My first "Assignment"! C2100-UZ

[PFR]

After weeks of practices, and hundreds of practice shots, I was off to Ottawa this weekend on my first assignment to capture our skating team in action at a major competition. Thankfully the arenas were well lit and fairly bright. This allowed me to keep the shutter speed at around 1/100 - 1/125 while using an aperture setting of about 4.0 - 5.0.

Check out some of the shots at http://community.webshots.com/album/21966727yZqCKMHPjK . This is a small sample of the over 500 shots I took over the four days.

Please provide any feedback you may have. Comments, suggestions or critiques.

I noticed that the camera seemed to easily "lock on" to skaters in dark costumes with lots of detail, but had a hard time focusing on light coloured costumes with subtle details. Has anyone noticed a pattern in what the camera can easily focus on and what it has problems with?

I would have preferred some of the shots to be a lot sharper than they actually turned out.

All of the pictures are straight out of the camera with no post processing whatever.

--PAT

 

[Sandman]

PAT,

You really captured the "moment" in this nice series of photos. I am curious as to why I am seeing so much of the "jaggies" in these: the zig-zag edges of your subjects. It is more apparent in some more than others, but they should be smoother than this. Do you notice it? What was your ISO setting? What was your resolution (HQ, SQ, SHQ, TIFF) setting? What is your sharpness setting? I have not noticed the jaggies with the 2100UZ and just wonder if there is something you can do to diminish this. Or could it be the web site?

Thanks for sharing these. (remember I'm not an expert, just a student of this hobby).

Jim

 

[PFR]

I used HQ for most of the shots. I found that SHQ was taking too long to save the file and I would lose out on other good shots. The majority are taken at ISO 200, and some are at 400 to try to freeze the action better. The noise and jaggies to become very apparent at that setting. The other cause may also be the compression used by the webshots site. I notice that the initial image is of much lower quality that the full size one. Did you look at any of the poor images at full size? Let me know which ones in particular and I can check the actual settings used.

Thanks for the comments. I was warned when I started this that I was trying to take pictures in one of the worst light environments possible. Boy, were they right! I'm still waiting to get the "perfect" quality shot. The noise and lighting are making this almost impossible. Any recommendations? Aside from changing all the lights, that is.

I'm not sure who's having more fun. Me or the kids.

Here's another collection based on their practise sessions.
http://www.members.home.net/predmond/MyAlbum/

Its on my web pages so maybe the jaggie issue will not be as apparent.

PAT

PAT,

You really captured the "moment" in this nice series of photos. I
am curious as to why I am seeing so much of the "jaggies" in these:
the zig-zag edges of your subjects. It is more apparent in some
more than others, but they should be smoother than this. Do you
notice it? What was your ISO setting? What was your resolution
(HQ, SQ, SHQ, TIFF) setting? What is your sharpness setting? I
have not noticed the jaggies with the 2100UZ and just wonder if
there is something you can do to diminish this. Or could it be the
web site?

Thanks for sharing these. (remember I'm not an expert, just a
student of this hobby).

Jim

 

[eric]

well did they win the competition?

After weeks of practices, and hundreds of practice shots, I was off
to Ottawa this weekend on my first assignment to capture our
skating team in action at a major competition. Thankfully the
arenas were well lit and fairly bright. This allowed me to keep the
shutter speed at around 1/100 - 1/125 while using an aperture
setting of about 4.0 - 5.0.

Check out some of the shots at
http://community.webshots.com/album/21966727yZqCKMHPjK . This is a
small sample of the over 500 shots I took over the four days.

Please provide any feedback you may have. Comments, suggestions or
critiques.

I noticed that the camera seemed to easily "lock on" to skaters in
dark costumes with lots of detail, but had a hard time focusing on
light coloured costumes with subtle details. Has anyone noticed a
pattern in what the camera can easily focus on and what it has
problems with?

I would have preferred some of the shots to be a lot sharper than
they actually turned out.

All of the pictures are straight out of the camera with no post
processing whatever.

--
PAT

 

[Mike W]

Pat,

I didn't see the "jaggies" in the full size images. They are very good! My only suggestion would be to check your white balance next time. Check the white balance differences by changing and looking through your LCD. I adjusted one pic in paintshop pro as an example. Your could also post process these if you wish. I selected auto enhance color balance and picked the illuminant temp to 6500k and a strength of 50. This gets rid of the yellow tint. I posted the pic for you to check out. I have to leave for a couple of days. Will take it down Thursday night.

