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baseball pictures

Doreen
Apprentice

Hi..I have the EOS Rebel T3- EOS 1100D w/the standard lense.  I've also purchased the zoon lens. 

 

My question is....

 

I love taking pictures/videos of my son playing baseball.  It is so hard to get good shots especially with the fencing.  Any advice on which lens to use, which ISO, shooting jpeg or raw and should I use Auto or create my own settings ???  I will need help with this as well. 

 

Thank you for your help.  His games are mostly at night, if that helps. 

 

Sincerely,

Doreen

2 REPLIES 2

digital
Rising Star

You basically have to be the right distance to elimanate the fencing and shoot with the aperture wude open. I was about 4 feet away from the fence here. Not easu but with time yo can get it. The AF will be confused as it treis for focus on your son and the fence. Use center point and keep the shutter speeds up as well.  

 

http://i33.photobucket.com/albums/d74/Zenon1/_MG_9280-1.jpg

ScottyP
Authority

Hi Doreen,

 

Shooting anything at night is tough, because once you are at the lens's widest aperture, and if you still don't have enough light, then you are forced to slow down the shutter and/or raise the ISO.  A slow shutter won't work for an action shot in baseball, though you could probably get some decent ones when he is not moving.  Slow shutter also does not work well at telephoto lengths, like your 55-250 standard zoom at 250mm, due to camera shake.  Raising the ISO will lose detail and look grainy.   It is kind of a tough shot.

 

On the other hand, maybe it is a well-lit field?  In any event, I would not want to raise the ISO above 800 on a crop body like T3 due to signal noise.  Really ISO 400 would be better, if that is enough.  If you are just posting little images online, or printing small prints, you may not notice the noise, but if you crop it/blow it up 100% in post processing it will look pretty bad.

 

Your kit tele lens has Image Stabilization so you should be able to hand-hold at 1/200th, even though your crop body magnifies the 250mm to 400mm.  That is one stop of IS.

 

If  you can get a properly exposed shot at 1/200th without raising ISO above 800, that is what I would try if your son is standing still.  If he is running, you will get bad motion blur at that slow a shutter. 

 

But maybe the field is very well-lit.  If there is enough light, you probably want to shoot action shots at 1/500 shutter or faster.  It will help if you can "pan" with the camera, following the player with the lens as you are clicking.  This will reduce blur on the subject you are following, while blurring the background, making it look like the motion is very fast.  Takes practice to do smoothly. 

 

Not knowing how well-lit your field is, I am just guessing.  You will have to try it and see.  A new telephoto lens with a wider aperture (f/2.8) would help a lot, but the cost would be high.  You can always plan on shooting lots of shots at the few day games, when all these problems would go away and you could shoot at 1/2000th and ISO 100 or 200.  Smiley Happy  I would definitely shoot RAW so you can correct the noise and brighten the exposure a lot more successfully than you could with a JPG.

 

Good luck.

Scott

Canon 5d mk 4, Canon 6D, EF 70-200mm L f/2.8 IS mk2; EF 16-35 f/2.8 L mk. III; Sigma 35mm f/1.4 "Art" EF 100mm f/2.8L Macro; EF 85mm f/1.8; EF 1.4x extender mk. 3; EF 24-105 f/4 L; EF-S 17-55mm f/2.8 IS; 3x Phottix Mitros+ speedlites

Why do so many people say "FER-tographer"? Do they take "fertographs"?
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