Basketball portraits

jmphotocraft

Shot a 5th grade girls' team last week, my first time shooting in a gym. I'm pleased with the portrait results...



ISO 400, 1/60, f/3.2, 430EX off silver umbrella to my right, about 30 degrees, FEC -1/3

rhondavid

May be my crappy monitor but seems that the lighting is more centered toward the center of the body rather than the face. Face seems tad darker than chest area. Also focus seems to be on the chest, logo rather than they face and eyes. I may be totally off but hard to tell with my monitor. Tighter crop might be better too. Just my two cents.

jmphotocraft

Thanks, I think the light is fairly even, but I'll aim a smidge higher next time. Not sure how you're discerning the plane of focus from an 800px image though. I have to leave room for cropping to different print sizes. This is 2:3; at 4:5 it is a lot tighter.

Scott_Quier

Crop looks good to me as, like you say, you don't know how the client is going to want to crop for framing.

Exposure also looks good and is even enough. There might be a slight fall-off as you go up from her jersey to her face, but not enough to worry about and, if you are really detail oriented, easy enough to fix in post.

On this POS monitor at work (not color corrected, but whites are pretty good even so), her socks and the tag on her jersey look a little yellow. Did you, by chance either set a CWB, shoot a gray target, or in post sample the color of something white to set the WB?

In the "for next time" column, I think I would move the camera a foot or two to one side or the other to keep the net from growing out of the top of her head.

Anyway you figure, I would think the clients will be well pleased with the image as posted. Well done, indeed!

jmphotocraft

Scott_Quier wrote:

Crop looks good to me as, like you say, you don't know how the client is going to want to crop for framing.

Agreed, the customer's ability to crop was one of the original selling points of smugmug for me. So I generally go a little loose and leave images at 2:3. This results in a lot "crop tighter" comments in forums, haha. This image as it appears above is the original composition straight out of the camera.

On this POS monitor at work (not color corrected, but whites are pretty good even so), her socks and the tag on her jersey look a little yellow. Did you, by chance either set a CWB, shoot a gray target, or in post sample the color of something white to set the WB?

Luckily enough, this was AWB. I agree it's on the warm side. I may tweak it.

In the "for next time" column, I think I would move the camera a foot or two to one side or the other to keep the net from growing out of the top of her head.

Ya know, I tried that and I didn't like it as much. I like the perspective given by the horizontal foul shot line and the key lines trailing off behind her symmetrically (mostly). I like those a lot more than I dislike the net right over her head. Also since neither the net nor backboard are touching her head, I don't think it looks like it is growing out of her head. And when you crop to 5x7 or 8x10, much of the backboard and even the hoop gets cropped out.

Anyway you figure, I would think the clients will be well pleased with the image as posted. Well done, indeed!

Thanks!