A Warm Refreshment

[jcoffin]

1) It's a good thing you put "style" in quotes -- your pictures show about the restraint and elegance my nephew had when we was eight years old or so.

To which are you referring? I have posted several hundred shots on here.

All of them. I've yet to see you post a single picture that showed real style or taste. Responding point by point to the remainder of your post seems pointless, since it's all based on the false notion that at least one picture you've posted was actually good. The other posts you added to this thread in an apparent attempt at showing off were, frankly, below average even for you. You should stick to pictures of pretty girls -- it's basically nothing more than halfhearted pornography, but at least the subject matter provides some distraction from the mediocrity of presentation.

[stevecim]

6) Shooting second rate athletes playing a second rate imitation of a sport that's itself exceptionally boring puts you in a poor position to make accusations about boring subject matter.

Don can look after him self. but just for the record I like American Football. not easy to say living in Australia, but I do take a day out of my holiday leave to watch the superbowl but would never waste a day on any other sport. I also played it for 3 years here in Victoria, Australia. there is no other sport like it. Don post all the football/cheerleaders photo you like at least I'll look forward to them.

[jcoffin]

[ ... ]

I do well enough to do books, magazines, museums, newspapers, mailers, flyers, posters, annuals, biz cards, and most all other types of publications as well as sell fine art so once again I don't care about some (banned term)'s opinion...Join the hate clubs and then please start adding some input regarding the problems with the OP's photos. This thread was in-part was about the OP's soft photos and weak gradients...my photos were only posted as examples of gradients that were not ruined and icicles that had some oomph. BTW...my websites get millions of page views so somebody sure likes looking at the pix...so many people in fact that I need a dedicated box on a fat pipe just to serve the pix...

-Sonolta

It's interesting how you claim others' pictures are doggy doo and such, quite rudely, and claim that it's meant as constructive criticism -- but when somebody else points out the mediocrity of your pictures, quite politely at that, you immediately switch to personal attacks, claiming they must be blind, are "haters", etc.

As for millions of hits, consider the National Enquirer and the New Yorker. The former virtually epitomizes cheap, tawdry and tasteless, while the latter is generally considered one of the most tasteful, elegant publications in the US -- but doing a bit of looking, it appears that the Equirer sold about 4 times as many magazines last year as the New Yorker.

[jcoffin]

You have pointed out nothing here other than the fact that you are quite narrow minded as well as quite ignorant...and a (banned term) too. You can't show me better alpha or KM or Minolta pictures made on many of the subjects I have posted to this forum so you need to pack up your bag of bullspit and go home. You have not critiqued anything. You have posted nonsense, flamebait, and other completely idiotic and stupid remarks. In-fact you have yet to critique one photo while skipping over hundreds and stumbling over your own lies and delusions! I have proved you a (banned term) several times already and I will do it another 100 times if I must.

Perhaps you need some work in English comprehension as well. Your claim of having proven anybody a (banned term) indicates that you don't even know what the word really means.

OTOH, you have claimed (for example) that I haven't done any action photography. For comparison, let's consider bicycle racing, where the speeds are around double or triple that of anything in football:


Link to larger size:
http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1386/787 ... 0236_o.jpg

If you prefer even higher speed, consider motorcycle jumping:


Link to larger size:
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3242/301 ... d62c_o.jpg


Link to larger size:
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3055/301 ... f2ee_o.jpg

To produce this height of jumps, these guys move a just a bit faster than a football player can run. In all three cases, note the careful choice of shutter speed to combine sharpness with motion blur to produce a dynamic picture with real impact. Take careful note of the contrast between the sharpness of the subject, and the substantial motion blur of the background -- essentially perfect panning, something that takes real skill. Simply put, this is real action photography that takes real skill, not just pointing a camera in the general direction of a football play, and using the "machine gun" approach until you happen to get a shot around the time something vaguely similar to real action took place.

