I usually don’t travel to new baseball stadiums until Memorial Day. I hate cold weather so I’m not risking a trip to Detroit to freeze my ass off. However, that allows April and May to be an extended Spring Training. I go to a couple Phillies games, shake the rust off, and try out now ideas.

This year I needed to test bounce flashing in stadiums. I normally make photographs with direct, full-power flash, which works great. Occasionally though I’ll come across a flat wall, plaque, window, etc. where the burst of flash against the object just destroys the photo. See Fig. 1.

More importantly, I needed to make sure my camera works. I use the Fuji GA645W. I hate it, but it’s the best tool for the job. Towards the end of last season, I noticed it wouldn’t focus as quickly. The camera’s AF is known for being quick and accurate. Yet I would find myself pointing at an object five feet away and the camera was reading it as 30 feet away. It would take several efforts to correct this, which is not ideal!

The lab sent April games scans back last week, so let’s look at them.

A case of the bounce flash working? Scene looks evenly lit, although I probably could afford to open the aperture even more.

Another case where bouncing the flash seems okay. Again, I could have used more power to better light the scene, but there’s no obnoxious direct flash blowing out the mural or the food holder things.

Failure.

Interesting, but not what I want.

The TV came out nice but the rest of the exposure is shit.

Embarrassing.

LOL.

I guess the lesson learned is: stay with the direct flash. Most of the time I’m in an open-air environment so I have no other choice. When I’m walking in the concourse, the ceiling is so high up the bounce will never work. Even in the smaller spaces where the ceiling is low enough to use, the ambient lighting is too dark. Good to know.

Okay—so these are all photos I took quickly without checking the AF distance. At first, when I had these blown up on my monitor, they did not look focused and I was crushed. I think I made the images too large because on a second look through most of the photographs appear sharp enough. The only questionable photo in this bunch is the couple eating below the TV, but I also do miss focus from time to time when working quickly.

These images were also part of the AF test. Normally I’d confirm the focus and really compose the scene to my wants. Here I prayed and sprayed to see if the focus was up to snuff. I think so? One or two seem a bit less than sharp BUT I had switched down to 1/60 or 1/90 when I’m normally at 1/125—could that be it?

Overall, I think the camera’s AF is still in shape—for now.What do you think?

One other note—the Phanatic is my white whale. I’ve had multiple opportunities to get a good photograph of the baseball’s premiere mascot and I cannot. If the frame is good the exposure is weird. If the exposure is good, the photo is out of focus. Nevertheless, I persist.

And because I’ve shared this much, I might as well share the rest of the editable photos on the roll.