Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2014/03/07

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Subject: [Leica] IMG: A sports pic question for Ted
From: lrzeitlin at aol.com (lrzeitlin at aol.com)
Date: Fri, 7 Mar 2014 17:48:44 -0500 (EST)

 I was a much better sports photographer back in the good old film days than 
I am now. I had trained my trigger finger to click the shutter of my Leica 
the instant before I saw something interesting happen and chances are I got 
the picture. I was a specialist in soccer. I had both played and coached the 
game and could anticipate the action. Local newspapers called me to cover 
regional and state championships.


Looking back through my old files I had a lot of great shots. Here is one 
published in a newspaper almost 50 years ago. Note the long hair and the 
"traditional" soccer ball. The picture was taken on a cloudy, overcast day.? 
Pushed Tri-X film was necessary to get a high shutter speed .The grain is 
simply from a big blowup. The picture looks like crap on a computer but 
looked OK when printed in a newspaper using a halftone screen.


http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/Larry+Z/Soccer_001.jpg.html


But now with my digital cameras I press the shutter button and wait and wait 
and wait for the picture to be taken. Sure, they are in focus and exposed 
correctly and the ASA 6000 sensor means that I don't have to push film 
speeds but getting the critical moment is a matter of guesswork. By actual 
test my DSLR takes nearly half a second in auto mode from button press to 
shutter click. A big league baseball would travel from the pitcher's hand to 
the catcher's glove in that time. Even by using all the tricks, manual 
settings, prefocus, etc. I can't reduct the latency to much less than .25 
seconds. My reaction time with a film Leica is half that.


Motor drives and sequence photography anyone? It seem like cheating to me.


Ted, what does your son do?


Larry Z



Replies: Reply from imra at iol.ie (Douglas Barry) ([Leica] IMG: A sports pic question for Ted)
Reply from leowesson at gmail.com (Leowesson) ([Leica] IMG: A sports pic question for Ted)
Reply from photo at frozenlight.eu (Nathan Wajsman) ([Leica] IMG: A sports pic question for Ted)