One Game at a Time

Today was another great day for a baseball game. Not a single cloud in the sky and the temperature was a nice 70 degrees out. This evening's game was free and it started at 6pm (an hour earlier than most games). With the sun going down later and the game starting earlier there was a lot of light to play around with tonight. During post production I was surprised to find that many of my shots were overexposed!

The Terps ended up winning 6-3 tonight, but West Virginia gave the Terps a run for their money in the top of the 9th inning.

There were a good number of fans in attendance, but not as many as Sunday. As a result my movement around the stands was unencumbered. For the most part I stayed along the 3rd baseline or behind the plate until the sun was down very low. In the past I'd sit just to the left of the Maryland dugout and shoot somewhat into the sun. Even with a lens hood my shots were still washed out. I've learned to not even try that angle anymore until the sun is plenty low!

I also noticed that most of my baseball shots are of the pitcher. In Softball the infield is so much closer and there's so much more action in the infield I can easily shoot. With baseball the infield is much larger and it's very difficult to get some good shots at 200mm. The 2x teleconverter helps but it slows the glass down to f5.6, meaning I can only use it when there is plenty of sun. And even in lots of sun it can be difficult.

I made an honest effort tonight to shoot more of the infielders, and I came up short. I only captured 3 steals and in all of them entire the empire got in the way or the batter stealing base slid in with their face down. I managed to stop the action by increasing the ISO to 1600, but I didn't get their faces. As such I'm not including those shots on this blog. My fundamental rule is: you have to shoot face.

The exposure meter (the <--|-->) helped tremendously. I also read some articles today about not letting the scene fool the metering in your camera. The author recommended using Aperture priority mode to let the camera meter and produce a recommended shutter speed, and then move to Manual mode to lock the shutter and aperture in place. This worked exceptionally well, and with the exposure meter as a backup I was able to adjust the shutter speed so that most of my shots were properly exposed. Well, to be more accurate ... none were underexposed. If anything I was overexposed in several of them!

I also tinkered around with the pre-set white balance for a bit. When I get some time I'm going to read up on the CS behind white balance so that I understand it better. There's a huge difference in my shots when I change the white balance, and I'd like to figure out how to configure that setting based on the scene I'm shooting. I read an article about the "coffee filter" method. Not sure I quite understand what that means, but I'm sure I'll learn...

I've been thinking more and more about putting together my own flash based gallery. I've seen a few flash galleries and the look so great. I'll still use gallery as my dumping grounds for all my photographs, but I'm liking the idea of putting my "best of" pictures into some sort of polished flash presentation. I think that the transitions between shots can really make things look nice.
I've also been giving some more thought to making a waterproof cover for my camera out of an old wetsuit. With Julie's sewing experience and my engineering background I think we can come up with something that I can use to protect my body and lens during some drizzle. It's definitely a project I'll work on this summer.

Lastly I'm looking around for some more sports venues in which I can shoot. The Maryland season is drawing to a close as the students prepare for finals, and that means my subjects are disappearing for a few months. I sent a message to the Bowie Baysox and volunteered my time. I haven't heard back from them and if I don't hear from them tomorrow I'm going to write again. I also sent my name into the Baltimore Press Box. I don't expect to hear from them tho. There might be some smaller events that I could get into (horse rodeo, cycling events, etc) but I'm not sure where to look. Hopefully it'll come to me.

I'm also feeling the burn of not having a short-range lens. I'd like to use my tripod to do some night time shots of our house in NC but the shortest lens I have is 50mm. On a DSLR that's effectively a 75mm lens. I'd really like the AF-S 17-35mm f2.8 VR lens, but it's pretty pricey. I'm going to keep an eye out on Adorama and on Craigslist for some used ones. Hopefully I can find one in the $800 - $900 range.

Today was a fantastic day for shooting. The sun was shining brightly and the weather was great! It was in the low 60s and the humidity was very low. The wind was blowing a lot from the front that moved through last night. The azaleas are blooming for the 4th week in a row, and it was great weather for shooting outdoors.

I arrived at the Maryland Baseball game in the 2nd inning. The stadium was packed! It was the largest crowd I've ever seen at Shipley. It makes sense tho - the Terps were playing the #2 team in the country on a warm and sunny Sunday afternoon. A great day for a game.