Mike W

After weeks of practices, and hundreds of practice shots, I was off
to Ottawa this weekend on my first assignment to capture our
skating team in action at a major competition. Thankfully the
arenas were well lit and fairly bright. This allowed me to keep the
shutter speed at around 1/100 - 1/125 while using an aperture
setting of about 4.0 - 5.0.

Check out some of the shots at
http://community.webshots.com/album/21966727yZqCKMHPjK . This is a
small sample of the over 500 shots I took over the four days.

Please provide any feedback you may have. Comments, suggestions or
critiques.

I noticed that the camera seemed to easily "lock on" to skaters in
dark costumes with lots of detail, but had a hard time focusing on
light coloured costumes with subtle details. Has anyone noticed a
pattern in what the camera can easily focus on and what it has
problems with?

I would have preferred some of the shots to be a lot sharper than
they actually turned out.

All of the pictures are straight out of the camera with no post
processing whatever.

--
PAT

 

[MarcelK]

I agree about the white-balans. You could also open the image in photoshop, choose adjust levels and use the white-color-picker to select a true white area.

Great pictures, good job!

Marcel.

I didn't see the "jaggies" in the full size images. They are very
good! My only suggestion would be to check your white balance next
time. Check the white balance differences by changing and looking
through your LCD. I adjusted one pic in paintshop pro as an
example. Your could also post process these if you wish. I selected
auto enhance color balance and picked the illuminant temp to 6500k
and a strength of 50. This gets rid of the yellow tint. I posted
the pic for you to check out. I have to leave for a couple of days.
Will take it down Thursday night.

Mike W

After weeks of practices, and hundreds of practice shots, I was off
to Ottawa this weekend on my first assignment to capture our
skating team in action at a major competition. Thankfully the
arenas were well lit and fairly bright. This allowed me to keep the
shutter speed at around 1/100 - 1/125 while using an aperture
setting of about 4.0 - 5.0.

Check out some of the shots at
http://community.webshots.com/album/21966727yZqCKMHPjK . This is a
small sample of the over 500 shots I took over the four days.

Please provide any feedback you may have. Comments, suggestions or
critiques.

I noticed that the camera seemed to easily "lock on" to skaters in
dark costumes with lots of detail, but had a hard time focusing on
light coloured costumes with subtle details. Has anyone noticed a
pattern in what the camera can easily focus on and what it has
problems with?

I would have preferred some of the shots to be a lot sharper than
they actually turned out.

All of the pictures are straight out of the camera with no post
processing whatever.

--
PAT

 

[Mike W]

Just a follow up. I notice it's not in all of your pics. Do you use auto white balance? If so, you could pick a dedicated mode like "flourescent lighting". That should do the trick.

Mike W
=========================

After weeks of practices, and hundreds of practice shots, I was off
to Ottawa this weekend on my first assignment to capture our
skating team in action at a major competition. Thankfully the
arenas were well lit and fairly bright. This allowed me to keep the
shutter speed at around 1/100 - 1/125 while using an aperture
setting of about 4.0 - 5.0.

Check out some of the shots at
http://community.webshots.com/album/21966727yZqCKMHPjK . This is a
small sample of the over 500 shots I took over the four days.

Please provide any feedback you may have. Comments, suggestions or
critiques.

I noticed that the camera seemed to easily "lock on" to skaters in
dark costumes with lots of detail, but had a hard time focusing on
light coloured costumes with subtle details. Has anyone noticed a
pattern in what the camera can easily focus on and what it has
problems with?

I would have preferred some of the shots to be a lot sharper than
they actually turned out.

All of the pictures are straight out of the camera with no post
processing whatever.

--
PAT

 

[PFR]

No. For most of the kids this was their first time skating at this level. It was viewed as an education experience from the start. Sort of an eye opener. Got the kids re-focused on where they have to get to.

PAT

well did they win the competition?

 

[PFR]

Thanks for the compliment.

I had the white balance manually set to flourescent as this seemed to give the "whitest" results.

I only have the run of the mill freeware type viewers and editors right now, and I can't seem to get the knack of tweaking the photo to improve it without blowing out some other aspect of it. Guess I'll have to keep trying.

I have a buch of other pic's taken at another arena where I couldn't figure out the lighting at all. No matter what WB I set they came out with an extremely yellow cast to them. None of the post processing I tried could get rid of the yellow without ruining the rest of the colours. Give me a shout when you get back if you'd like to try clean up one of them.

Thanks

PS How do you like paintshop pro? Is it worth the money?

PAT

Pat,

I didn't see the "jaggies" in the full size images. They are very
good! My only suggestion would be to check your white balance next
time. Check the white balance differences by changing and looking
through your LCD. I adjusted one pic in paintshop pro as an
example. Your could also post process these if you wish. I selected
auto enhance color balance and picked the illuminant temp to 6500k
and a strength of 50. This gets rid of the yellow tint. I posted
the pic for you to check out. I have to leave for a couple of days.
Will take it down Thursday night.