As far as boring goes, well I've sat through some pretty boring NFL games, but I've never met anybody who could watch a Superman or a Lazy Boy, or just about any other kind of jump, and keep from getting excited. When people talk about a football game that sucked, they mean it sucked. When they talk about jumping "sucking" they mean something like the weather stopped the jumping from happening.

And yes, of course I could post hundreds more like this, but David's new rule isn't really a problem at all -- even just one of these would be more than adequate to demonstrate how much more exciting action photography can be than your boring shots. Oh, and since you consider the equipment important, these were all taken with a K/M 7D.

[jcoffin]

You are comparing ISO3200 work to ISO 100 work!

Only fools, idiots, and stupid people think shooting action at ISO 100 is anything like shooting action at ISO3200 with wide open lenses. Seriously, dude....get a life and try shooting something tough for a change.

[ ... ]

-Sonolta

Don, your "argument" doesn't even contain a hint of sense anymore. The fact is that the light during the motorcycle jumping (for one example) was quite minimal -- these were taken well after sunset. As I alluded to in a previous post, a skilled shooter can use a low ISO in situations you think you need a higher one. If you look at the EXIF data, you'll see that the shots of motorcycle jumping were at 1/90th and 1/60th of a second respectively. You're using your lens wide open and shooting at ISO 3200. I'm stopping the lens down to about it's optimal sharpness, and shooting a subject that's moving roughly 80 MPH at 1/60th of second, and still keeping it sharp.

You're right, this is NOT like shooting at ISO 3200 with wide open lenses. This is action shooting done with skill and finesse, while shooting at ISO 3200 with the lens wide open is using brute force and ignorance to make up for lack of skill.

[jcoffin]

If you try to execute motion blur for effect for indoor football it does not work on most plays because the players are all moving at different speeds and the are constantly accelerating and decelerating....you will come home with only a few keepers instead of many. I have shot maybe 30K indoor football shots from 1/160 full effect motion blur to 1/500 which stops almost all player and ball motion. I usually settle between 1/320 - 1/400 as shooting at 1/250 and below results in to many ruined shots...way to many. Indoor football is one of the hardest sports on the planet to shoot...outdoor biking is one of the easiest to shoot as you know exactly where your subject will be and at what the pace the bikes will be going...on top of that you have plenty of room to work form there as far as aperture, shutter speed, and ISO are concerned. Outdoor is almost pointNshoot stuff just set the SS you want for blur effect and fire away with no worries.

-Sonolta

Don, you should have given up while you were ahead. The reality is that the bicycle shot was taken near a fairly sharp corner, that the racers took at substantially different speeds and accelerated out of at substantially different rates. In fact, the difference in speed between one and the next was higher than the maximum speed your football players can ever hit. Likewise, the bicycle racers took substantially different lines through the corner, so you did NOT know where they were going to be ahead of time nor when they were going to be there.

As far as indoor football being particularly difficult to shoot because it's unpredictable, you simply don't know what you're talking about. Rodeos (for one example) involve far faster action that's a lot less predictable. Of course, there's also a bit more "guts" involved since at least when I did it I was in the middle of things, where the bulls could have stomped on me if I was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The bottom line is that every post you're just displaying more of your ignorance, and no amount of skill you claim to use changes the fact that they're just plain boring.

[jcoffin]

Don, your "argument" doesn't even contain a hint of sense anymore.

You are the clueless fool...ask any photographer that shoots action. My god man it's like you were born yesterday!

And you claim you aren't making personal attacks!

As far as your claim of underexposure goes, you're clearly wrong: just for example, in the first motorcycle jump shot, the highlights (after straight conversion with ACR) come in at 255, 254, 242. Any more exposure would simply have blown the highlight. I don't really expect you to accept or understand that argument, but for those of use who actually understand digital photography, it's simple, clear-cut and incontrovertible.

The rest of your post was simply more personal attacks, devoid of technical content, to which a response would be pointless, so I won't bother.

