Track and Tennis

[mtngal]

I've been taking pictures of sports while the track team practicesand a couple of people bat a tennis ball around (the sports I've found recently during my lunch hour). I thought some people might like to see what you can take with the K20 and the manual focus A*300 lens. I'm very happy with the combination, though I'm still trying to figure out shooting sports. If I were shooting to sell, I'd try to get closer but since I'm just hanging out at lunch, I'm more limited. These are all taken from the stands.

Taking Off:



At the top:



Concentration:



As you can tell, I find pole vaulting fun to watch and photograph.

The Jump:



Made It:



The Serve:



Not exactly your normal tennis shot, but I thought this was rather neat, considering how high the ball was tossed up, and how it appears stopped way up above him.

Keeping Your Eye On the Ball:



I know, shooting at noon doesn't get you the best quality, but I was really happy with these pictures. All were taken using single shot rather than continuous shooting with the lens pre-focused (nice to shoot a sport that's relatively predictable). All have been cropped. These may all have been shot jpg (can't remember) on a couple of different days. It's been fun trying my hand at this - I don't have much of an opportunity to try sports.

[vIZnquest]

Harriet,

Pretty good for being up in the stands and then cropping the image. Also,with a manual lensto boot.

I looked at your exif information and see you tried different shooting modes, auto iso to just 100 iso, and also different metering.

I usually shoot in Av to keep it wide open as possible.I start400 iso (oft times I go even higher with myiso to get that fast shutter speed)with spot metering with the amount of sun you had to work with. I keep the shutter speed as high as possible and with these type of sports, 1/1000th of a second would suffice in freezing the action with minimal blur of the ends of the extremeties or equipment such as the tennis racket.

Some will say shoot wide, crop later. If you shoot autofocus lenses you will find not to have many keepers. Try to get a bit closer and fill the frame on the action. Sports is really about the faces in action.

That 50-135mm 2.8 would get you some very sharp shots if you can get close enough to fill the frame and blur the background nicely.


Mahalo,

Tom

[Wingman]

Wow! The sharpness and color are exquisite!

style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #000000"Jay

[ennacac]

Not much room for improvement there Harriet before you can sell those images. The are all geat shots with a MF lens.

Tom

[mtngal]

Thanks for the suggestions. I've been having some trouble with DOF - I tried f4 and ended up with a smaller DOF than I wanted but smaller apertures are horrible because of the very cluttered background I'm shooting toward. I usually keep the ISO at "Auto (100-1600)". I was often using Tv and in a couple of cases, TAv, then leaving the ISO to the camera.

Maybe some day I'll find a track meet and will try the DA*50-135 - I think it would be fun to be that close to the action. Until that time, I'll probably continue to shoot with the A300. If I were to do this more, I'd probably seriously consider the new DA*300, though for track, especially pole vaulting, it's easy to pre-focus using the stand and bar, then waiting for the action.

[Driver3]

Extremely nice colors and details, Harriet. That combo works well together and your handling of the manual focus is spot on!

Dennis

[Rodney9]

Terrific images, timing, colour and sharpness just right.

Rodney