Sports Photo Question about backlighting

Xraymaniac

Hi,
I'm new to the forum. Shooting outdoor water polo pictures with Canon 40D, 70-200 2.8 stabilized. Usually sun overhead or in front and no problem. But, last week had to shoot with subjects in shadow and bright sunlight behind.

Needless to say, had trouble keeping subjects light enough, as needed quick enough to stop action (iso 400; speed 1/800th). And, if subject exposed correctly, background way too light.

Had to do lots of post processing.

Any suggestions?

Thanks for your help.

rockcanyonphotos

can you post a few examples (with EXIF) ... I think it would help us understand a bit better.

torags

Shoot with a flash (for fill light and reduction in dynamic range) or active D lighting in cam or PP.

I just had the same problem. Wrong side of sun the in supermoto racing. One side of subject in glare - other side in shadow.

I would suppose the water would be even more difficult glarewise. You can't use a CP makes deeper shadow.

I used in cam active D and I had to add fill light in PP. More processing than I like, but I had to.

My .02

Rags

du8die

I've had a similar situation - shooting youth football early in the morning with the sun low in the sky -- there's only so much you can do. Flash isn't always an option. I think it's boils down to making a compromise between a perfectly exposed picture and a perfectly exposed person...

What I do in those situations is bump up the exposure compensation by a stop and expose for the person's face. Yeah, my backgrounds look horrible, but I'm not taking a picture of the background.

Xraymaniac

Hi,
Can't use flash
Tried exp comp but background still off
Here's an example....but don't know how to find EXIF, sorry

mercphoto

Xraymaniac wrote:

Needless to say, had trouble keeping subjects light enough, as needed quick enough to stop action (iso 400; speed 1/800th). And, if subject exposed correctly, background way too light.

You've already said using a flash wasn't feasible, which is unfortunate. I only see two options now. One, don't shoot in that environment. Or two, realize the subject is what's important, expose for that, and just live with a bad background. Neither options are terribly satisfactory though.