Mike W

 

[PFR]

One more note on WB. Most of the arenas seem to use mercury vapour lighting. Anyone know what setting would work the best for this type of lighting? I have found that the flourescent setting on the UZi gives the best results, but they could always use some post processing to clean them up. I guess this is one are in which a manual WB would come in very handy.

PAT

Mike W
=========================

 

[Brian]

Just our of curiosity, did you have the IS turned on for these shots?

After weeks of practices, and hundreds of practice shots, I was off
to Ottawa this weekend on my first assignment to capture our
skating team in action at a major competition. Thankfully the
arenas were well lit and fairly bright. This allowed me to keep the
shutter speed at around 1/100 - 1/125 while using an aperture
setting of about 4.0 - 5.0.

Check out some of the shots at
http://community.webshots.com/album/21966727yZqCKMHPjK . This is a
small sample of the over 500 shots I took over the four days.

Please provide any feedback you may have. Comments, suggestions or
critiques.

I noticed that the camera seemed to easily "lock on" to skaters in
dark costumes with lots of detail, but had a hard time focusing on
light coloured costumes with subtle details. Has anyone noticed a
pattern in what the camera can easily focus on and what it has
problems with?

I would have preferred some of the shots to be a lot sharper than
they actually turned out.

All of the pictures are straight out of the camera with no post
processing whatever.

--
PAT

 

[John McElwee]

I used HQ for most of the shots. I found that SHQ was taking too
long to save the file and I would lose out on other good shots.

You don't need to wait until the red led stops flashing to take the next picture. The camera has a high speed buffer than can hold a number of shots (depends on other settings) until it's able to write them to the card.

The
majority are taken at ISO 200, and some are at 400 to try to freeze
the action better. The noise and jaggies to become very apparent at
that setting.

Changing ISO speeds should not induce jaggies. When I viewed your images online I did notice weird jaggie like edges but when I saved the image to my hd and viewed them offline, they were fine.

The noise level does increase quite a bit at 400 (I try to use 100 only).

You're right about the lighting being very difficult. One thing I noticed is a yellow cast on most of the pics. Ice is not yellow (unless a little doggie has done his business there!). You may have had the camera set to auto white balance. I would suggest trying the indoor setting.

Also, if possible, move closer to the skaters. This will reduce the need for zoom which can lead to a smaller aperture and shake/blur from camera motion.

John

 

[PFR]

That got turned on and off over the weekend. Turning it off did give sharper pictures when panning, but allowed camera shake when relatively still. It was a catch 22 either way. By the last day I got into the habit of having it on until after the opening pose, then quickly turning it off to follow the movements. It really makes you learn where your menu settings are. I think I can leave IS on for the younger skaters because they are slower. The older ones are moving way too fast! On a couple of the close shots I would start pressing the shutter button pointed at 10:00 and have to follow them around to 2:00 before the shutter released. Those kids can move!

The shots where the moving skaters are sharply in focus and the background is streaked are definately non-IS shots.

I also did the same thing with the digital zoom. The "conference" shots with the coaches were taken with full digital zoom to get in real close. I had to make sure I turned it off before they started skating so that I would not over zoom.

All shots were hand held. I don't have a tripod but I am thinking of picking up a monopod for the next time.

Just our of curiosity, did you have the IS turned on for these shots?

 

[Marty Schultz]

I noticed that the camera seemed to easily "lock on" to skaters in
dark costumes with lots of detail, but had a hard time focusing on
light coloured costumes with subtle details. Has anyone noticed a
pattern in what the camera can easily focus on and what it has
problems with?

The auto focus system needs something with contrast to lock onto, so what you are describing is normal. It also needs some vertical lines to lock onto, but that would not have been a problem with the skaters.

If there was more light you could have moved back and used more zoom, if you are more than 50 or 60 feet from the object you can set the manual focus to infinity and leave it there.

 

[PFR]

The delay I was referring to was the viewfinder freezing up after each shot. It is only for a split second on HQ, but seems to be almost a full second on SHQ. In that second the skaters have moved about 10 - 15 feet and I have to find them again in the viewfinder. When using HQ I found that I could normally track them "blind" until the viewfinder came back to life. Have you noticed this characteristic with your viewfinder?

I tried to stay at ISO200 because that seemed to give a pretty good balance between noise and shutter speed. ISO 100 was simply too dark. I would get shutter speeds of around 1/60 which was too slow for a clear shot.

