Safe or out? Does the photo reveal the truth?


It was our third game.  We were the X-men (actually, team χ - the Greek letter chi - being the chi-men, which sounds more like a spice than a baseball team) and playing against a team much younger than ourselves.  The final score was 28-9, and we weren't the 28.  I brought along my Z7ii and Plena f.1.8 135 mm lens which allowed me to shoot at very low apertures and very fast shutter speeds.  The image above was at f/1.8 at 1/1000th of a second.

Looking at the above photo, do you think the runner was out or safe?  The image was actually falsified as the ball was not where it seems.  If you look at the image below you can see the original, the one a moment after it, and where I got the ball from.

This was the photo a moment later.  So, how is it possible that the ball seems to be in a much different position - it should be closer to the mitt, not further away.  The truth is that the first image had the ball copied from the above one and pasted onto it in a convincing position.  If you look closely at the ball in both images, you will see that they are exactly the same in terms of the markings.  

The answer then is that the runner was safe, he got on base just before the baseman caught the ball.  I don't think it was a forced play either, which means he would have to be tagged with it.  

Anyways, the game was fun and I took about 200 photos and posted many of them on the game site.  I got a couple of hits and even made it to second base, but never made it past that.  However, I got a chance to play and that is all I wanted.

Congratulations to the winners of the game.  It wasn't us, but we had fun.

Thanks for reading.

Eric Svendsen     www.ericspix.com



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