A little intense.

[KHarmon]

Baseball season is here again. Baseball reigns supreme in the sporting world for me. My wife calls herself a "baseball widow" from February, when the college season begins, until October when the World Series ends.

Texas Tech had their opening series this weekend and my son and I took in a double header. Tech won the first game handily but the second game was close until the 7th inning before Tech got some breathing room. They were playing Indiana who starts the season ranked #3 in the nation.

Had great seats to view this little disagreement between the 1st base umpire and the Indiana close. An Indiana player was called out on a very close play at first base and the coach took issue. A little fuzzy for my liking but I'm going to keep them.

1.


2.


3.


4.

[John 2]

Great series of "testosterone" shots. Nice story telling.

[bnnrcn]

I certainly agree with John

[NorthernFocus]

The last one is really great. You caught the vein popping out on the guy's neck that really shows haw hard he was yelling. An the ump's expression is great. Looks like someone was about to get ejected?

[ShaneS]

Nice series John. I can relate and I offer my sympathies to your wife...

The fans do love a good argument don't they? These types of shots are quite difficult to capture from the stands for a number of reasons - getting a good angle to shoot from and avoiding getting other fans in the shot just to mention a few...

What focal length you were using? I'm guessing they are slightly soft because a a long focal length and the shutter speed being a tad too slow? I ask out of curiosity rather than as a critique.

[KHarmon]

I'm not sure why, but the original looks more in focus that the post processed image. I was shooting in AP mode at 1/1600s and because it was getting shady I had jacked the ISO to 800 to get good shutter speed on the players when they were at bat. When I post processed these pictures there was definitely an issue with noise so I did noise reduction and it made the image appear fuzzier than the original. I applied an unsharp mask and it helped but these are still fuzzier than the original. I don't know why that is, but with the exception of the first one (which is fuzzy no matter what) the others are sharper in the original than the post processed images.

[ShaneS]

Kris...you are way over my head when you talk about noise and post processing. I would be interested to hear potential solutions to this dilemma from others.

My sympathies are now with you too