Dogfan, personally I would have cropped the image to just take out the spectator in the white shirt as he is a bit distracting, but you need to allow a little space for the batsman to move into so I think your crop is a little more extreme than you need. On the other hand, if the spectator on the far right had been wearing a darker coloured shirt (and was therefore less distracting) I would probably not have cropped the image at all. Good shot though, and practise will make perfect.
Graelwyn, you just need to play around with the camera to get the correct settings, easy to say I know, but if someone wants to really learn to be a good photographer, they have to learn how to override or compensate for Auto settings. This is not to say Auto is bad, you just have to learn how and more importantly, when, to override them to get the results you desire.
As photographers, with modern technology we now have cameras with more advanced features and settings available than our predecessors, yet the photographs that many of us aspire to take were taken on equipment with limited facilities and it was their knowledge of the subject and media (film, chemicals, paper etc) that allowed them to get good results. if you point a modern camera at a white wall regardless of what metering you use (spot, matrix or centre weighted) it will come out grey similarly if you aim at a black wall the result will be the same, we know this and we make allowances for it, it should be the same with every part of the image capturing process, and practise makes perfect (okay maybe not perfect, but a whole lot better).
So, how do you improve? Well digital helps massively here as you can take hundreds of shots and after perusal, just delete the ones you don't require, I don't mean when you are on an assignment I mean just to practise! In the past really learning photography was an expensive business as you had too buy the film and get it processed before being able to see the results, and then do the same again each time you wanted to try out a new technique, the expense of this and the time delays were not condusive to quick learning. Use your camera, every free minute take photos of things around the house, use different settings and techniques, take the camera out with you for a walk when you have some free time, but most important of all, record details of every shot and all your settings for each one, then on your return, stick them into the computer and armed with your notebook of exposure information see what worked for you, take note of the settings of the ones you are happy with.. Take the camera out of some of it's auto modes, and set the controls yourself, experiment, use the wrong settings to see what will happen (use tungsten and fluorescent settings in daylight etc) deliberately underexpose and overexpose to see what the results will be like and if and how you can correct them, use JPGs rather than RAW to start, to take another variable out of the equation.
Remember too, that digital has a range of exposure of about 5 stops from black to white, this is a similar range to that of Transparency Film and must be remembered when shooting for optimum exposure. Try to visualise how you want the end image to look and remember to meter from a 'known tone' and then adjust the exposure to suit i.e white wall, add two stops, light grey or coloured subject (yellow, beige) add one stop, mid range subject (grass, blue sky, light tarmac) as is, darker subject reduce one stop, black subject reduce two stops.
As I said before, practise will not necessarily give you perfect images, but it will enable you to get perfect control over your cameras functions (and foibles) and the confidence to know that you are fully conversant with it and how it performs under different circumstances, therefore then allowing you to then concentrate on the subject matter.
I think a lower iso or a shorter exposure would have probably produced an image more to your liking.
Did not mean to cause any confusion!
(Justin Langer for Somerset V Kent by the way )
