Spring Training baseball.

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nullvector

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Apr 16, 2002
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Here's a lucky shot I got off at one of the games so far this Spring Training.

Couldnt believe I got this one. It was hard enough timing the ball as soon as it left the pitcher's hand, let alone getting a pic with the ball right on the end of the bat. Even in the shadow, the ball is touching the bat. Taken with Digital Rebel, and 70-300mm.

Enjoy :)

smack.jpg


Here's another one after the guy took a golf swing at a ball and missed badly.

whiff.jpg


Updated: Here's two more I got around to resizing.

Chipper Jones got up for his first at-bat of the game.
chipperjones.jpg


John Smoltz pitched about 2 innings.
johnsmoltz.jpg


The game featured lots of pitchers, most of them nobody recognized.
pitch.jpg
 
wow man those are great pictures

what shutter speed were you using to capture a 90mph ball?
 
I put some more pics in the first post. Going through 500 of them takes a long time..heh.
 
Love the Smoltzy one, can I get it in HI-RES? I love you long time if so. :D just kidding on the love thing, but I would like a HI-RES.;)
 
Tiny said:
Love the Smoltzy one, can I get it in HI-RES? I love you long time if so. :D just kidding on the love thing, but I would like a HI-RES.;)
Click to expand...
Sure. Here's one at 1600x1067, if you need larger, I can go up to 3072x2048
 
I'm assuming this is the canon version of the 70-300?

Good shots, especially from the stands. Great capture on the first image...especially with a rebel :eek:

Pro's have a hard time getting the ball on bat with $5000 cameras that shoot 8 frames in a second...you managed to capture it with a peice of plastic that you can pick up for $600 and shoots under 3 frames per second....not to mention the shutter lag. Good job.

However, perhaps you could crop it slightly tighter, and rotate it a little clock wise.

What was teh shutter speed on that shot?
 
It was a Tamron 70-300mm http://tamron.com/lenses/prod/70300mm.asp

Thanks for the kind compliments. The shots are hardly pro-quality, but I'm slowly getting better, hoping to eventually get a 20D one of these days. I'm still working on framing shots correctly, the difficulty with sports is quickly being in the right spot/zoom/view when something cool happens.

I came up with a little technique after a while at the game, (about the 7th inning), where I'd mentally note the shutter lag, and hopefully compensate for it when the pitcher releases the ball. The easiest way to do this, was to watch the batter's reaction to the incoming pitch, as soon as it looked like he was initiating a swing, id hit the shutter. Came pretty close with some much better shots, but that was the only one I managed to "connect to the bat". That ball actually fouled off and hit the stands about 15ft from where I was sitting. Even without that one lucky shot, it was a good technique to get a look at some good strikeouts :)

Shutter speed I think was 1/500? I'll check the EXIF data later. I think I had ISO at 200, but I might be wrong. I'll do some work on that picture and maybe re-upload it, I think I was fully in at 70mm for that shot, and it might already be cropped. I'll do some work to try to get it better.

In about 2 weeks I'm going to shoot the "53rd Annual 12 Hours of Sebring" in Sebring, Florida. It's an American LeMans series race with some cars that are really amazing. I'm hoping to get a 28-135 Canon IS lens before then, I'll post some shots here when I get them.
 
Shutter speed I think was 1/500? I'll check the EXIF data later. I think I had ISO at 200, but I might be wrong.
Click to expand...

Thats about what i expected. Dont be scared to bump that ISO up to at least 400, the noise is minimal and you wouldnt get so much motion blur in he bat.

I bring up the lens becaues most 70-300's are not very good, especially sigmas. The shots arnt "sharp" as far as say...a $3,500 canon 300mm f/2.8. However, they are more then acceptable. I'm impressed with the results.
 
nullvector said:
Sure. Here's one at 1600x1067, if you need larger, I can go up to 3072x2048
Click to expand...

The 1600 did the job! Thank you. Those are great pics, very crisp...makes me want to invest in a higher-end camera.

p.s. I like IMG_0870 too.
;)
 
There's the slightest bit of motion blur in those. Don't be afraid of higher ISOs. The rebel can handle even 800 reasonably well

EDIT: TQ said almost the same exact thing.. LOL.
 
mwarps said:
There's the slightest bit of motion blur in those. Don't be afraid of higher ISOs. The rebel can handle even 800 reasonably well

EDIT: TQ said almost the same exact thing.. LOL.
Click to expand...
Yep, there is motion blur, its really my first time doing fast-action shots for baseball, so I was changing alot around to find the right combination of settings.

I checked ISO on the EXIF, it was actually at 100 for the smoltz and bat-ball shots. Explains alot of things.

I have pretty good results at 400-800, I'll remember to set higher next time I'm doing fast-action stuff.

Thanks for the input.
 
wow man, nice shots.

one question I have, is why the HELL would people need 1/8000 shutter speed if 1/500 looks just dandy, and with basically no blur at all?
 
DaCoOlNeSs said:
wow man, nice shots.

one question I have, is why the HELL would people need 1/8000 shutter speed if 1/500 looks just dandy, and with basically no blur at all?
Click to expand...

1/500 doesn't cut it for ... anything involving fast motion. Baseball, especially. If you want ball on bat shots, you need up to 1/8000
 
I agree with mwarps, 1/500th is almost too slow for baseball. I'm still learning alot of this stuff, so I used a lot of different speeds in the 5-600 shots I took that day.

Like I said before, I got really lucky with that bat/ball shot. 1/500 is in no way fast enough to accurately catch something like that. Even in the smoltz shots, there is some blur at 1/500.

I'm taking some shots next weekend at an American LeMans race, where the cars hit 200mph+ on the straightaway. Ill take some comparison pics at different speeds and put them in a new thread so you can all see the difference. Hopefully what I've learned from analyzing the baseball pics will help me get cleaner pics in the future.
 
nullvector said:
I agree with mwarps, 1/500th is almost too slow for baseball. I'm still learning alot of this stuff, so I used a lot of different speeds in the 5-600 shots I took that day.

Like I said before, I got really lucky with that bat/ball shot. 1/500 is in no way fast enough to accurately catch something like that. Even in the smoltz shots, there is some blur at 1/500.

I'm taking some shots next weekend at an American LeMans race, where the cars hit 200mph+ on the straightaway. Ill take some comparison pics at different speeds and put them in a new thread so you can all see the difference. Hopefully what I've learned from analyzing the baseball pics will help me get cleaner pics in the future.
Click to expand...


Remember to try and convey some motion. Race cars look good when they look like they are going fast.

Look up "panning"
 
awesome pics of my favorite team! someday they're gonna win more than division... looking forward to your LeMan's pics
 
Nice Pictures, I especially like the one whiffing on the ball...hopefully everyone on the Atlanta team will copy that particular swing this year. :D
 
How fast of a shutter would you need for 200mph+ cars to look like they're dead stopped?
 
EnforcerGT said:
How fast of a shutter would you need for 200mph+ cars to look like they're dead stopped?
Click to expand...

It depends on how far away the car was, what lens you were using, and your angle on the car.

My question to you is, why would you want the car to look stopped?
 
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