[jcoffin]

Outdoor racing and jumping is so easy you can almost do it blindfolded with a broken camera. This time I was shooting one of the largest events in the nation the Midwest Nationals which was the first and only time I had shot a BMX event. My KM5D had broken the day before and my 7hi was not up to the task so I shot this event unable to change settings on my KM5D....The dials and controls were screwed from moisture so I had to stick with a mode and setting that worked at the time....I came home with almost all keepers...hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of them in a couple hours. I dug these two up and I ill dig some others later..

[ pictures elided ... ]

Is that enough motion blur for you?

-Sonolta

No -- part of the point of blurring the background is to keep it from being distracting -- and the minimal motion blur you have in the first shot simply makes it _more_ distracting rather than less. The second doesn't seem to include any panning at all -- or anything that's moving very fast either.

In short, you've simply shown a still more thorough demonstration of your incompetence, poor understanding of photography, and general lack of taste.

[jcoffin]

Ur an idiot....post something other than 2 shots of your buddy and something over ISO 100 or shut your mouth! The camera was stuck for the BMX event...I had no control over the aperture and it would not have made a ton of difference on much of it anyway as I was shooting from a fixed trackside position with s 28-75 whirling 360 degrees to catch the start, the first jump, 2 large turns, and the last big jump on every rider...Shoot with too wide of an aperture and you would be asking for more trouble than it's worth. At this event if a rider had crashed in my direction I could have been killed as I was standing inside the track between a turn an jump no further than 3 feet away from either at any time during the event.

You can't show us any low light or high ISO work so move your rookiea$$ on down the road....You have not a clue about shooting sports....Show us some sports shots and stop spewing your nonsense.

You don't have a clue and you know it!

You don't have any other sports shots or you would be showing them...you are just a punk spewing a bunch of misinformation and lies from your sorry piehole.

Only a fools think outdoor shooting is easier than indoor action..only fools.

Take your 3 pictures and horrible advice and move on down the road.

-Sonolta

I haven't posted more, because it would clearly break at least the spirit (if not quite the letter) of David's new rule. It'd be interesting which of these guys you think of as my "buddy". The bicycle shot is from the prolog of the 2007 Tour de France -- in other words, he's one of the absolute best riders on earth, and while I wish I could claim his acquaintance, I'm afraid I can't.

Likewise, the two motorcycle jumpers are a couple of the top professionals in their fields, each world famous in his own right. Hopefully David won't mind too much if I stretch the spirit of his rule to include a link to another shot of a motorcycle jumper:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3267/318 ... 8e70_o.jpg

Again, these guys are world famous. Just for one example, along with motorcycle jumping, Carey Heart played bass with Pennywise on tour, co-starred in a season of Surreal Life, and is apparently the "Ex" that Pink sings about in "I'm still a Rock Star" (or whatever the name of the song really is). I'm not exactly the sort of person who cares much about celebrities, but this guy has enough talent that I'd be happy if I could count his as a buddy -- unfortunately, I'd be lying if I did.

One last point: since you made noises about the shot being "soft" I thought I'd toss in a couple of 100% crops:




In short, you're just plain wrong. Even at 1/90th of a second, panning with a motorcycle moving around 80 MPH this shot is sharp even by nerdy pixel-peeping standards.

[jcoffin]

You are a (banned term) and an idiot and you don't have a clue on how to set up your camera to shoot sports. Worse yet, you removed the lousy underexposed and out-of-focus photo you called great earlier and now you are trying to play games with another photo's minature crops! Lowlife indeed! Sports shooters use shutter speeds near 1/500 so get it through your thick skull! I don't care about your one panned photo for gosh sake! I already touched on panning earlier in the thread. Stop talking about your one panned photo and start talking indoor sports or better yet the OP's icicle shots! Nobody cares about your motorcycle shot at 1/90!

I included two photos in the original post, and have since posted 100% crops from one of them. I haven't taken anything down from anywhere -- but taking a copy and putting it on another web site without permission sounds an awful lot like copyright violation. You should take it down immediately. As it stands, it looks like you've descended from simply being a tasteless boor to outright law breaking.

