2013 Carson High Varsity Baseball vs. Elko

First home game… first win of the season for the Senators and for new Head Coach Manoukian!  They continue their season on the road tomorrow at Reed High for the Mike Bearman Tournament.  (There is a chance that they’ll play Douglas at home Saturday evening (5) instead of at Reed…)

Here’s a few shots from the game today… see below for my photographer follies…. 🙂

130307_Carson_instaimage_Baseball_Out at FirstChase… takin’ one for the team…130307_Carson_instaimage_Baseball_Take one for the TeamWas he out?  Was he safe?
130307_Carson_instaimage_Baseball_Throw to FirstTwo big plays happened in the game that were “memorable”… Luke “powering” through the catcher… which I did “get” but all were blurry (beyond keeping blurry…)… (keep reading…) and this dive by Gehrig… which is also blurry… but this one not near as much… so… how does this happen?

130307_Carson_instaimage_Baseball_Flying Tucker

Yes, we have these new fancy cameras with VERY good auto focus… if they’re so great why does this happen?  Several factors can be involved… the camera I’m shooting with will shoot 12 frames per second.  The autofocus can and does keep up with that… meaning that in-between those 12 frames per second it is in fact trying to focus.  Here’s the autofocus “overlay” of the shot above.Screen Shot 2013-03-07 at 8.56.32 PMSee the red square?  See that it’s not “on” anything… that red square is where the camera is trying to obtain focus.  I chose that point… the best way to try to get consistent results is to use just one point but the catch is that you need to get that point on the player… I missed… This play happened down the third base line… When the pitch was thrown I was kneeling down on the home plate side of the dugout, far enough back that I could not see this area… As I watched the ball go up, and saw Gehrig running for it, the only thing that went through my mind was a similar play that he made at the Galena scrimmage on Saturday… that I missed… so I jumped up, picked up the camera (which sits on a monopod due to weight…) and moved out to where I was clear of the players in the dugout and fired away… and I missed… so as “smart” as these cameras are, sometimes it just does what I’ve told it to do too well….

The situation with Luke was a bit different but also a very common “problem” that sports photographers run into… the camera can grab focus on things that pass in front of the action that you’re trying to shoot… It’s particularly bad in football and basketball… but when you’ve got plays at the plate and the ball being thrown around, all good teams will have players in backup positions… they have to get there somehow… and that’s what the camera can sometimes grab focus on… again, it’s so smart that it grabs focus on that point, it’s doing what I’ve asked… 🙂  … the life of an action photographer.