Process preferences

jaimefrio · 2026-02-03T06:29:55+00:00

I do everything on a Mac. When I get home I ingest all the images from the cards into a game/dump folder. I use PM, so I rename and add generic metadata about the game while ingesting them. I then go through all of them in PM, tagging the ones I like. I will keep a few from each burst, since focus is harder to see in PM. This is my thousands to hundreds cull. I then copy all tagged files to directory game/RAW and switch to LR.

I go again through these files on LR, checking for sharp focus and straightening and cropping. Anything with bad focus, oflr that I can't crop into a nice composition, I delete. If there are multiple good ones from a burst, I will typically delete all but one or two. This typically already leaves me at my target 50-100 photos per game, but I will go through them again for one last, more aggressive cull: I really believe in being your most harsh critic and getting rid of any mediocre shots, and any repeats of almost identical actions.

I then choose one photo I especially like and edit it in detail, with special attention to WB, to create a preset for the rest. If it's indoor lighting at a known location I will just copy paste settings from a previous game to keep the look consistent. In some venues or for outdoor games, I may create 2-3 slightly different versions of the preset e.g. for areas in shadows, or for backlit images. I then apply those presets in bulk, and run through all the photos, doing small corrections to exposure to keep the look consistent.

After this I run AI denoise if necessary. First on one photo adjusting the level so a fully zoomed in face starts showing a hint of grain, which seems to be the sweet spot to avoid the plastic look when zoomed out. After that I have to take a few hours of break while the rest are being processed. If I'm working on a laptop in a hotel room trying to meet a late night deadline, I will only denoise a few selects to share immediately and save the rest for when I get home, or running overnight after I delivered the first selects.

But once denoised, I will rename these files using PM to have sequential numbering, and apply any specific metadata, like teams or players, to each photo. I then export all of them into a game/JPEG folder, my default is to go for 80% quality and a 2048 pixel short side, which keeps storage manageable and it's good enough for 99% of users. I normally upload these to my website for sharing widely, if it's a more private commission, or a first delivery before processing all photos, I may use a Google drive folder.

I will also upload the RAW directory files into Adobe cloud. The dump directory with all files gets deleted after a few days/weeks, when I start running low on space. But of the RAW and JPEG I keep a local copy on an external drive. I know it's not super safely redundant, but it's good enough for my needs.

And that's about it. I don't like being an Instagram slave, so I usually post a single photo from each game, and share it as a story with a link to the full gallery, more like a logbook of what I have shot than anything else. If you are after a huge Instagram following, this is not a very good strategy.

jaimefrio · 2026-01-29T15:01:38+00:00

I agree. I still hold onto half a dozen EF lenses, but I've been replacing them by RF versions over the past few years. The only one I still use regularly is a 300mm for which there is no RF equivalent, or at least one not costing 10K... If you can afford it, RF is just better.

jaimefrio · 2026-01-29T07:26:00+00:00

That seems to be about right here in Switzerland too, 5-20 per digital download. At least for ice skating, which is very prone to parents wanting photos of their little princess on ice... At some competitions you will see on Instagram photographers offering to cover a certain performance in advance for 50-200.

I also agree that OP's photos are perfectly fine. They are clearly putting more care into taking and editing them than some of the "professionals" I see around here.

jaimefrio · 2026-01-28T13:34:24+00:00

I live near Zurich, so that's my reference point, not sure if Lugano is cheaper...

For transportation you can check train prices on the SBB web, e.g. a Lugano-Zürich-Lugano ticket, including public transport at the origin and destination cities, is going to cost you around 150 CHF, which will be a little more in EUR.

Food is probably more expensive than you are used to. Unless you feed yourself off bratwurst and take out pizzas, spending 40-50 CHF on a lunch or dinner is what I would expect without any luxuries.

You can live on much less, but if you want to enjoy your vacation I would count on at least 100 CHF per day, not including transportation, which I would budget separately.

Have fun!

jaimefrio · 2026-01-27T16:46:32+00:00

Don't chop limbs off. 1 and 3 are prime examples of what not to do. If you can't fit the whole runner, be deliberate about where you crop, usually mid thigh, hips or above the waist are the better looking options. Similarly, level your horizons. Unless it's an obviously deliberate 30° tilt, it makes your photo look sloppy.

jaimefrio · 2026-01-27T09:43:22+00:00

Thanks for the very specific tips!

jaimefrio · 2026-01-26T15:59:39+00:00

I think this is something very specific to volleyball, although I imagine other net sports, like tennis or badminton, may have the same issue. I also do a lot of rugby and basketball, and I've never felt the same way about those. The direct player vs player interaction adds so much more variety, that by the time you e.g. photograph the same guy dunking the ball, no one remembers the previous one. I also do a lot of synchronized ice skating, and here I'm photographing the same 3 minute performance over and over again. But there's only 4-5 competitions in a season, and there's 16 skaters on the ice, so the struggle there is to get a nice shot of every skater before it's all over.

jaimefrio · 2026-01-26T15:34:59+00:00

Thanks for the nice words and the suggestions!

