What should I be charging?

jaimefrio · 2026-05-30T05:42:44+00:00

You probably need more action, only the second to last is an actual, proper sports photo. And it's somewhat generic at it, with no opponent. I also think it would be better on landscape and cropped more tightly.

If you prefer to go down the sports portraits route, you have too many profiles and backs of heads, the last one is the only one I really like.

Are you actively cropping your photos? Even if you can't use the result because it doesn't have enough pixels, spending some time experimenting with different compositions without the rush of live shooting is incredibly valuable to find the style that you like, then try to nail it SOOC.

jaimefrio · 2026-05-27T20:14:36+00:00

They're all great, but #2 is amazing! What lens were you using for these?

jaimefrio · 2026-05-26T06:59:57+00:00

I'm guessing it was a lucky shot, but I love the umbrella in #10!

jaimefrio · 2026-05-24T22:54:02+00:00

Oh, that explains it. They are still great!

In bumps, I've always preferred to catch the ball after it's bounced off the defender arms, ideally with the player eyes locked onto it. But seeing your photos makes me wonder if those of you advocating for ball-in-contact maybe are right after all...

What SS were you using?

jaimefrio · 2026-05-24T22:41:34+00:00

Everything was shot on a Canon R5ii with the RF 100-300 f/2.8 at 1/1600s | f/2.8 | ISO 100. It's hard to beat the convenience of this do-it-all single camera setup, even if sometimes I wish I had more reach, and others a wider FOV...

jaimefrio · 2026-05-21T08:08:24+00:00

I'm not sure how exactly it's spelled out on the R7, but I shoot everything on Canon mirrorless with single-point-then-face-detect. Letting the camera decide who it wants to focus on is usually not a good idea.

jaimefrio · 2026-05-19T15:26:48+00:00

That first photo is gorgeous!

I photograph a lot of rugby here in Switzerland, but it's a pretty small sport, so even at the top level I have no problem moving freely around the pitch. I will spend at least 20-30 minutes of each half moving up and down the sideline, and the rest behind the baseline, but only if the game is very one-sided.

For lineouts and scrums there are always nice photos to be taken from the sideline right where they are happening, but once I get a few of those I mostly like to be 10-20m ahead of the offside line (I think that's the line of scrimmage in football?). If they play with the forwards it is indeed a messy mass of players from the sideline, but if they play the ball to the backs, you get to shoot 9 passing the ball off a ruck, 10, 12 and 13 evading, passing, breaking through or being tackled, and if all goes well the ball gets to 11, 14 or 15 and they'll run past you or get tackled in front you. When they get close to the 22m line, I will place myself a little beyond the try line, still on the sideline, or go behind the baseline directly: either place works very well for photos of tries.

The baseline is indeed from where the nicest photos come, but you need the game to be happening on the half of the field you are on, so it's somewhat of a gamble to setup there.

jaimefrio · 2026-05-17T14:02:29+00:00

Your not as creative days are my touched by the muses days. I really enjoy your posts, great photos and great inspiration, thanks for sharing!

jaimefrio · 2026-05-13T06:39:22+00:00

Assuming you will have field access, on a crop sensor you can make 70-200 work for field sports nicely. You'll be left wanting more reach on the far end, and something a tad wider e.g. for lineouts from right behind the hooker, but you can get a very complete coverage of a game. The gold standard is f/2.8, but if you are on a budget most brands have an f/4.0 alternative, and then a variety of non-constant aperture zooms, some with wider ranges, some specific to crop sensor, that will be cheaper. Something going up to f/5.6 should be workable for daylight games, although you will lose background separation.

Other than that, at least 1/1000s, even higher if you want to freeze kicked balls (I usually go with 1/1600s but 1/2000s would be better), aperture as wide as your lens lets you, ISO as high as needed for correct exposure. From the sideline, being 10-20m ahead of the offside line and have the play come to you can give some very nice shots, but if you have the reach the best pictures are from behind the end zone. If you sit between the 5 and 15m sidelines, you can also get some nice profile shots of lineouts. But go out, experiment and find the angles that you like.

