Question about high noon sports

[ccpickre]

So, some of you know I am working at the school paper.

Well I recently got "promoted" to shooting sports (promoted isn't the best choice, lack of options is much more apropo :D )

Anyway, I had to shoot the women's field hockey this past Sunday, and it began at 1:00 in the afternoon. A lot of my pictures came out VERY saturated with color (which may have been a white balance issue, and I since created a custom one that was slightly sharper, and less contrasted).

But my biggest problem was that while my highlights were decently exposed, the shadows came out black as tar.

I was wondering if I was doing something wrong. I don't have any pictures to post as examples yet. I have 2 tests to study for this week and probably won't get to it later this week. But I'm wondering what kind of settings work best for high noon lighting in outdoor sports, so maybe I could practice.

My shots for Sunday were...

100 ISO
1/2500th to 1/1000th (depending on what angle the sun was hitting)
F/2.8

Thank you.

[snaptie2002]

Because of the limited DR of most cameras we are sometimes faced with making a choice of which end we want to give up.

It is a pretty common practice in sports photography to expose for the face and blow the highlights a little.

Marty

[rwells]

Lower your contrast and saturation in camera, this will allow the picture more latitude...

You can add it in later in post production.

Give it a try :thumb

[ccpickre]

Lower your contrast and saturation in camera, this will allow the picture more latitude...

You can add it in later in post production.

Give it a try :thumb
Well, I did that now. So we'll see what happens next.

It is a pretty common practice in sports photography to expose for the face and blow the highlights a little.
Well therein lies the problem. Since I'm the new guy, I get accused of making a mistake. Whereas the "senior" and "experienced" photographers do the same thing, and get respected for it :D

[sirsloop]

well if you are shooting raw you'll end up touching the photos anyways. Might as well leave the shot plain jane in the camera, and make your exposure/color edits in post processing where you can see the thing on a big screen.

[rwells]

Maybe if I would learn to read :scratch

"But my biggest problem was that while my highlights were decently exposed, the shadows came out black as tar."


You will also want to employ the highlight/shadow tool in photoshop to open up those shadows -- also useful to sometimes save near blown highlights.

A very useful tool indeed.

[SloYerRoll]

employ the highlight/shadow toolBe VERY careful when using this tool though. While this tool can be very useful, it can also be very easy to let it get away from you.
I'm pretty sure everyone that has used the SH tool has overdone it at one time or another. It looks like a miracle fix until you get the eye to see it, then it stands out like a sore thumb.

While this may be a good fix for your current dilema. I'd recomend getting a good speedlight for fillflash when shooting at high noon. This will help difuse those nasty shadows as well. Toss a CTO gel on the front of the flash to balance color temp to the sun.

Another way to work around this (definately not as good as fill flash) is bump your ISO and close your aperture a bit (increase f#). This will also help DOF a ton unless you want shallow shots.

-Jon

[ccpickre]

Slo:

Flash wouldn't work cause from where I shoot (or am allowed to shoot) it wouldn't reach.

And for sports you do want a very shallow depth of field.

RWELLS:

The SH tool was used, and didn't bring those shadows out too well. I'm trying to discover if there's a way to avoid relying too much on Photoshop.

SRSLOOP:

Shooting RAW is not always an option because sometimes I have to shoot 3 or 4 sports a day, and I only have a 4 gig and 2 gig right now.

[sirsloop]

CF is cheap, especially if its for a business! $200 bucks will get you roughly 32GB... (4) 8GB cards. If this is for profit shooting, I can't see how you can NOT shoot raw? Shooting raw will also give you better ability in post processing to fix white balance issues. JPG is real real real limited...I've saved COUNTLESS photos by shooting raw.

[mercphoto]

CF is cheap, especially if its for a business! $200 bucks will get you roughly 32GB... (4) 8GB cards. If this is for profit shooting, I can't see how you can NOT shoot raw? Shooting raw will also give you better ability in post processing to fix white balance issues. JPG is real real real limited...I've saved COUNTLESS photos by shooting raw.
There are lots of pro sports shooters out there shooting JPG instead of RAW and for good reason. It has nothing to do with the cost of memory cards or hard disk space but more along the lines of time and money: how much time does processing RAW take, and how much money are you making off the photos? When you shoot a few thousand photos on a Saturday of Pop Warner Football and sell a hundred or two its a big deal. Plus when you have on-site viewing, which many of these guys do, you need the fastest possible path from card to viewing station to print. And that is what JPG gives you.