WB was set manually to fluorescent. The arena used mercury vapour lighting. These pics are white compared to some others I took at other arenas. The entire set looked like they were covered with a yellow film.

I couldn't get any closer to the skaters. I was right at the boards. They had taken a section of glass out to create a spot for the club photographers. I found that sometimes getting too close was worse than being too far. It was very hard to keep the subjects centered at full zoom. I got some really great shots of headless skaters. Some of the shake could also be from the cold!

Thanks for the feedback. I'm glad you liked the shots.

PAT

You don't need to wait until the red led stops flashing to take the
next picture. The camera has a high speed buffer than can hold a
number of shots (depends on other settings) until it's able to
write them to the card.

Changing ISO speeds should not induce jaggies. When I viewed your
images online I did notice weird jaggie like edges but when I saved
the image to my hd and viewed them offline, they were fine.

The noise level does increase quite a bit at 400 (I try to use 100
only).

You're right about the lighting being very difficult. One thing I
noticed is a yellow cast on most of the pics. Ice is not yellow
(unless a little doggie has done his business there!). You may have
had the camera set to auto white balance. I would suggest trying
the indoor setting.

Also, if possible, move closer to the skaters. This will reduce the
need for zoom which can lead to a smaller aperture and shake/blur
from camera motion.

John

 

[PFR]

Does zoom affect the focus? If I was 50 feet away without zoom and manually focused to infinity, would the object still be in focus when I zoom in closer?

PAT

The auto focus system needs something with contrast to lock onto,
so what you are describing is normal. It also needs some vertical
lines to lock onto, but that would not have been a problem with the
skaters.
If there was more light you could have moved back and used more
zoom, if you are more than 50 or 60 feet from the object you can
set the manual focus to infinity and leave it there.

 

[Marty Schultz]

Does zoom affect the focus? If I was 50 feet away without zoom and
manually focused to infinity, would the object still be in focus
when I zoom in closer?

Changing the zoom shouldn't change the focus. I know for very far away objects it doesn't, I can't remember if I've ever tried it when at the edge of where the lens goes to infinity.

The auto focus system needs something with contrast to lock onto,
so what you are describing is normal. It also needs some vertical
lines to lock onto, but that would not have been a problem with the
skaters.
If there was more light you could have moved back and used more
zoom, if you are more than 50 or 60 feet from the object you can
set the manual focus to infinity and leave it there.

 

[eric]

heh, to be a kid again huh?

PAT

well did they win the competition?

 

[John McElwee]

The delay I was referring to was the viewfinder freezing up after
each shot. It is only for a split second on HQ, but seems to be
almost a full second on SHQ. In that second the skaters have moved
about 10 - 15 feet and I have to find them again in the viewfinder.
When using HQ I found that I could normally track them "blind"
until the viewfinder came back to life. Have you noticed this
characteristic with your viewfinder?

You must have the record view (gives you a quick view of the image while it writes to the card) turned on. I have mine turned off and I thought it was off by default.

If you want to speed things up, turn it off.

In the "P" mode menus go to "mode setup" (menu 5/5) and press the right arrow. "SETUP" will appear. Press "OK". Then scroll to menu 2/3 and turn "rec view" to off.

You may want to turn on burst mode (press the "drive" button on the top of the camera until you see multiple stacked rectangle boxes appear). This will allow you to take sequenced action shots at a rate of about 2 frames per second.

I was at an air show a few weeks ago and used this mode a lot.

John

 

[PFR]

You're right. I have the record view turned on so I can get a feel of what is turning out OK. I didn't think it had that much of an impact on the processing speed. When I turn it off I get a black screen for about just as long. I'll have to run some tests to see how much of a difference it makes.

I tried the burst mode on some of the shots as well, It was great when taking a sequence, but I found that taking a single shot in burst mode seemed to take longer. Maybe it was the record view again. I'll turn it off tomorrow and try again. I also tried burst with continuous focus. Boy did that slow things down. The camera paused to re-focus between each shot.

Thanks for the suggestion.

PAT

You must have the record view (gives you a quick view of the image
while it writes to the card) turned on. I have mine turned off and
I thought it was off by default.

If you want to speed things up, turn it off.

In the "P" mode menus go to "mode setup" (menu 5/5) and press the
right arrow. "SETUP" will appear. Press "OK". Then scroll to menu
2/3 and turn "rec view" to off.

You may want to turn on burst mode (press the "drive" button on the
top of the camera until you see multiple stacked rectangle boxes
appear). This will allow you to take sequenced action shots at a
rate of about 2 frames per second.

I was at an air show a few weeks ago and used this mode a lot.

John