The large crowd made it somewhat difficult to move around. I've gone to a lot of games were the bleachers are empty and in those games it was really easy to change my vantage point without worrying about getting in people's way. The biggest problem I had was the children - there were a lot of them and their parents weren't keeping track of them. They kept congregating around the entrance to the dugouts, which happens to be where I take pictures of the batters, pitchers, and first basemen.

I used my 2x TC for the first part of the game. It slowed the glass down to f5.6 but that wasn't a problem because of all the light. I made sure to adjust the white balance to use sunlight. I also played around with the ISO setting a bit. I took several shots at 200 and the rest at 400. After looking at the pictures at home I can't tell too much of a difference.

When I removed the TC my camera was struggling to keep up with the amount of light coming through the lens. My 70-200mm is f2.8 and I thought that I could slow it down but that doesn't appear to be the case. In retrospect that some sense. I'll have to double check it online.

I messed around with the EV correction and set it to be negative. That appears to darken the image, and that was pretty important for some of the shots. The sun was so bright and the Terps were in their whites today, so a lot of the shots came out overexposed. When in Aperture priority mode the shutter speed kept going from 1/8000 to "HI". I'm not sure what HI means, but 1/8000 seems familiar to me from the manual. Maybe it's the maximum shutter speed.

I learned about using the <---|---> gauge in the viewfinder today when shooting in manual mode. When in manual mode the little exposure gauge goes left or right to indicate the exposure. If it goes left the shot is overexposed. If it goes right the shot is underexposed. That's pretty useful because you can then adjust the shutter speed. I plan on keeping my eye on this little gauge - I think it'll help a lot down the road.

Overall I found myself shooting in Aperture priority mode for the most part. It was mostly sunny but there were a few scattered clouds. When the clouds covered the sun it became noticeably darker, and in M mode it was difficult to adjust the shutter speed correctly and quickly. I think tho that if it was completely sunny I would have used M mode.

With about 30 seconds left in the 4th quarter of the men's lacrosse game the skies opened up and it rained like crazy. I pay a lot of attention to weather forecasts and I had heard Saturday's forecast called for showers and possibly rain. So when it started raining I was worried that it would keep raining and I wouldn't be able to shoot the softball game. I hung out under Tyser Tower for a bit and put all of my gear into my bag and then ran back to my car.

When I got to Comcast Center the rain had fortunately stopped. During the drive over there I thought about doing some weatherproofing on my camera and lens. My D200 is weather-sealed, and my 70-200mm VR lens is supposedly weather-sealed as well, but it wouldn't hurt to put together something to better protect them in case of inclement weather. I have an old wetsuit that no longer fits and I think I can cut it apart and re-sew it as a cover for my camera. Julie can probably help me with the sewing project as well.

The game was pretty fun to shoot but it was difficult due to the low light. The cloud cover was really thick and it was getting later in the day so I had to increase the ISO setting and lower the shutter speed to properly expose the shots. Even doing that I underexposed most of my shots. I haven't yet figured out if it's better to use Aperture priority mode and let the camera calculate the proper shutter speed or if I should use Manual mode and try my best to learn what the best settings would be.

In between innings I spent some time navigating around the menus. On my D40 I knew almost every menu item by heart by the time I sold it. I haven't had that much time with my D200 and because there are so many dials on the outside of the camera I've had little need to poke around in the menus. I decided to use "More Vivid" image post-processing to see what that would do to my shots. I've noticed that in a lot of my pictures the subjects are soft. I was hoping that Vivid and More Vivid reduced the softness and sharpened the photos. I don't think this is a good test tho due to the low light conditions. I'll have to try it again.

The Terps took on the Yale Bulldogs on Sunday at Byrd Stadium in front of a packed crowd. It was senior day and so a lot of people came out to see the seniors off. The pace of the game was set in the opening 5 minutes of play with the Terps jumping out to a 4-0 lead.

It was a good shoot today. It was cloudy and I think that helped the exposure. When it's really sunny and the players wear white jerseys it's difficult to get a proper exposure. But when it's cloudy there's sufficient light to get fast shots but not too much light to overexpose.

This was my first shoot in Byrd Stadium during the day. I shot another Men's Lacrosse game but that was at night and it was before I had my 2x TC. I was hoping to get down onto the field but didn't have much luck at all. The recruits entrance to Byrd was locked shut and the CSC staff were searching people's camera bags. When they saw the size of my lens they shuffled me over to a desk that had a list of player's family members that were coming with camera equipment. Fortunately they just waved me on, but it was impossible for me to get down onto the field.