Ok, I'm done with my "RAW is not always better" rant. :)

Back to exposure. When I shot youth football I was told to dial in one bump of positive exposure compensation. Yes it blows out the whites but it helps the shadows a lot. And frankly, the shadows were much more important than the whites. Blown whites are no big deal, but black shadows look horrible.

Try dialing in +1/3 or +1/2 of exposure compenstation and see what happens.

[ccpickre]

CF is cheap, especially if its for a business! $200 bucks will get you roughly 32GB... (4) 8GB cards. If this is for profit shooting, I can't see how you can NOT shoot raw? Shooting raw will also give you better ability in post processing to fix white balance issues. JPG is real real real limited...I've saved COUNTLESS photos by shooting raw.

As a student, this is DEFINITELY not for profit... yet :D I shoot RAW religiously, but when it comes to sports on the weekend, I trade the perks of RAW for the speed and amount of JPEG.


Try dialing in +1/3 or +1/2 of exposure compenstation and see what happens.
And if I shoot in manual like it was my religion? :D

[snaptie2002]

Try dialing in +1/3 or +1/2 of exposure compenstation and see what happens.
And if I shoot in manual like it was my religion? :D[/quote]

Sure are a lot of what ifs coming back here.

If you shoot manual you should have an indicator in your view finder to tell you when you are at the correct exposure. Go a couple of notches off center in the + direction.

A lot of sports photgraphers shoot in aperture priority so they can catch a split second oppotunity in different light instead monkeying with camera dials. But you may do ok otherwise.

And yes shallow dof is very common in sports photography for lots of reasons. Mostly to blur distracting back grounds.

My flash reaches about twenty meters. Lots of other ones do too. You can probably find one you can afford if you do a little shopping. Or when all else fails shoot only shots you can reach.

There's not a whole lot left, you should be able to sift through the advice given on this thread and get started.

We can all find a million things that won't work but the one who comes back with the pictures is the one who finds at least one way that will :)

Marty

[ccpickre]

Sure are a lot of what ifs coming back here.
Sorry, I'm anal about these things. I know for a fact my camera dosn't have "AEC" in manual mode, and I generally don't shoot any other way. So I wanted to make sure.

Thanks for your help though :)

Here are some of my uploaded photos.

http://Mnemosyne.smugmug.com/photos/197388785-L.jpg
http://Mnemosyne.smugmug.com/photos/197388716-L.jpg
http://Mnemosyne.smugmug.com/photos/197388635-L.jpg
http://Mnemosyne.smugmug.com/photos/197388546-L.jpg
http://Mnemosyne.smugmug.com/photos/197388476-L.jpg
http://Mnemosyne.smugmug.com/photos/197388426-L.jpg
http://Mnemosyne.smugmug.com/photos/197388375-L.jpg
http://Mnemosyne.smugmug.com/photos/197388344-L.jpg
http://Mnemosyne.smugmug.com/photos/197388321-L.jpg
http://Mnemosyne.smugmug.com/photos/197388193-L.jpg
http://Mnemosyne.smugmug.com/photos/197388162-L.jpg
http://Mnemosyne.smugmug.com/photos/197388109-L.jpg
http://Mnemosyne.smugmug.com/photos/197388056-L.jpg
http://Mnemosyne.smugmug.com/photos/197388010-L.jpg
http://Mnemosyne.smugmug.com/photos/197387966-L.jpg
http://Mnemosyne.smugmug.com/photos/195590532-L.jpg
http://Mnemosyne.smugmug.com/photos/195590508-L.jpg
http://Mnemosyne.smugmug.com/photos/195590475-L.jpg
http://Mnemosyne.smugmug.com/photos/195590428-L.jpg

[rwells]

http://Mnemosyne.smugmug.com/photos/197388716-L.jpg




ccpickre,

Hope you don't mind and will pull down if requested...

Here is a quick edit of one of your pics. Yes I used the S/H tool, and yes a "trained" eye might recognize it :rofl , but it makes a useful picture from one that isn't. Could have further processed it with curves to bring out some pop, but that wasn't the point of my post. My point is that you can save lots of pics with the S/H tool if need be.

