Youth Soccer (lots of images... sorry)

[iCe]

A friend of mine asked me to shoot her son playing soccer on Saturday morning. And then some friends. And then some other friends... I kept all but a few of 185 frames. Mostly because some of the people won't care what the images look like because the image has their kid in it. I can relate

All shot with the 300mm f2.8L (first time out with it) which proved to be a little long on some occasions.

Non-paying and good for a full day of image processing instead of shooting wildlife like I wanted to. Oh well...











Dad is on the left and son is on the field.

[Daniel Bates]

Good stuff, Michael. I like!

[gardener]

Ya did good on these... I love shooting kid soccer simply because it's always moving. The big guys make better action (and a ton of money) but for Saturday sports action, it's hard to beat...

[thelegend1472]

i like these a lot too. sharp lens. nice job.

[iCe]

Thanks guys...

It was fun shooting but I need some more computer horsepower. I'm still working on images. The last 18 will be done in a half hour... maybe an hour. I was able to automate a good bit of the process but it still takes a lot of time. I could have made it easy on myself (they're free after all) and shot JPG but "that ain't how I roll" I'm treating them like I do my wildlife images and that makes for some big files to start with (16+ meg RAW and a 90 Mb TIFF, which is then sent thru NN Pro and saved as another 90Mb TIFF. Once those are run thru a Fred Miranda plug-in, saved as, then checked and cropped JPG's are made the original TIFF is deleted. Then the Noise Ninja TIFF is deleted. That leaves a cleaned and sharpened TIFF for cropping.). The last thing I do is an 8 x 10 crop, add a border, and level 10 JPG save which is done with an action (batch processed on open files). Por nada... I ain't bitchin though... I think they'll get some good memories out of the deal and that makes it worth it.

But I've got to do something about the PC horsepower... or lack of...

[Daniel Bates]

Good lord...


My workflow: 4 MP jpegs are a whopping 2Mb. Cull out the bad shots, individually adjust levels/contrast/sharpening sometimes/masking, save as edited files (jpeg again) in a new folder. Batch resize to 800x600. Upload, and post!

[iCe]

I even work in ProPhoto RGB colorspace and convert... I don't like throwing away data (no matter what the experts say) so I work in RAW then TIFF or PSD. I don't convert and save as JPG until everything else is done. 99% of what I do is automated. About the only thing I can think of that might speed the process up would be to crop and save the TIFFs and then batch process the directory that they are saved in (more files to delete later though). The speed issue arises from not being able to load more than 10 - 15 images at a time (for cropping) and that many images slows the PC down to a crawl. It takes a good 30 minutes just to crop them. If I happen to have a crooked one and need to straighten then add another 5 per image. Then another 10 to batch process the open files. I don't think that's normal... I think my PC has "issues". But 15 90Mb files is a lot to ask it to deal with so maybe not.

[Daniel Bates]

Maybe... (not to turn this into a completely off-topic gear discussion, but:)

I'm using a laptop, and it keeps up with me very easily. Of course, my file sizes are miniscule compared with yours. What specs does your computer have?

[My Porsche]

Is there really a 300mm f/1.2? because you've called it that on several occasions and ive never heard of any 300mm below f/2.8

[Daniel Bates]

Yes if by 300 you mean 85. iCe?

[iCe]

Originally Posted by My Porsche

Is there really a 300mm f/1.2? because you've called it that on several occasions and ive never heard of any 300mm below f/2.8

Only when I've been staring at a computer screen for a day and a half... You heard correct. 300 f2.8 is as fast as it gets as far as I know (and I think this is only the second time that I screwed it up )

The 85mm f1.2 rocks... but not for stuff like this... Focuses too slow. The II version is faster but mucho dinero... Someday... Maybe.

[iCe]

Originally Posted by Daniel Bates

Maybe... (not to turn this into a completely off-topic gear discussion, but:)

I'm using a laptop, and it keeps up with me very easily. Of course, my file sizes are miniscule compared with yours. What specs does your computer have?

It's "thinking" right now... and it doesn't like it when you interrupt "it's" thinking. I'll check it when I'm done with the last of these @*^#$@ images. 2+Ghz Pentium and 2Gb of RAM... but that's all I remember. Since it also doubles as my programming PC for home it has a ton of processes running in the background. That's probably the biggest hangup...

[Wendy]

Originally Posted by iCe

Thanks guys...