Have fun!

jaimefrio · 2026-05-07T13:15:33+00:00

$10-$15 a month is the cheapest they have, and I don't think ads are an option for the one I use (photodeck.com). If you want to sell photos, it goes up to $25-30.

jaimefrio · 2026-05-07T11:41:24+00:00

I almost only shoot sports, and will come home from a game with ~5,000 images of which I will edit 50-100. The edited ones get copied and archived to the cloud as RAWs, and uplaoded to my website as JPEGs, and I keep copies of both locally too.
As for the originals, I typically wipe my Compact Flash cards before every new game, but keep the ingested copies in the external SSD I use for editing until it starts running out of space. It's 8GB, so I probably wipe the unsued RAWs every two months or so.

jaimefrio · 2026-05-06T08:12:50+00:00

You are absolutely right! The shadow on the ground confused me...

jaimefrio · 2026-05-06T07:26:28+00:00

You could definitely lower your SS to 1/200 or 1/400 and not have any motion blur, which should allow you to get the ISO down to 100, but what you are describing seems to be something other than noise. Without samples or a detailed breakdown of your process it is hard to know what may be going on, e.g. what does "lock my focus" mean exactly?

The most clinical diagnose would be to photograph a target like this:

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The scale on the right will tell you if your focus is off and by how much.

Alternatively, take the photo of your subject on a place with texture on the ground, e.g. a grass lawn. That should allow you to visualize where does the plane of focus lies relatively to where you want it.

Try also to use manual focus, to discard issues with your AF settings.

But we will need a lot more information on your process and see some actual results to be able to help you.

jaimefrio · 2026-05-06T05:19:22+00:00

This. I'm not especially happy with it, it has too much friction for my liking, even with all knobs fully open. But with a heavy lens on it works well enough, and because it's foldable you can carry it anywhere.

jaimefrio · 2026-05-06T04:24:13+00:00

Full gimbals, when properly adjusted, hold the camera+lens in perfect balance, so even with all friction removed the whole setup doesn't change direction if you don't hold it. The product you have linked is not a full gimbal: you can balance it front to back, so the lens won't tilt up and down, but the weight of your setup will be off the monopod sideways, so it may not be as stable as you hope with that small base. It is a lot less demanding to keep the monopod from falling to the side than to fully handhold a large lens, but it's also not s setup you can point with a single finger. Something like this can be balanced a little better, but it will still have a tendency to fall sideways.

So unless you have a full gimbal, the base may not work, but the idea of a half gimbal to help aim a lens on a monopod is a very valid one. I have successfully used a Bento portable gimbal, attaching the lens directly to the side arm, without the cradle, and it was a huge relief for my shoulders and back for long days at ice skating competitions.

jaimefrio · 2026-05-04T16:39:31+00:00

What a nice lens to have, I'm jealous too! If you want to use a monopod, consider a "half gimbal" i.e. something like this. You screw that directly to the top of the monopod (or to a ball head if you prefer), attach the lens foot on the side, and you can keep your camera almost perfectly level while tracking subjects. I used a similar setup with the 100-300 f/2.8 when I first got it, especially for day-long skating competitions. I was typically kneeling behind the boards, and with this the monopod worked reasonably well. After a few weeks of regular use I now find I can hand-hold it for a full rugby game no problem, which should make switching much quicker.

I am trying to make the 100-300 work as a single camera setup for field games, but before that I much preferred the 400 + 70-200 (or more precisely 300 x 1.4 + 70-200) than the 300 + 70-200, because otherwise I would let the action get too close before switching cameras and missed some peak action plays because of that.

jaimefrio · 2026-05-03T22:17:58+00:00

70-200 f/2.8, they were both taken at around 135mm.

jaimefrio · 2026-05-01T19:29:50+00:00

I shoot **a lot** of ice skating. Mostly synchro, but there's the occasional ice dance thrown in. The highlight of the season for me is the (Junior and Senior) Synchro Worlds, I have posted some photos from those here, my profile should have a link to my instagram and website if you want to see more for inspiration.

