Shooting Through Fences and Netting.

[TexPhoto]

What are your experiences shooting through fencing and netting? A local college baseball team I shoot for has netting throughout their new stadium.

I was thinking of putting together a how-to video and was just wondering what other have experienced.

I find that that 2 main things help:
1. The bigger your front element is the more it tends to wash out the obstructions. Shoot with the aperture wide open obviously, but a lens with a large front element is going to do better than one with a small from element. Of course a small front element might be able to poke though a hole, but that's not really shooting through it.
2. Get the camera as close to the obstruction as possible. I prefer to use a lens hood and actually press the hood against the fence.

Here is a worst case example, shot with a 200-400mm f4 lens. At 400mm and F4. Lens hood against the fence.


The Photo:

 

[neuroanatomist]

Both are with the EF 70-200/2.8L IS II, the wattled crane is with the 2x extender. Same method, hood of the lens pressed up against the fence.

 

[Maximilian]

What are your experiences shooting through fencing and netting? ...

I find that that 2 main things help:
1. The bigger your front element is the more it tends to wash out the obstructions. Shoot with the aperture wide open obviously, but a lens with a large front element is going to do better than one with a small from element. Of course a small front element might be able to poke though a hole, but that's not really shooting through it.
2. Get the camera as close to the obstruction as possible. I prefer to use a lens hood and actually press the hood against the fence.

I have no example at hand right now.

But your #2 is definitely the way to go. I do it the same way, hood against the fence.
Together with aperture wide open and the centre of the optical axis in the centre of the hole/fence/free area.
This gave me the best results.

I am not sure if #1 is relevant. But thinking about what I know about astro optics, it could be true.
But I don't have a scientific explanation.

 

[Roo]

Even if you can't press up against the fence, you can still get usable images and even when not shooting wide open.

This was a heavy crop on a 70-200 shot through black netting that was about 2.5-3m in front of me at f2.8.



Uncropped here and the netting was just outside the focus limiter distance, which sometimes causes issues even when using people tracking.


Problems occur at motorsport with debris fencing as often you can't get close enough to it and it reflects back into the lens causing soft images. For this the trick is to find spots where the fence is in shade. Here I was in the shade about 6m from the fence (also shaded) shooting with a 200-400 @ f13 to get the shutter speed down as panning helps remove the bars. I was using a CPL but could have added a ND filter to get the aperture closer to wide open.


Another shady spot but with a higher shutter speed and wide open at f5.6


Another slow shutter image but the shaded bars are appearing as black in the light part of the image as the subject moves away rather than sideways through the image.


And this is what it looks like at a higher shutter speed wide open at f4

 

[meywd]

not sports but

 

[TexPhoto]

Here I was shooting through the soccer goal trying to get some visible netting in the photo. I was about 10 feet back. In the top photo pressing the camera to the net may have resulted in camera damage or bodily injury. They seemed to be targeting me.