It was fun shooting but I need some more computer horsepower. I'm still working on images. The last 18 will be done in a half hour... maybe an hour. I was able to automate a good bit of the process but it still takes a lot of time. I could have made it easy on myself (they're free after all) and shot JPG but "that ain't how I roll" I'm treating them like I do my wildlife images and that makes for some big files to start with (16+ meg RAW and a 90 Mb TIFF, which is then sent thru NN Pro and saved as another 90Mb TIFF. Once those are run thru a Fred Miranda plug-in, saved as, then checked and cropped JPG's are made the original TIFF is deleted. Then the Noise Ninja TIFF is deleted. That leaves a cleaned and sharpened TIFF for cropping.). The last thing I do is an 8 x 10 crop, add a border, and level 10 JPG save which is done with an action (batch processed on open files). Por nada... I ain't bitchin though... I think they'll get some good memories out of the deal and that makes it worth it.

But I've got to do something about the PC horsepower... or lack of...

Holy cow! I don't think I'd ever pick up my camera again if I did all that! For youth soccer, I shoot RAW. I take a look at the images in PhotoMechanic before I even save all of them off my card, tag the keepers, and download only those. Takes less than a minute tops for a full 2 gig card. I then open the RAW files in Capture One and convert them to JPEGS, then upload to my website for the parents to view and purchase. If they need cropping, I crop in C1. That's all I do. I rarely even open them in PS. I spend maybe 20 minutes total processing and uploading shots to my website for a youth soccer game.

Can I ask why you're running these through NN? If you're shooting during the day, presumably you're at ISO 100-400, but no higher. I don't see why you'd need to run that through a noise filter.

As for the photos, I'm sure the parents are going to be thrilled with these! You did a really nice job. My only suggestions would be to watch your backgrounds - try to get them a little cleaner if you can. On #2 for instance, you could crop in closer in a portrait orientation and get that ugly yellow bar on top of the fence out of the frame. You'd lose the kid on the right, but remember that his parents aren't going to be interested in that shot anyway. The parent of the kid with the ball is going to like that photo and they could care less if another child is in the shot.

[iCe]

Hi Wendy,

I agree that it's too much however I did this as a favor. Most of the people that will print these images BARELY understand the concept of right-click, Save-as much less cropping. I felt obligated to give them the best I could (one of my weird traits) even though it was por nada.

As far as keepers go, since I didn't know the other kids or parents I figured I would let them choose the keepers. My thought was that evey image of a their kid is going to be important to them and I'm not doing this for a fee. I dumped about 10 because of technical errors (focus issues, etc).

Noise Ninja seems to help a little no matter what ISO I shoot at when I let it auto-profile using the MKII profile. Especially if I am running it thru CSPro afterward (Fred Miranda Sharpening plug-in for the MKII). Both are done with batch processing so there is no screen time for me. It just run it at night or when I'm going to be away. The only time consuming thing for me is cropping. Everytihing else is automated. Even so... I may take a look at some of them without using NN and see how they come out. Sometimes I do things out of habit and I picked that one up (using NN on everything) when I first started shooting digital.

Yeah, I actually debated about cropping a quite few of the "ugly yellow thing" images to get rid of it. In your example I left it because the kid added depth plus his momma might want to see him (free images remember). That's my "scenery" and my every kid is important to the parent thing thought process coming out.

Not arguing or saying it's right... just why. I wish I would have opened up a little and gotten less background detail for a lot of them (it works for some of them). But things were moving fast and I haven't shot a fast sporting event in a long time so I cheated and fudged up to f10. What do they expect for free?

If I were selling these I would probably do a lot less. Ironic isin't it...

For the record.. the next time someone says "can you come shoot my kids xxx game for free?". I am going to run away, screaming loudly, and waving my hands in the air That's way too much work for little to no R.O.I.

Thanks again.

[iCe]

ROFL... I followed your sport shooter link... and read "this story"

Good advice there...

Clean Backgrounds
Please pay attention to your backgrounds. Be aware of the cars, chain-linked fences, distracting advertisements, really awful bright white blobs, cheering parents, hot dog vendors, lighting fixtures, stray dogs, piles of uncollected trash, etc.

If you are at an event, actually take the time to look at the background through your lens – if it is filled with clutter, do something about it.

Move around. Find another shooting location that will give you a cleaner background. Try and shoot backlit so your background becomes the backlit trees – which will go dark-green or black.

If there is not a good background available from any position, try looking for an up position to shoot from. Shooting from overhead is cool because the ground becomes your background - that can mean a solid brown background (infield dirt in baseball) or a solid green background in football or baseball.

Also - the longer the lens you use the cleaner your backgrounds will be. Shooting baseball or football with a 70-200 zoom at f/11 will most likely result in really cluttered, very sharp and detailed awful backgrounds because there is too much depth of field.

Shooting with a 400mm or 600mm lens wide open (at f/2.8 or 4) will really help to clean up your backgrounds by throwing them drastically out of focus (which is a good thing) - thus making your main subject pop out and make the picture more pleasing to look at and easier to read.

So rather than think about what I think a parent might think (whew)... I need to think about the image... duh