I was asked to take a few pics for a friend's daughter's 8U soccer game. I thought I was doing well with the D300 and Sigma 120-300mm f2.8 lens. I was chimping during the game and thought the pics looked good until I got home and looked at them on the monitor. I seem to have been catching quite a haze. I use a UV/Haze Sigma filter, and about half way through the game I switched to a Sigma circular polarizer. Are there any tips for eliminating this haze? I was trying to shoot with the sun at my back, but for some of the pics that doesn't seem to work. TIA, Matt
what time of day were you shooting? as for the filters, and this is only my preference, i wouldn't use them for sports photography.
If you show us some of the photos, we might have a better idea what caused the haze look. Things to consider doing to minimize this: Clean front element (no dust, no fingerprints) No filters Sun at your back (no sunlight on the front element and subject front-lit) A good lens hood Proper exposure w/o too much contrast setting
With out photos as others have said this an stab in the dark I use a sigma with out filter with no problems
Yup, pix will help. FWIW I shoot this combo, just posted some from today, and the past month have made several posts if you search on my username...
I had to run out to my son's baseball game last night, so I couldn't stick around to see any replies. I'm at work now, so I'll get an example posted when I get home. Oh, and the game started at 10:30 am and ended at 11:30, so it was pretty much mid day.
For those interested in a larger version, I found it here: This image just has very low contrast. The likely reason is that you were shooting into the sun, perhaps even with sun on the front element which causes scattered light in the lens to reduce the overall contrast. This image can be improved a lot with simple post processing. In the future, you either have to avoid shooting into the sun or you have to get the exposure right while keeping the sun off the front element. In these conditions, I would definitely avoid a filter on the lens as that's just an additional sun-lit surface to cause scattered light. I did a black point adjustment and a white point adjustment and an s-curve for additional contrast. That turned this: {} Into this: {}
Thanks for the help, next time I'll try to keep the sun out of the equation. I'm using the Sigma LH1134 lens hood, which is a large hood that comes with the 120-300 f2.8 APO DG HSM EX lens. I'd rather get as good as capture as I can than spend time in PP. I've got Lightroom 1 and CS3, but I just HATE sitting in front of the 'puter to fix a shot that I should have gotten right the first time. Again, thanks for the advice, next time I'll take the filters off. Matt
Nice work on this John, I agree with what you have said The secret of shooting into the sun is using +EV comp (+.3 or even +.7) and get as much of the player in frame as possible to minimise the blown backgrounds. You can get some VERY nice results. Mike Mac is the master of this imho.