As always, YMMV

Hope that helps in some way...


http://rw.smugmug.com/photos/197488693-L.jpg

[SloYerRoll]

Slo:

Flash wouldn't work cause from where I shoot (or am allowed to shoot) it wouldn't reach.
While strobes have limitations, you'd be surprised how far they throw light. Your not using the flash to brighten up the players, all you want is the flash to come in and soften up those harsh shadows that coom at high noon.

See if you can rent a speedlight from a local camera store or borrow one from a friend for a day. If you do do this, here's a few pointers to optimize sucess:
Set your strobe on 1/2 or 1/4 power. Full power on strobes is too much. You'll kill the poor thing in about 2 months. Not to mention charge cycle times will drain some serious power.
Make sure the flash is set to telephoto so all the power is sent to the player vs spread over the field.

Make sure to take a shot w/ the flash and a shot w/o so you can look at them side by side when you d/l them to your machine. If it didn't work, you know it's not for you. If it did, you know what your next toy on the list is:wink (along w/ the other million things every photog wants)

-Jon

[mercphoto]

While strobes have limitations, you'd be surprised how far they throw light. Your not using the flash to brighten up the players, all you want is the flash to come in and soften up those harsh shadows that coom at high noon.
Agreed. I've used a 580EX for motocross shooting a lot, and I think it would help you too for those shots. I always shot in Tv mode with the flash in automatic mode. I'd often dial in a little negative FEC, but play around and see what you like. If your flash will accept an external battery pack (580s do) it will help a ton with your recycle time as well as total number of shots you can take.

[ccpickre]

I have a 430

[SloYerRoll]

I have a 430Your golden then!
I'm eager to hear (and see) your results if you decide to give the flash a try.

All the best,
-Jon

[pathfinder]

Chris,

I thought your shots pooked pretty good for shooting at high noon, but......

Try putting your ISO AT 200 OR 400, set your camera up for Av mode, and use the 430ex pointed straight ahead with - 2/3 or so FEC. Your 430ex should do this as duck soup. You MAY need to set your strobe for High Speed Sync if your shutter speeds need to be higher than 1/250th because the strobe will prevent your camera from shooting faster than 1/250th without turning on HIgh Speed Synch.

Shooting when the sun is high in the sky is a perfect time for adding fill flash. Av mode, ETTL, and HSS and it should lighten your shadow quite a bit. Try it and see how you like it - you may need to add + or - Flash Exposure Compensation at times. Set your zoom setting on your flash to 50 or 80mm or so unless you are using a longer lens.

Bring extra batteries though:D

[ccpickre]

Your golden then!
I'm eager to hear (and see) your results if you decide to give the flash a try.

All the best,
-Jon
Well, I have been using my flash. A lot. Just not in sports as much, because usually the school won't allow us to.







Batteries. The bane of my existence :D

Here are a few examples of pictures with flash.

http://Mnemosyne.smugmug.com/photos/195357828-L.jpg
http://Mnemosyne.smugmug.com/photos/195357717-L.jpg
http://Mnemosyne.smugmug.com/photos/192212743-L.jpg
http://Mnemosyne.smugmug.com/photos/192212464-L.jpg
http://Mnemosyne.smugmug.com/photos/192212817-L.jpg
http://Mnemosyne.smugmug.com/photos/192213035-L.jpg
http://Mnemosyne.smugmug.com/photos/192400696-L.jpg
http://Mnemosyne.smugmug.com/photos/192400716-L.jpg
http://Mnemosyne.smugmug.com/photos/192400551-L.jpg
http://Mnemosyne.smugmug.com/photos/192400514-L.jpg

[pathfinder]

I know - and look how great they look with the subject clearly set off from the lightly less bright backgrounds!!:clap :thumb

Your use of fill flash is very good - it will do the same for sports if you are allowed to use it.

The players will not notice the flash when they are playing in bright noon sunshine. If the official policy won't permit it, then it will be difficult and Bill's suggestion of increasing a little +2/3 Exposure Compensation is the only other alternative - let the skies blow out and save the your shadow quarter tones.

[SloYerRoll]

If the official policy won't permit itThen use a snoot so no one sees the flash!:wink

[pathfinder]

Unless you are facing the flashtube, in bright sunlight, it is hard to tell if the flash fired sometimes:thumb

The snoot sounds like a good idea - Chris, you even have the black soda straws in your strobist kit. Go to their website and dig out how to fabricate the snoot with the grid - it might actually work:thumb