Comment: What Is Good Supposed to Look Like?

It comes back to the very reason on why I enrolled in this degree program: you can't get better unless there is somebody with experience in this field tell you what is missing. Some people has the skill to learn from the school of hard-knock. However, very often I find myself not able to tell what to look for. An image that is good enough is probably not that good. Friends and family can provide sentiment but they cannot give me any idea on how to get better.

School is not the only place I can learn. Here is an interesting occasion. I have been to the UEFA women champion league quarter final match of Arsenal Ladies vs IFK Goteborg last week. When I was there, there were three video recording (two from Swedish TV, and one for UEFA if I get it right), and at least four photographers around with 400mm f/2.8 lens with monopod. In additional there are armature like me around, so the media list is quite long (my name is actual listed under "freelance"). 

Anyway, a difficulty to learn photography by "copying" the pro is that, the shooting condition can be very difficult and it is not obvious why my picture is not good. There is no issue if I shoot side by side with the pro. A pro and I stood at different side of the goal and took this shot.

This is from the pro:

http://tgsphoto.photoshelter.com/gallery-image/Arsenal-Ladies-vs-Gothenburg-14-03-12/G0000sqxYvKiiRSo/I0000wJq4ENmaGmg

This is from me:

https://picasaweb.google.com/111658380662836941338/14thMarch2012ArsenalLadiesVsIFKGoteborg?noredirect=1#5719870353352669506


Forget a moment that the pro get a better angle (no people blocks in front), notice the sharpness of the image. The question is, is mine less sharp because of handshake? Slow shutter speed? Equipment issue? Or else?

I took this up to Trung, a good friend of mine. He noticed that my image is slight over-exposed. He noticed from the historgram that some of the signal disappeared to the right, and that corresponds to the face area (side lighting) of the player in the air (Lisa Ek from IFK Goteborg). Then he also notice that the pro image has been photoshopped. He pointed out that the pro used the Unsharp mask (how can he tell?).

Do both and we can get this at 100% crop. Any better?


Before:

 After (the skin tone dial down and with unsharp mark):

I notice from the ball that my shutter speed is probably too slow. I don't think it is hand shake because I was using tripod. My camera + lens is about 2.7kg while the max load of the tripod is 5kg. Then at 1/800s, it should be fast enough to shoot even if I need to hand-hold the lens. I try to raise the shutter speed to 1/1000s to 1/1250s in the next match with Crystal Palace. Despite the ISO noise in the second half is horrible (the sun got covered up), most of the image are sharp at 100% corp. The folder is here.

https://picasaweb.google.com/111658380662836941338/18thMarch2012CrystalPalaceFcVsCambridgeWomenFc?noredirect=1#

I think I still have a long way to go to become good at shoot sport, but it helps to go to the high level game and shoot next to a pro.