PCHS Mustangs Baseball Photos

2010 Returning Players

2009 Photos

2008 Photos

2007 Photos

How it's done (technical photography stuff for those who asked):  It would be nice to own one of those 400mm f/2.8 lenses that newspapers use but not at $6800!  Most of the 2009 website photos were taken using the 70-200 VR lens in combination with the TC-17E teleconverter.   A monopod is a tremendous help with both image quality and shot readiness. This combination gives amazing sharpness with good zoom (200 x 1.7 = 340mm), although you give up one f/Stop with the teleconverter.  So when the light gets low, off comes the teleconverter, leaving the f/2.8 lens which is a favorite lens of many professional photographers.  To freeze the baseball action, I normally shoot in Shutter Priority mode, at a shutter speed of 1/1250 - 1/2000 sec.  The camera decides how much light is needed by automatically choosing its own f/Stop and ISO settings.  For baseball, the ISO usually doesn't go above 1000, keeping photos from becoming noisy (grainy), while the f/Stop rarely goes below 5 or 6 which maintains a decent depth of field.  Auto White Balance is used in sunlight with center-weighting, and Cloudy White Balance is used on overcast days. Continuous focus is always used, normally with the medium matrix (focus) spot.  Want your photos to really pop?  I like deep, saturated, even exaggerated color, and you can get that by using the "Vibrant" color mode.  The images are saved on a 4GB Compact Flash card at the highest JPG file size, allowing space for about 400 photos at 12.3 megapixels with plenty of resolution for cropping.  About 200 photos are typically taken in a double header, then about 75 are selected, cropped, and posted to this website within 24 hours.