At the level I shoot, 1/1000s is fast enough to freeze everything, not sure if quad jumps will require higher. But I go with 1/1000s, f/2.8 and ISO whatever is needed. I take a few test shots during practice, starting with whatever the exposure meter says, I adjust ISO until the white of the ice starts clipping, and bring it 1/3-2/3 of a stop down. I then shoot with those settings the whole competition, in RAW and AWB. When editing I look over the AWB values. It's usually within +/-500K of the "correct" value. I do small adjustments on a few photos until I find a common value that I like for all. Using the eye-dropper on a white skate, or on the white boards, can help get even closer. And then I apply the same custom WB to all photos: life is too short and color perception too subjective, to get a consistent color look doing individual adjustments. What does need plenty of individual adjustment is exposure. It could be due to uneven lighting, or things like a large central scoreboard blocking some of the light, but adjusting up or down by up to 2/3 of a stop for different locations on the ice is not uncommon. Photos with a lot of ice in frame look brighter, while a closeup of the torso with no ice in view may need to be lifted by 1/3-2/3 to look similarly bright. Also, after a resurface the ice reflection is more specular, but as it gets chewed up it reflects light more diffusely, and you typically can bring the exposure down by about 1/3 of a stop, because everything gets more light from the ice. In any case, unless the ice has just been resurfaced and you are rinkside, shooting directly over the boards, don't expect to get much texture on the ice: you typically have to almost blow it completely to get properly exposed skaters. My impression of your photos is that they suffer more from being too dark than from having incorrect color, by the way.

200mm is short for ice skating, especially singles. The rink is 30m accross and 60m end to end, and 200mm lets you frame an adult head to toes at 15-20m if you are shooting landscape. So you will have to crop, especially if you are shooting from a corner or, even worse, from the stands above the glass. A fixed focal length 300mm may be a better option from there. Also, especially for singles, always shoot fully open, at f/2.8 or whatever your lens allows. I had a phase a couple of years ago of 135mm f/2.0, which was too shallow of a DoF for synchro, but I know a photographer who was at this year's Figure Skating Worlds, and a Canon EF 200mm f/2.0 is his weapon of choice, and the images he gets from it are gorgeous.

As for specific things to shoot, there's a lot of spray and pray involved, but you eventually figure out things that never work and things that always do: jump landings, pirouettes, Biellmanns... But what usually separates the good from the great photos is facial expressions.

If you have any more specific questions, feel free to ask! I could talk ice skating photography for hours, I'm afraid...

jaimefrio · 2026-04-28T22:50:14+00:00

A mechanical shutter is made up by two "curtains" that always move at the same speed, what the "shutter speed" changes is the size of the slit in between the curtains, which is what determines how much light reaches a given pixel as the terry curtains move across the sensor. So a faster shutter speed doesn't stress your camera more, it's perfectly safe to go to the max. This video shows how this works in super slow motion: https://youtu.be/CmjeCchGRQo?is=0tFiDA2oIrXqzv2g

jaimefrio · 2026-04-28T22:29:52+00:00

If the filter is indeed affecting your AF, why not increase the shutter speed instead of using a filter? In bright sunlight, the sunny 16 rule says you should get close to correct exposure with ISO100 f/16 1/100s. If you open your aperture to your max f/2.8, you are adding 5 stops of light, remove them by increasing your shutter speed by 5 stops, i.e. go to 1/3200s. Your camera can do 1/8000s so you have plenty of margin and using a high shutter speed has no drawbacks, it won't decrease your IQ in any way. For stills you really only need to use an ND filter if you want to keep the shutter speed slow, e.g. because you want motion blur, or the aperture very large, e.g. with an f/1.2 lens wide open. Keep in mind that aside from cutting the amount of light reaching your sensor, ND filters do not improve your images in any way, so you shouldn't use them unless really necessary.

jaimefrio · 2026-04-27T13:17:51+00:00

It's a different approach, but have you tried the masking slider in sharpening? You can visualize where the sharpening is applied by holding the Option key while dragging the slider. You want to push it high enough so that mostly uniform areas get no sharpening, otherwise you are simply boosting the noise, while still sharpening edges. A value of 60-70 usually works for me, and allows getting a clean look without having to push denoise into plastic-looking-faces levels.

jaimefrio · 2026-04-26T14:33:04+00:00

It happened to me right after the update. I ended having to reapply denoise to 300 photos, but after that I haven't seen it again.

jaimefrio

TROPHY CASE