K-3 Football Images - Part 2

These are images taken with my K-3 under the meagre floodlighting available at Knaresborough Town FC - the sun had set about an hour before I took these. Both images are at 6400 ISO and no more than 50% cropping. So you can see the noise levels there is no NR applied and the noise is pretty ugly when viewed on my 27 inch screen. Aperture's in-built NR seems pretty ineffective anyway so I'm going to need to investigate a decent NR plug-in.

What I was incredibly impressed with was the K-3's ability to lock focus under such low lighting (1/800 sec, f/2.8, ISO 6400). In fact the focus lock behaved exactly the same as it did in the early part of the match when there was some daylight. I used a single point so no AF matrix tracking.

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My PPG link
K-3, K-5 + D-BG4 Grip, Pentax: FA 50 1.4, DA* 300, Sigma 70-200 2.8 Macro HSM II, Sigma 18-50 2.8 EX DC, Metz 58 AF-1

There's something more gritty and conveying the atmosphere of the game with these than I've seen from examples in bright floodlighting. the narrower DOF @ 2.8 also helps.

Not bad shots at all

The improving AF of the latest Pentax models over the Original K-5 is notable

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[i]Bodies: 1x K-5IIs, 2x K-5, Sony TX-5, Nokia 808
Lenses: Pentax DA 10-17mm ED(IF) Fish Eye, Pentax DA 14mm f/2.8, Sigma 17-70mm f/2.8, Pentax-A 28mm f/2.8, Sigma 30mm F1.4 EX DC, Pentax-A 50mm f/1.2, Pentax-A 50mm f/1.4, Pentax-FA 50mm f/1.4, Pentax-A 50mm f/1.7, Pentax DA* 50-135mm f/2.8, Sigma 135-400mm APO DG, and more ..
Flash: AF-540FGZ, Vivitar 283

I did notice some strange AF behaviour though. I originally custom set up as the first image with focus priority and subsequent images with release priority and found that the K-3 wandered off focus. I checked it was the AF and not me by selecting a slowly walking player so I could be sure I was keeping the focus point on the player. Once I'd confirmed this I changed the setting to focus priority for both first and subsequent and noticed a dramatic improvement in hit rate when bursting. In some cases this did noticably affect the burst speed but it was still pretty rapid.

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My PPG link
K-3, K-5 + D-BG4 Grip, Pentax: FA 50 1.4, DA* 300, Sigma 70-200 2.8 Macro HSM II, Sigma 18-50 2.8 EX DC, Metz 58 AF-1

As a football fan. There is always something a little more interesting about games under floodlights. These two are very acceptable journalistic shots. In fact imho the noise adds to the quality...

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K-1Gripped K-1 ungripped K-5ii K7 Various lenses

Stuart..

I think they are great and "tell it how it was"

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Regards
Stan

PPG

Nothing wrong with those two shots for me. 'Gritty' is good.

karlo

Superb footy photos from a big footy fan, but the noise is quite bad isn't it, but if printed in a newspaper I guess it will never be noticed.

Very impressed

Excellent shots, they capture the action really well.

Regards
David

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Flickr

Nicola's Apartments, Kassiopi, Corfu

Some cameras, some lenses, some bits 'n' bobs

Very nice

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K10D, K5 plus plenty of clueless enthusiasm.

My Flickr site link

A lot better than my efforts from last week I love the first shot in this sequence.

As for the noise, I found that LR5.3 cleaned my images great but I don't find it obtrusive in these shots at all.

As I thought the Sigma 70-200 looks to be the lens of choice, we will see if I can match these next week.

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Cheers
Brian.
LBA is good for you, a Lens a day helps you work, rest and play.

I've acquired Topaz DeNoise which has done a good job but people actually seem to like the "grain" so I'll keep them like this. Best of luck at your next match and, of course, post the images on here for me and everyone else and hopefully we can learn and improve together.

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My PPG link
K-3, K-5 + D-BG4 Grip, Pentax: FA 50 1.4, DA* 300, Sigma 70-200 2.8 Macro HSM II, Sigma 18-50 2.8 EX DC, Metz 58 AF-1

Thank you everyone for the feedback. I wasn't sure how the shots under floodlight would turn out but the atmosphere and the ability of the darkness to isolate the subject from the distracting backgrounds compared to the daylight shots has surprised me.

Roy

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My PPG link
K-3, K-5 + D-BG4 Grip, Pentax: FA 50 1.4, DA* 300, Sigma 70-200 2.8 Macro HSM II, Sigma 18-50 2.8 EX DC, Metz 58 AF-1

Just an update - the first of the two pictures in this thread was published on the back page of the local paper (Knaresborough Post) today so I'm pleased.

Roy

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My PPG link
K-3, K-5 + D-BG4 Grip, Pentax: FA 50 1.4, DA* 300, Sigma 70-200 2.8 Macro HSM II, Sigma 18-50 2.8 EX DC, Metz 58 AF-1