Aperture

I have two lenses for my camera. One is an 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6, and the other is a 55-200mm f/4-5.6. I’d like to get a 300mm or 400mm f/2.8 lens. The f/2.8 means a wider aperture, which means I can lower the ISO, and speed up the shutter release. The softball photos from the other day were OK, but this lens would be great. It would also soften up the backgrounds some more. I’m a fan of soft backgrounds. But that lens costs a couple thousand dollars. I’ll have to do some saving to get it. Another thing I need to do is get down to the same level as my subject. The softball photos were shot from the stands and look down on the field. The sports photos I like to look at are at eye level with the players. I’m going to a baseball game Wednesday, and I think I’ll be able to get in a good spot at field level. Hopefully I’ll be able to get some better shots.

In the meantime, it stopped raining today, so here are some shots I took at the park.

The application of knowledge

So I learned that I needed to turn up the ISO so I could turn up the shutter speed so I could have sharper action shots. I went out today and turned the ISO all the way up to 1600. The aperture on these two shots was f5.6. The shot of the guy was 1/1250 shutter speed, and the girl was 1/2000. I noticed some grain when I was color correcting and cropping in Gimp, but it wasn’t too bad. It was cloudy today. I think if it was sunny, I could have dialed back to ISO 800 and maybe shot with a little faster shutter speed. This was at Wilson Park in Fayetteville, Arkansas. Comments are appreciated.