College lacrosse

[AlQ]

I'd appreciate any feedback on these pictures, especially if you are a pro and shoot for a living.
Some of the pictures are a little soft and all have been cropped. These are shot with a 7D, sunny day with Canon 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6, ISO 400 at about 1/2000th (maybe a little faster), on a monopod.

The main question I have is the ones that are a bit soft....is this from inability to keep the camera still or imprecise focusing on my part or motion blur....is this just an issue of me developing better skills at shooting action?

http://aqpictures.shutterfly.com/277

Thanks in advance for the feedback!

[jdepould]

(Moving this over to technique)

It looks like a couple of things to me ...

Firstly, a few frames look like they're just slightly off focus (sports: it happens). Secondly, it may be the 7D. I have a friend who kept getting assignments kicked back from editors because the images were soft. It magically stopped when she started using a Mark II. The hang up for you is that the 7D's AF system blows the 5D out of the water.

At that shutter speed, you shouldn't be getting motion blur on the majority of the players' bodies. You'll still get blur on the end of the stick for shots and the like, but not if they're just running with it.

Are you shooting wide open? That could also be contributing to some slight softness, though the L should be pretty good wide open.

This frame is from a D700 and 300mm prime: 1/1000 at f/2.8 and ISO1600. The center mass of the player appears a little sharper than a lot of your images, while the head has more motion blur than many of your shots. To me, that says it's less about shutter speed than the other factors.


On an unrelated note: are you from Long Island? I have a friend who teaches journalism at Stony Brook.

[AlQ]

Excellent feedback....thank you!

I moved up to the 7D this past year primarily to shoot sports, so this is a camera I will be sticking with for awhile, I think.

I was shooting wide open (f/4.5-5.6 depending on the focal length). I'll try closing it down a bit next time.

Your picture looks great considering it is at ISO 1600, but my impression is that prime telephotos take sharper pictures than even the good zooms (yes....?)

Thanks very much for looking!

(yes, I am from Long Island ; I'm a lacrosse coach and was lucky enough to be able to shoot at this game!)

[jdepould]

Originally Posted by AlQ

Excellent feedback....thank you!

I moved up to the 7D this past year primarily to shoot sports, so this is a camera I will be sticking with for awhile, I think.

I was shooting wide open (f/4.5-5.6 depending on the focal length). I'll try closing it down a bit next time.

Your picture looks great considering it is at ISO 1600, but my impression is that prime telephotos take sharper pictures than even the good zooms (yes....?)

The long primes are designed to work really well wide open, because of the way they're generally used. So yes, if you shot them side by side, the prime will give you a sharper image. I don't know a whole lot about the 100-400, but I don't think it has a reputation as a soft lens or anything like that.

Are you shooting at the longer end of the zoom range? Some lenses do better when you aren't zoomed to the max (don't know about this one, sorry).

Short of a 1D, the 7D is the right body to use, it's just that you lose some of the sharpness you might otherwise expect.

You might try increasing your sharpening in post, just be careful not to go too far with it, as you'll introduce aliasing and other artifacts that weren't there before.

[AlQ]

I'll have to check the sharpness at different focal lengths for this lens....some were at 200mm and some at 400mm. I guess maybe I'll have to try shooting with a prime at some point and see what I get in comparison.

I did increase the sharpness a bit (about 10%) for some that were soft on post process.

Thanks very much for the feedback; I appreciate you looking. As I try to get better, the feedback I get from pros is invaluable.

Thanks!

[jdepould]

Originally Posted by AlQ

I'll have to check the sharpness at different focal lengths for this lens....some were at 200mm and some at 400mm. I guess maybe I'll have to try shooting with a prime at some point and see what I get in comparison.

I did increase the sharpness a bit (about 10%) for some that were soft on post process.

Thanks very much for the feedback; I appreciate you looking. As I try to get better, the feedback I get from pros is invaluable.

Thanks!

You can probably use more sharpening than that. What program are you using? If it's Photoshop (or similar), I'd say do an unsharp mask on a separate layer, flip it to luminosity blending, and bring the opacity down just a tad.

This is how I generally sharpen in Photoshop: Sharpening

[AlQ]

I use Photoshop Elements for post processing; I don't know if I can do a masking layer in Elements, but will check it out.

The link to the "Sharpening" tutorial is very helpful though in understanding the process.

Thank you!

[jdepould]

Originally Posted by AlQ

I use Photoshop Elements for post processing; I don't know if I can do a masking layer in Elements, but will check it out.

The link to the "Sharpening" tutorial is very helpful though in understanding the process.

Thank you!

You don't actually need to do masking, just duplicate the layer and flip the blending mode to luma. Super easy.

[AlQ]

Thanks!
I was able to do an Unsharp Mask in PSE so at the risk of sounding ignorant, what is the difference between sharpeining through Unsharp Mask, and using the "Adjust Sharpening" option (which is in the same menu)?

The first picture in the album is one that I sharpened through the Unsharp Mask (115%, 1 pixel, 40 threshold). It didn't look like it resulted in halos or aliasing (?).

Message

Also, what does the luminosity and opacity control actually impact in that layer?

Thanks for your patience in explaining these aspects; I appreciate your feedback!

AlQ

[jdepould]

I'm not 100% of the difference to be honest. But basically USM works by altering the luma values on individual pixels to create higher apparent sharpness. Switching to luma blending means that's all the filter affects.

That image looks decent, you could probably bring the threshold and radius down--threshold seems pretty high.

It's important to mention: USM (or any other kind of sharpening) won't fix missed focus. It can help if your subject is within your field of focus, but it can't fix physics.