So TheServerSide.com‘s parent company, TechTarget, has taken some of us folks at Oracle out to the ballgame. Twice. The first time, I mainly went to hang out with Dennis. I figured we
would have decent seats, but I had no idea how good they would actually
be. They were dugout seats, right along the first base line. We were separated from the dugout where the sports photographers sat by nothing more than a chain.
So the next time we got the invitation, I brought along all my photographic gear. Much to my disappointment, I was not allowed to use my tripod. So I spent the entire game with my camera braced up against the metal fence separating us from the field, because, with the low light, it would be hard to get steady pictures with a long lens. Besides, I had planned to use slower shutter speeds to capture the blur of motion. But the inconvenience and discomfort of being twisted at odd angles actually turned out to be a good thing: I was so worried about camera shake, even with the extra stability from the metal fence, that I pushed my film up two stops to guarantee that I would catch something in focus.
What I did catch, in two pictures, was a long, thin white streak. The baseball. I’ve always wanted to catch the blur of a baseball leaving a pitcher’s hand, or bouncing off the end of a bat. If I’d had my tripod, I would only have pushed the film up one-stop–which I did for the first roll of the game. No streak at one stop. The shutter speed was just too slow.
Okay, I’ll admit that the pictures aren’t so great. They’re super
grainy, and they’re too dark to boot. But they were fun to take.
I also discovered a useful feature of my scanner: calibrating the auto-focus. I wish I’d found this feature years ago. Every picture I’ve scanned is just a hair out-of-focus, even when the slide is razor sharp.
Oh, I should also point out that I took these pictures six months ago. The photo development service at Oracle can only push process up 1.5 stops. So these two rolls have been sitting on a counter, waiting for me to find a place to develop them all this time.
The gallery for the entire game is here.