[jcoffin]

Page 3 of the Popular Photography article How to Photograph Football

The AP's "Secret" Formula for Pushing Film

[ ... ]

I do not see Kodachrome 64 or Velvia 50 being mentioned.

-Sonolta

Of course not -- these films are about reproducing color exceptionally -- but the AP dealt primarily with newspapers that printed primarily in black and white, and even that was pretty poor quality. For them, great quality color was pointless, useless and way too expensive to think about. Their job was to get a mediocre B&W photo of whatever they needed to under any circumstances they might encounter.

Kodachrome also didn't fit with their schedules at all. Newspapers are typically written primarily during the night. They plan to cover anything up until 10 PM or so (later if it's important enough). The photographer(s) develop and print from then until about midnight, when the pictures are due to the editors. Layout happens from around midnight to around 2 or 3 AM, when printing starts, and the newspapers are ready for delivery by 5 AM or so.

Turnaround time for developing Kodachrome is about a week to ten days in most parts of the country. Newspapers are about what's new, not what happened a week to ten days ago, so even if they could print high quality color, Kodachrome would be useless to them anyway. Just glancing at them, it looks nearly certain that these techniques predate Velvia by a decade or so (e.g. my brother was using Acufine to push Tri-X when he was photo editor of a newspaper starting around 1978 or '79).

[jcoffin]

No...you blocked access to the photo (or it blocked, crashed, or removed itself) so I re-posted it for you. It suddenly became available again and I figure it was probably you playing games like the punk that you are. In hindsight I should have screenshot the denied access page that was displayed.

I did nothing of the sort. I suppose it's barely possible that Flickr's servers had some sort of momentary glitch, but I certainly didn't take it down, make it unavailable, or anything of the sort. Given your level of dependability versus Flickr's, there's no question in my mind who's really at fault here though.

Re-posting photos that are already posted to a public forum is not illegal nor is it a copyright violation. In-fact it's been done in forums for a very long time. Look around and you will see it goes around here at times.

Here's the actual text of US copyright law:

§ 102 · Subject matter of copyright:
In general
(a) Copyright protection subsists, in accordance with this title, in original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression, now known or later developed, from which they can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated, either directly or with the aid of a machine or device. Works of authorship include the following categories:
(1) literary works;
(2) musical works, including any accompanying words;
(3) dramatic works, including any accompanying music;
(4) pantomimes and choreographic works;
(5) pictorial, graphic, and sculptural works;
(6) motion pictures and other audiovisual works;
(7) sound recordings; and
(8) architectural works.

§ 106 · Exclusive rights in copyrighted works
Subject to sections 107 through 122, the owner of copyright under this title has the exclusive rights to do and to authorize any of the following:
(1) to reproduce the copyrighted work in copies or phonorecords;
(2) to prepare derivative works based upon the copyrighted work;
(3) to distribute copies or phonorecords of the copyrighted work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending;

So, the work in question falls under "pictorial" (§102(a)(5)) and you (without permission) both reproduced the work (§106(1) and distributed that copy to the public (§106(3)). The second might be open to some question (whether you attempted to transfer ownership) but the first is clear and incontrovertible.

There are, of course, exceptions made for "fair use" of copyrighted material -- for example, reproducing part of a copyrighted work for the sake of criticism is usually allowed. There are also exceptions for things like reproductions by libraries/archives, some types of performances such as in a class room, etc. -- but your infringement appears to bear no similarity to any of these at all.

It's arguably true that posting a picture in a public forum implies permission to reproduce that picture to at least some extent -- clearly viewing it is intended, and that's only possible by copying it to your computer. In doing so, however, you're taking for granted a permission that's never been given explicitly. To avoid obvious violations of the law, you need to restrict yourself to permissions that are obvious and unavoidably part of the posting, which clearly does NOT include anything like your actions in this case.