In retrospect I don't think it made too big of a difference. I was able to sit in the front row of the stands and that was only about 20 feet behind the other photographers on the field. It was kind of difficult to frame the shots tho because the people on the field kept getting in my way.

Greg was there shooting and he had an assistant he was mentoring. During half time I had a chance to talk with them and I found out that there's a group in Baltimore you can register with as an assistant and then you'll be called when a professional photographer needs some help. He mentioned that Washington DC has a similar program. I might look into that because the seasons are rapidly closing at Maryland and I'll have the entire summer off unless I can find some more places to shoot.

This evening's matchup was between the #2 ranked FSU Seminoles and the Maryland Terrapins. The first pitch was a preview of things to come: FSU came out and hit a home run off the opening pitch. They then proceeded to put another run on the board in the 2nd inning, and 3 runs in the 3rd. In the meantime the Terps only managed to get 1 hit and 0 runs.

Overall the game was an interesting (although difficult) shoot. The sun is so low in the sky when the game starts that you can only really shoot from behind the catcher or along the 3rd base line. A 200mm lens just doesn't get you far enough when trying to shoot the players on the bench and on first base.

I attached my 2x teleconverter, but that slows down my glass to f5.6 and as a result I have to increase the ISO to H0.7. That leads to very grainy pictures. I used to think I could just use a 200mm lens and crop the photos and zoom them because my D200 shoots in 10MP. But after trying it I noticed that the focus is simply off at that far range. I realize now that I need 400mm to be able to focus accurately from a distance, and for the time being my 2x TC is going to have to help me...

Tomorrow is a triple play: baseball, men's lacrosse, and softball. They all start at 1pm. I've been hoping to run into Greg at some of the games this week so that I could coordinate coverage for tomorrow's games. I go to all the games I can, and I very rarely see another photographer present. Naturally, the pictures on umterps.com don't represent photos from the actual game. I'd really like to figure out a way to get my photos up there when another photographer isn't shooting the game, and I was hoping that this weekend might be a chance to talk with Greg about it. Maybe I'll bump into him...

Work has sucked lately.

I left early this afternoon and decided to watch the Maryland Softball game. It was a double header with Penn State and was nationally televised on CSTV. Jonathan Coachmen (from the WWF) called play-by-play. Unfortunately the Terps lost both games.

There were some great opportunities for pictures because there was plenty of light. The first game started at 4pm and the second game ended around 7:15pm. I was able to shoot f2.8 at about 1/250th towards the end. I attached my TC and that slowed me down to f5.6 but I could still shoot pretty reliably.

Unfortunately most of the batters for Maryland are right handed and the sun sets over their back. That makes it difficult to get face shots while they swing. Too bad they don't play early-morning games. However, the sunset does through great light onto the infield.

While driving home I noticed the lights were on at the baseball stadium. I thought about stopping by but I noticed it was only the 3rd inning and I was pretty hungry. So I kept driving and I noticed the lights were also on at Ludwig (the soccer field). I stopped and to my surprise it was a women's lacrosse game. I grabbed my bag and headed inside.

I walked out onto the field and started taking pictures. Fortunately nobody asked me what I was doing there (probably because I had similar equipment as the other photographers). I sat down and took a few shots. Shooting at night under the lights is really difficult. I still haven't figured out how the professionals do it - all of my shots come out grainy.

Anyhow, here are a few of my shots. I hope you enjoy them.

If you have some suggestions on taking less grainy pictures at night under the lights I'd like to hear them. I'm shooting north of 1600 ISO with a 200mm f2.8 lens with VR in active mode. I'm using aperture priority mode and my shutter speed is usually around 1/100 or 1/120.

I'm looking forward to tonight: Baseball.

I shot 2 Softball games this weekend at Maryland. The softball stadium outside of Comcast is superb for shooting. You're really close to the action, and the Lady Terps offer up lots of great shooting opportunities - they yell a lot and really get into the game.

Here's one of the pictures I took this weekend when the Terps played NC State. I sent some of my photos into umterps.com for posting but the webmaster dropped them. I still haven't figured out how to get my pictures posted anywhere...