures, or desired amount of images that's going to be in one image.. you want to edit it in Photoshop after you've done all your touch-ups and things.

Open up all the pictures and add them as layers on to the same file.. once you've done that, then select all your layers and go to Edit > Auto-Align Layers.. and click the reposition option.

After that, you want to crop the excess picture to make it look square or however you want, then go to Edit > Auto-Blend Layers, and then you click on the stack option. And voila! you're done.

[IABoomer]

I did something similar once at an indoor track meet, only instead of fixing the camera in one position, I followed a high-jumper and was able to create a panorama of her attempt.



It's been a little while since I put this together, but I'm pretty sure I used the Photomerge capability in Photoshop to select the individual frames and get them stitched together. Afterwards, I cropped out the dead space, leaving the full jump.

[dionv]

@trooper5010 Honestly, I first thought that was a shot of 4 kids jumping in rapid succession.

Nice editing job! Great shot, too.

Thank you for sharing the shot and the steps taken to make it.

DionV

[DelCan]

I thought it was 4 kids jumping also. Great job!

[chackk]

Yeah me too, lol. I was like, what if the second kid jumps directly onto the first one... Good job.

[jujitsu1]

Thank you for posting how it was done. I used to use microsoft group works for this type of shot but it no longer works.

[asp7yxia]

nice 1
fooled me too
great shot.

[fotoworx]

Nice capture, TFS.


Photography Tips

[ptigers31]

Your picture is great. Here is an action shot I did earlier this year. I didn't use the same method you did but using photoshop and other techniques I was able to get similar results:

[DelCan]

That's cool also! My wife has a cousin that has a sequence like that of a Purdue basketball player going to the hoop. They definitely make you stop and take notice. Great work.