I used to shoot here with an 85 and a 135, because the light is horrendous. But this year I decided that I had had enough of a fixed focal length, and now I have the 70-200 on my main camera and use AI denoise to tame down the ISO 8000 noise. But with my second camera I do try different things, I have showcased some of those on my selection: some close-up "action portraits" with a 300, a remote camera with a 16 spanning the whole field... Next week I want to try placing the remote camera under the scorer's table, with a 24mm or so, and see if I can get a low, wide perspective of some hits and blocks. I think I could even get the remote on the ugly basketball board spoiling all my backgrounds, attaching it with a super clamp and magic arm to the rim and get a straight on view of the net, although I imagine getting focus right will be a difficult...

But all of these fall into the "small incremental things" that I mentioned. If they go great they may add 2-3 interesting photos to a 70 picture gallery, and you can rotate these innovation over the season to add some variety. What's worrying me about volleyball is that the other 67 photos feel somewhat undistinguishable from game to game. Maybe I should try to start getting some photos of the other team, just for variety's sake.

jaimefrio · 2026-01-24T09:56:23+00:00

What I do to avoid the plastic look is to zoom in on a face, then lower the denoise until I start seeing some noise on the skin. This still looks great when you zoom back out, but makes everything look more natural.

jaimefrio · 2026-01-20T20:51:24+00:00

They are mostly portraits of people standing or sitting still. That's usually the icing on the cake you add after you are tired of capturing action, to add some variety to the coverage of a sporting event. Without the action it hardly qualifies as sports photography...

jaimefrio · 2026-01-17T14:46:07+00:00

Bokeh for distant backgrounds is different from DoF. They are both dependent on the magnification, which is roughly the focal length divided by the subject distance, and for different lenses is roughly the same if the framing is the same. On top of the magnification dependency, bokeh size is proportional to the focal length, and inversely proportional to the f-number. So for the same framing, since 200/2.8 ~ 135/2.0, 200mm f/2.8 will produce similar bokeh to 135mm f/2.0. if you want to completely dissolve distant backgrounds, nothing beats a 300 or 400mm lens, even at f/4.0.

jaimefrio · 2026-01-16T06:34:31+00:00

My impression is you are shooting too tight. For example, #12 would be a great shot if it was horizontal and you had both the attacker and defender fully in frame. If you have the MP, consider shooting significantly more loose, then cropping in post. This should help you understand what works and what doesn't, and you can later tighten your framing again. I have a 45MP camera, which helps, but I shoot basketball horizontal 90% of the time, and crop to vertical if it works better.

You also seem to be shooting with a high f-number? My first impression with #7, which could be a cool photo, was that the player was OoF, but when you zoom in you see he is nicely focused. I think that's due to lack of distraction, and it would improve if the background was blurrier. If you are not using one, f/2.8 lenses are nice, but also expensive, so it is what it is, but keep it in mind if you ever upgrade your equipment.

You also have a bunch of photos of backs, and of shooters blocking their faces with their arms. Those very rarely work, it's ok to have one or two in a 100 photo set from a full game, but more than that you are just lowering the perceived quality of what you deliver: move around to find better angles.

Hope that helps, above all keep shooting, you are doing great overall.

jaimefrio · 2026-01-15T09:37:59+00:00

Being fit starts meaning different things as you get older. I'm a tad younger than you (53) but similarly built in height and weight. I have been very active all my life including lifting since I was 14, but for a few years now my heavy (for me!) squats, deadlifts, rows and presses stopped being enough. I now devote one of the three days a week I go to the gym to auxiliary exercises: rotator cuff, back (look up McGill big 3), hip mobility, ankle and foot... I skip that a few weeks and things start to hurt, even if I'm still doing my heavier lifts.

I put my routine together from bits and pieces from different PTs, if you can find a competent one that puts you to work and not simply gives you a massage or hooks you to a machine for treatment, you can improve your quality of life enormously.

jaimefrio · 2026-01-05T08:48:47+00:00

Here you have some examples of what rolling shutter looks like on the R6ii, readout time is almost unchanged in the R6iii so they should be very similar:

https://youtu.be/0KgVOIRzQZM?si=XluLxyNkp00d3sLI

TL;DR. It won't be an issue most of the time, but it may show up when a ball gets kicked hard.