In case you prefer not to trust my copy/paste of the text of the law, feel free to examine the original at:
http://www.copyright.gov/title17/

[jcoffin]

How does it feel man?

[ yet another mediocre photo elided... ]

BTW, I was a 25cent internet lawyer in my earlier life and I have posted a few bits of legal mumbo jumbo over the past several years... You basically gave everyone permission to use the photo on this forum when you offered it up for public discussion. Case closed.

You're clearly not any kind of lawyer, and don't have a clue of what you're talking about.

Please stop flapping your ugly trap and post some icicle photos, indoor sports photos, or links to your sports galleries and/or publications.

I've put up a gallery of motorcycle jumpers at:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jerrycoffi ... 363830006/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

They're really two sets -- one from 2005 and the other from 2006. The ones you've seen previously are from 2005, and I've added about 30 more from that year. There are also 30+ from 2006. Unfortunately, I was lazy that year, and shot them about as you'd recommend -- ISO 1600 and (as it got darker) 3200, with the lens at f/3.5 (this lens is really soft wide open, but sharpens up a lot stopped down even half a stop) and shutter speeds around 1/250th to 1/350th. Except as a technical demonstration, I wouldn't normally display them though -- the noise is obvious and intrusive, and even if there wasn't any noise, they'd be boring and static looking. Granted, even that can't completely ruin something as intrinsically exciting as motorcycle jumping, but they're clearly inferior to the previous year's shots anyway.

Oh, and in case anybody cares, the numbers on the pictures are those the camera originally assigned -- as you can see, in both cases, the percentage of keepers was actually reasonably high. Few of the rejects are really from technical problems with the shot either -- most were rejected because gusts of wind prevented them from doing any tricks during some jumps.

I see we are still waiting on those crops as well, rook.

We're still waiting on you to post 100% crops from even one challenging shot. As a minimum, the subject should be moving at least 75 MPH, taken from close enough that it occupies at least 1/2 the frame, and the shutter speed should be no faster than 1/125th of a second. So far, I've shown 100% crops from one shot that exceeded every one of those requirements, and the 100% crops you've shown have only been of a brick wall!

[jcoffin]

Hey, rook...back for more of the same I see! You clearly do not know how to operate a camera! Look at the settings you used you mindless nutcase!

I'm not sure what you're using to read the EXIF data, but it's clearly producing bogus results -- it's giving "FNumber" as 3.50 (correct) and "ApertureValue" as 9.50 (bogus). Here's what Ps CS4 shows:

You're also showing an incorrect value for the maximum aperture (2.83 instead of 2.. It's possible that's some sort of rounding error, but speaks rather poorly of whatever software you're using. As for Post processing, I intentionally didn't do any (other than the obvious minimum of converting to sRGB and reducing the size to something that was reasonable to upload).

As an aside, after looking at your latest posting of semi-porn, I've realized that my previous advice wasn't quite right either. The third cheerleader under http://www.photoclubalpha.com/forum/vie ... =32&t=1673 is either pretty ugly, or you've managed to take a picture of her with a terrible expression that makes her look that way. After some thought, it appears that your real talent is for adding smilies to your posts!

[jcoffin]

Dude you are busted! You are changing exif's to make yourself look less like an idiot! Sorry, that trick backfired!

What a load of garbage. I've already shown you a screen shot of what Ps CS 4 shows. Checking with Bibble Pro, it shows precisely the same data as Ps. Some of your supposed displays of EXIF data don't even show what picture you're supposedly looking at EXIF data for. The latest one you've posted is one that was taken in 2005 at ISO 100, and 1/90th of a second. ISO 100 with f/6.7 is hardly a terrible combination.

For that matter, anybody who really knows photography can look at the pictures themselves and confirm that they weren't taken at f/9.5. Though the noise covers it up to some degree, many of these pictures are somewhat soft at the closest and farthest parts of the subjects -- that's expected at f/3.5, but at f/9.5 the DoF would easily cover the entire subject.