Baseball Shooters

[peety3]

mattsartin;


My 40D is seldom off the AI Servo and High speed settings....most of my time photographing is spent trying to capture birds in take off/landing situations as well as in flight.


If the situation arises for a 1 frame, static shot of a bird.....my practice of rolling my shutter finger usually allows me that 1 frame shot. I've not yet perfected this technique....but is a quick 2 or 3 shot burst of a static subject a bad thing?


I seldom maximize the 6.5 fps capability of the 40D; I watch the birds for movement indicators and try to anticipate that moment.


Rarely do I find myself selecting the first frame of the shooting sequence.


When I can afford to move up to a FF body, it will be the 1D Mark lll (or 1D Mark ll N), because it's 10 fps ability separates it from the rest of the FFs.


Oh yeah, I do end up w/quite a few (many hundreds) shots during these sessions....so make sure you have plenty of memory available.
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For reference, the 1D series is not full frame. It's less crop than the two-, three-, and four-digit models, but it's not full frame. The 1Ds series is full frame, but it's not 10fps.


I'm slowly learning to admit that I have a thick skull. When I first got the 10fps monster, I used to rip away and toss 90% or more in the bucket when I came home. Lately, I'm getting better at shooting the right shot the first time (and shooting it right - desired composition, desired lighting, etc.) so that my post-processing time is shorter and my disk consumption is lower. I filled a 1TB drive with my/our work from 2002 through 3/2009; we've killed another 1/4TB in two months (with six events, admittedly). All too often, I'd fire away in HSD and not know what actually made "the roll" until I got home and reviewed. I don't like going home unaware of what I really got. In addition, firing away like that led to bad habits - the first and last shots were often blurry, because I wasn't using good technique on a consistent basis.


My opinion (and it's nothing more than that, except that I suspect a lot of folks with tens of thousands of frames shot would agree) is that it's all about timing, anticipation, and truly knowing your equipment. A "better" camera is going to shorten the shutter lag, so you'll have to learn that difference, but it's not going to change much else.


Do try shooting with flash sometime. When you have to wait 2-5 seconds for the flash to recharge, you'll see a lot of stuff disappear in front of you, and you'll gain an ability to read the action. Shooting at 6.5fps means you'll be taking a shot every ~154ms. Shooting baseball outdoors in the daytime probably leads to shutter speeds of 1/1000th or better. At 6.5fps you're still only capturing 0.6% of the action!

[Bill W]

Peety....thanks for the correcting my thought about the 1D Mark lll. Sounds like you and I have something in common.....a thick skull. []

[Dallasphotog]

For sports performance at a budget price, you might go shopping for a used 1DMKII. The MKIIN is an even better choice, but still runs about $1,750 used here in Dallas. I've seen the 1DMKII for $900-$1,100. They're built like tanks and the autofocus is quite good. The downside side is it will feel like a bowling ball compared to your XTi.

[Colin]

Even at only 5 fps, the higher possible frame rate is why I sometimes keep my 30D on the lens instead of the 5D.


Before my kids' gymnastics place closed, I used AI servo and continuous shooting a LOT. Even if I didn't just press and hold and let the machine gun roll, it was nice to be able to take another shot immediately. Example, kids running up, jumping off the spingbroad, hands hitting the fault, kid in the air over the vault, kid preparing to land, kid landing, kid falling over. Even if you're able to press your shutter individually, the capacity for a higher frame rate in the camera helps a whole lot.


I wouldn't want to go around spraying 10 fps all the time, but I sure wouldn't mind having the capability. It's good to develop intuition and timing to be able to get the shot with less, but if the priority is to get the shot, get it anyway you can, I think.

[joback]

Colin: Yes, I agree andfeel the same way about my 40D. When I was shooting the California governorat a podium (see earlier post), I used a 5D mkII. That's aclear shot where the 5D shines.I quickly switched to the 40D for its burst rate whenthe governorpressed intothe crowd.Yes, it's cumbersome tolug two cameras around. I don't do thata lot, but it's necessarywhen you need the best of both worlds.

[Colin]

Joback, what event was it that he received a lei?


Looks like a Hawaiian contituency []

[joback]

Thanks for the interest, Colin: This reception at the Stanford Mansion in Sacramento was to celebrate "Asian and Pacific Islander American Heritage Month."


FYI: Shots of various VIPson the following page are about 70% from a 5D mkII and the rest from a 40D. The client is the public service organization who sponsored the event. Thephotographsinclude the Governor,state legislators, a former NBA star who's mayor of Sacramento,local media personalities,business leaders, and other pillars of the community: http://www.apapa.org/news/2009_governors_reception.htm

[Bob]

<span style="font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 9pt;"]Look at the frame rate as 1/framerate. i.e. (5fs = an imageevery 200 ms or3fs = an image every 333ms). <o></o>


<span style="font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 9pt;"]Can you show us a series of images and tell us what you would have liked to captured but missed?<o></o>


<span style="font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 9pt;"]Also the frame rate of a camera assumes that you are shooting wide open, otherwise the frame rate slows down to allow the aperture to settle.<o></o>

[mattsartin]

i don't have an example of a particular series sorry, i was shooting wide open though, a few samples are available in a previous post: College Baseball

[peety3]

<span style="font-size: 9pt; font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; color: black;"]Also the frame rate of a camera assumes that you are shooting wide open, otherwise the frame rate slows down to allow the aperture to settle.

Huh? The frame rate assumes that have a high enough shutter speed (model-specific, but often around 1/250th) to give the camera time to do its thing, but I've NEVER seen anything that suggested that the camera could shoot faster wide-open. I have seen a menu option in the 1D Mark III series of cameras that allows a shorter (but variable) shutter lag - it defaults to 55ms for all apertures, but if selected can shorten the shutter lag to as short as 40ms, aperture/lens-dependent.