On Mon, 25 Aug 2008 16:31:11 -0400, Alan Browne wrote:

If talent and timing are all that's needed to be successful,
maybe there are some talented sports photographers out
there using Sigma's SD10 or SD14. Know any?

Without replying to your other points, some of merit, mostly none, I
single out your last sentence for ridicule. Why, oh why, would anyone
bring up these cameras except as a deflection? A form of damning by
bringing up cameras that most of us wish we would never hear of again?

It most certainly wasn't a deflection. You're becoming too much
the fanboy, going on with your loves and hates. Sigma cameras do
have faults, lack of speed being but one. As we're all pretty much
in agreement that they're cameras well worth avoiding, it takes a
lot of effort to miss the reason why Sigma was mentioned and assume
that deflection was its purpose. Had I mentioned any other brand,
the point I was making would have been less clear or obvious. But
not obvious enough for you, since it appears that understanding
didn't have as high a priority as finding ways to disagree.

You started off with a decent premise, that "Most DSLR buyers are
not sports shooters who 'need' high fps", but you immediately
contradicted yourself by adding that "its value to sports shooters
is not as high as you may believe". You're becoming like someone
else here whose statements often need to be questioned. You say
that most of my points had no merit. Really, now? It looks more
like you just took the easy way out and resorted to a cheap parting
shot rather than trying to illustrate the flaws you claimed to see
in my points.



Oh, OK, one other thing. While skeptical, I would not take away a
sports shooters desire for high fps shooting. The point, is that for
the majority of DSLR buyers, high fps is a non-issue.

That's so good of you, to not take away their desire for high fps
shooting, even though you think that its value is "not as high as
you may believe". I've been looking at the sports shots taken by
Mark Rebilas (Olympics, baseball, Nascar and others), and a good
number of his best shots absolutely would have been missed had it
not been for his D3's high frame rates. Your argument (and David's,
who simply slinks away after his snipes) is that because lower frame
rates in the past were able to produce some amazing shots, really
high frame rates aren't needed. Others have given other reasons why
this isn't true, but the fact remains that for sports where the
action occurs for longer than a fleeting moment, the more shots that
you're able to take, the greater the odds are that you'll capture a
really great one. No guarantees, just better odds.


See also the article I linked in the other reply. Very telling about
the yield of pro photographers at a pro football match.

No, it didn't "tell" what you think it said. If anything, it
proved the point that *many* shots are needed in order to end up
with a few that may be amazing. The shots, pouring in from a team
of photographers was being viewed by Steve Fine at the rate of two
per second for four hours. That's almost 30,000, not 15,000 shots.
Maybe just a bit of poetic license, and the absolute number isn't
all that important. But nowhere in the article is there any mention
of the need to shoot at high frame rates, although they were
undoubtedly doing so for some shots. You get comments like this :

Later, unable to find a good shot of a particular Patriots
touchdown catch, he gestures at the screen. "Eleven guys.
Eleven versions out of focus."

Should the blame be placed on SI's photographers, their equipment
(Canon's EOS-1D), or maybe the game itself had something to do with
it. The article stated that several good shots were made through
the first three quarters of the game, but none were "killer" shots.
According to the article, the game wasn't really terribly exciting,
even compared to the half-time show. It changed in the fourth
quarter which was "full of scoring action." If the best
photographers took hundreds of pictures during the first three
quarters using view cameras, or hundreds of thousands using fast
DSLRs, the best shots *still* would have been selected from those
taken during the last, exciting quarter.

For covers, he is said to favor emotionally evocative shots
over action images, and when a shot turns up of New England
Patriots Quarterback Tom Brady, the game's MVP, smiling
and holding up the Super Bowl trophy, Washington says,
"That's the cover. That's a Terry cover. The trophy. The smile."

And that shot could have been taken with almost any camera, by
almost any photographer. But this massive photo shoot wasn't the
first nor the last time tens of thousands of shots have been taken
to cover a game, and it wasn't the failure that you implied by
providing a link and a very misleading comment about what the
article illustrated.

But was that a great shot or merely a very good one. Well . . .

"Oh," he says. "Oh. Here we go. What's this. What. Is. This."
Washington leans in closer as Fine enlarges one image to full
size. It's part of a continuous sequence of Brady running onto
the field in celebration as the game ended, shot from one end of
the field looking down the Patriots sideline. The MVP is frozen
in mid-air, jumping to high-five a teammate and smiling about
an ocean wide. The picture is dead-on sharp.

Hmm, sounds like a high frame rate helped get a good one.

"Wait," Fine says, leaning back in his chair. "Let me just look
at next week's cover. Who shot this? Phil, who shot this?" The
answer comes back: John McDonough. "Johnnnny Mac," Fine
says, drawing out the name as he studies the picture. "Johnnnny
Mac. After 15,000 pieces of crap, we got a cover."

In an instant, the previously selected shot :

"That's the cover. That's a Terry cover. The trophy. The smile."

was suddenly downgraded to just another one of the 15,000 pieces of
crap. No, I'm afraid not. That story after all wasn't a scholarly
work. It was intended as entertainment. Not to enlighten as much
as to titillate, and to try to capture part of the excitement that
was in the air, in addition to describing the equipment and
technology now used to *big* cover athletic events. Your closing
comment :

See also the article I linked in the other reply. Very telling about
the yield of pro photographers at a pro football match.

tells us something else, that some people get out of articles what
they want to read into them and not what was actually written. The
article in no way indicates that there is anything remotely
problematical with taking and ending up with 15,000 '****ty' shots.
In fact, it goes on to describe in detail the cameras, lenses and
computers and workflows that are used, stating how much improved the
situation is compared to the days when film was used. Of course you
probably won't find much merit in what I've said in this reply, but
maybe that's why you're engaged in problems keeping the shoot-in
going rather than shooting for S.I.

[ was that last bit of humor more palatable than the reference to
Sigma that I used to close my last reply? ]