The all-purpose running photo/critique thread.

The one of the girls coming at you really is a great shot. The intensity is fantastic.

 

You can fix wonky horizons in Photoshop by tilting them a degree or two, It helps to fix players running down hills.

 

Hopefully I am not taking this off topic, but I too have a D100 that must be approaching 500,000 frames. When I bought it the guy said it should last for at least 250-300,000 if everything works well. The D100 has been a workhorse, I've used it just about every day in all weather since Sept of 2003, and other than some dirt it still works well.

 

Xan, I'd be curious to know what steps you take to prepare your photos for print. They appear overly sharpened, but that's not uncommon when you're putting photos down on toilet paper... I mean, newsprint.

 

I kind of liked the way this one worked, though I could probably crop even a little tighter - or looser to get the keeper in. My editor kept the keeper in, I favoured even tighter cropping.

 

This was a last second try to win a game.

 

We used this on our front page, and I had it laying around. Our camera isn't great with dark rinks and I shot through glass - hence the fuzziness, but I like the action in it.

 

I've put mine through the ringer and back again a thousand times. What a workhorse camera, though! There have been nights I took it atop a mountain for ski jumping (really fucking cold), to a hoops game inside a gym more humid than my crotch during those days in Jamaica and back to a hockey rink or 2. I don't think I've really cleaned the inside too much, and I've covered games amid dust reminiscent of the Mint 400 (how it was presented in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, the movie). Really worked the camera hard in 3-plus years. Surprised it hasn't told me to go take a flying fuggat. Great camera.

As for the steps to prepare photos for print ...

1) Take the mask off (some call it sharpen) at 1.5 radius. I'd rather have a hard, grainy look than the glossy shine. In my mind's eye, it adds something better that I can't really explain in words. But I like it, and I ALWAYS do it.

2) levels and contrast, and if necessary, curves. If really necessary, variations.

We have an old version of Photoshop, something like 5.5, and I don't think it's terribly adaptive to digital photos. I'd give my one remaining nut to have a Photoshop 7 or 8.

 

My two cents--crop real tight.
It's a good photo, a tight crop would make the main action, (the head ball) stand out.

 

Yeah, that's really what I thought, but I didn't win that argument. Thanks.

 

For a color photo, sharpening should always be the very last step before converting it to CMYK (never heard it referred to as taking the mask off). I would knock the radius down to 1.0, and the amount anywhere from 150-350. Even on newsprint, it should only look a little over sharpened.

I don't think that's the main reason why your photos look grainy though. That looks like artifacting to me, which happens when you save jpeg files at a high compression rate (lower quality number), especially if you've had to increase the size of the photo. If you find yourself having to up-res files on a regular basis, try doing it gradually - increase the size 10% at a time until you reach the desired size.

If you know how to use the dodge and burn tools, levels, color balance and the history brush, you could adequately tone 95% of the photos you'll ever take.

For example, a simple color balance of this photo


gives you this photo


The cyan color cast of the original photo is about the only complaint I ever had about the D100. No matter what white balance setting I used, I always had to tweak it to get rid of the cyan.

 

Terrific thread. Just as a point of reference, or inspiration, here are a couple of links to the online photo galleries at the Guardian UK.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/inpictures/0,,770631,00.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/gallery/2007/jun/07/internationalnews?picture=329992106