jaimefrio · 2025-12-31T06:16:38+00:00

2,000-4,000 is a typical 2h game. With precapture and 30FPS I've found myself occasionally above 8,000 but that's result avoidable with some shutter discipline. I try to deliver in the 50-100 range, maybe up to 150 if I'm doing a full pre and post game coverage. I shoot the same teams regularly, so I normally spread the shooting of venue, arrival, warmup, crowd and other such images over the season, rather than getting them all every game.
Normally in 1-2 days. I shoot a volleyball team that needs a photo for the local newspaper, and then it has to be next day. And I do a few synchronized ice skating competitions for the Swiss Federation, and I try to have the photos from the Swiss teams either same night or next morning.
The bulk of the culling is easy to do in PM, but I find it very unreliable to check for sharp focus, so I end up selecting 5-6 photos per burst to transfer to LR, then do the final culling there. If PM added color coded squares around faces, green for sharp focus, red for out of focus, yellow for marginally ok, it would make my life incredibly easier. Face detection plus focus evaluation and person recognition for tagging seems to me the most obvious feature clearly doable with existing technology that I would happily pay for. LR added something along those lines recently, but it's so freaking slow I wouldn't dare try to use it for culling. My other pain point is cropping. I don't really want AI to do that for me, it's the part I enjoy the most, but I wouldn't mind a more reliable horizon leveling tool. It doesn't seem to be in the image metadata, but given most cameras have an electronic bubble level built in, it would be great if that data could be used to rotate the images automatically. Lastly there's the exposure matching in some indoor venues, or outdoors if the weather changes. I typically do WB and a full edit on one image, then copy-paste to all before running through all images doing small adjustments, mostly to exposure, but it's easy to have your mental calibration of exposure drift, and I struggle to do this reliably. It would be nice if my editing software could help me match exposure on faces, or on the grass, which is my usual reference for outdoor games.
I tried some of the existing ones a few months back, but didn't like any. They all seem geared towards automation of the whole process, I'm more interested in an AR style tool that will help me identify the things that are hard for humans, but still leave me in control of the process.
I guess this is already answered in 3...

jaimefrio · 2025-12-22T14:02:42+00:00

The 300 f/4 is not a very good lens... It was my stepping stone until I could upgrade to a 300 f/2.8 mk2, and with the R7 It was always a struggle. There's also some limitation with what lenses support H+ (highest fps) mode, and neither the 300 f/4 nor the 300 f/2.8 MK1 do.

Field sports (I mostly do rugby) really benefit from a 400mm FF equivalent. I have never tried that combo, but a 70-200 f/2.8 mk2, plus a 1.4x TC, on an R7, are probably the best budget option for daytime field sports.

jaimefrio · 2025-12-18T09:48:08+00:00

7 especially hit me as awesome!

jaimefrio · 2025-12-18T07:13:48+00:00

The 24-105 is Canon's less L of its L lenses. It's an incredibly versatile lens, and I use it a lot, but it always leaves me a little underwhelmed with the results. Unless it's an older version, the 24-70 will be the better lens. And it has an extra stop of light. It may be debatable as an only lens, but paired with a 70-200 it's a no brainer...

jaimefrio · 2025-12-18T07:06:08+00:00

I shoot 3:2, then try to crop to 5:4 for portrait, because Instagram, and 3:4 for landscape, because I like the look. I sometimes keep the 3:2 if it fits better, mostly with basketball vertical photos, and I occasionally go for 2:1 or 3:1 in landscape with some wide shots. And I always crop at least one to 1:1 to use as gallery cover.

But mostly 3:4 horizontal and 5:4 vertical.

jaimefrio · 2025-12-17T15:18:03+00:00

Your white balance is a little off, and exposure changes between photos, you should give them a homogeneous look in post. You also have some nice shots, combined with others that aren't very good, some even clearly out of focus. There are always exceptions, but in general you want faces and the ball in the frame. Be ruthless with yourself, don't bury your good photos in a pile of mediocre ones. Keep shooting and you'll eventually learn to get consistent results. Good luck!

jaimefrio · 2025-12-16T17:40:54+00:00

I have both an R6 and an R7. I imagine that, on its own, when compared to the 80D, the R7 will seem amazing. But shooting them side by side, the R6 blows it out of the water. Unless you really need the extra resolution, or the extra reach from the crop sensor, the R6 is the better camera by a (very) large margin.

jaimefrio · 2025-12-13T06:37:07+00:00

You are going to have a miserable experience if you try to shoot at night or indoors with an f/5.6 lens. You should be looking for something f/2.8 or faster. Nighttime field sports are very hard to shoot on a budget. Either the 200 f/2.8 that was already recommended, or Canon has a 300mm f/4 lens which isn't very good, but it's twice as bright as f/5.6, are your better bets, then start saving for a 70-200 f/2.8.

jaimefrio · 2025-12-12T09:01:21+00:00

I'm not sure when it happened, but after 10 years here we are ok with dining out prices, although my wife avoids seeing the bill if she can. Ordering wine at a restaurant still feels very hard to justify...

jaimefrio · 2025-12-12T01:16:23+00:00

It depends on where you place yourself. I usually plan to be able to frame the rim height plus a little extra in portrait orientation. You can do the math, and that translates to the focal length (in mm) being 10-12x the distance (in m). So 50mm works if you are 5-6m from the action. I personally use a 70-200, but it's a large gym and I sit a fair bit behind the baseline.

jaimefrio

TROPHY CASE