Re: Low Light DSLR Sport's Shots
- From: Pat <groups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 6 Oct 2008 08:43:48 -0700 (PDT)
On Oct 6, 9:29 am, Wolfgang Weisselberg <ozcvgt...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
C J Campbell <christophercampb...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
All sports shooting is looking for "the moment." [...]
The only way to get that shot is to machine-gun it. You will never do
it single shot.
Sorry, but you are wrong. It may be that *you* never get it
unless you machine-gun. It may well be that many people stand
a better chance to get it when they machine-gun.
But as it stands, your statement is obviously wrong.
Pray tell, why aren't almost all sports shooter using 60 or
100 or 1000 fps cameras? That'd be real machine-gunning, and
by your belief, it must be better. Got an idea?
That said, a faster lens helps a lot. Flash does not. Most external
flash units will not allow you to machine-gun your shot anyway. They
don't recycle fast enough.
Sheesh, even without thinking for a second I know at least 3 ways
how to counter the 'problem'. If you treated machine gunning as a
magical formula for shooting instead of understanding what happens,
then I'd unterstand you not being able to see trivial solutions.
And use a monopod. Catching your subject at
the moment he freezes at the peak of the action will do you no good if
you are waving the camera around.
Stuff the monopod and use IS!
-Wolfgang
Like everything else in photography, there is a time and a place for
just about everything. This includes machine-gunning as well as not-
machine-gunning.
The art a sports photography is patience. You have to wait for it to
happen but you also have to be prepared. You can't machine-gun a
football player hitting a hole if you don't know that that is what is
going to happen. Therefore, positioning is also crucially important.
Indoor lighting generally sucks -- especially for soccer and lacrosse
that is played in hockey rinks. Rinks are lit assuming there is ice
to reflect a lot of the light. Warehouses are also pretty spotty.
A flash is useful but then you have to deal with the plexiglass.
Putting a flash on a pole and extending it above the glass works. You
can also take a box and cut the corner out of it to create a cone,
line it with aluminum foil and put the flash in the corner cut-out.
Then tape the whole thing to the plexiglass. It's immobile but
works. You need to deal with the reflexivity of the glass in some
manner.
If there's not glass, you have to deal with getting hit by a ball,
which isn't too bad but has been know to break a hot-shoe or two. So
get an extra hot show and be prepared to replace it, it generally
isn't hard to do.
For lacrosse and soccer that has cages, ask to cut out a small section
to put your lens through. That's useful.
Sometimes you can also sit on the bench if it's played in a rink.
For outside, you want a lens in the 300 to 400 mm range. For indoor,
you want a shorter lens. A small F-stop is important but not so much
for the light gathering abilities but because it helps focus faster
and more accurately.
Don't forget to shoot offense and defense and to share your pictures
with all of the players/parents if you get any special treatment (or
even if you don't). Few people have decent pics of their kids playing
sports because it's so hard to take the pictures.
Finally, remember there are different constituencies. For my sons'
soccer leagues, the newspaper wants isolated pictures with plain
backgrounds. Two or three people in the picture and easy to make out
what's going on. It also needs to have the ball in it and it should
be near the player. They prefer the ball in the air because it shows
movement. The second constituency is the school. They like pictures
for their bulletin boards and newsletters. They like lots of their
kids in it -- looking at the camera. Movement or action is not as
important. Switching to a football example, a huddle breaking up and
all of the kids running out together is just fine for them. In
soccer, a group hi-fiving after a goal is just as good as the goal
(maybe better). Finally, it's the players. Even the bad ones and
defensive players want a picture of themselves doing something. It
might not be a great action picture, but to that player it is the best
picture ever. Heck, you might not even need to have a good focus for
the player to love it. Remember, a bad picture of your kid is better
than no picture at all, and since most people have no pictures of
their kids playing sports ....
Finally, sharing. If you don't want to make money on the pictures,
then you don't want the hassle of a complex web site, billing, etc.
The people don't care. One easy solution is (oh this is tough to say)
Walmart's web site. You can upload the pictures for free. People can
register and browse them for free. They can even download the files.
If they want pictures, they order them and pay Walmart either through
store pick-up or mail-order. Plus, if the grandparents aren't local,
you can print to THEIR Walmart. The other thing is that people can
make magazine covers, mouse pads, calendars, etc. without you have to
be involved at all. This is how I handle it for 2 soccer teams and
one football team. I create "groups" for each team and upload from my
account over to the group page. Other parents can also upload
pictures if they wish -- I don't care. The parents love it. The kids
love it. And I don't have any hassles at all.
.
- References:
- Low Light DSLR Sport's Shots
- From: infiniteMPG
- Re: Low Light DSLR Sport's Shots
- From: C J Campbell
- Re: Low Light DSLR Sport's Shots
- From: Wolfgang Weisselberg
- Low Light DSLR Sport's Shots
- Prev by Date: Re: Canon: "Some of our lenses...may not be good enough"
- Next by Date: Zeiss on Canon
- Previous by thread: Re: Low Light DSLR Sport's Shots
- Next by thread: Re: Low Light DSLR Sport's Shots
- Index(es):
Relevant Pages
|
Loading
