Wrestling

JSPhotography

Some wrestling shots from yesterday, the mat made things tough, C&C welcome
#1

#2

#3

#4

#5

#6

#7

#8

cmkultradome

Wow - I've never seen a mat that bright!! Like the action caught in #7.

Stephanie

Macushla

That is a crazy mat. I love #4 - great action shot and all their limbs are in the frame. Can you share your equipment and settings? I'm always trying to improve my wrestling photos.

JSPhotography

I was using my 40D, Sigma 70-200 2.8, F2.8, ISO about 1000, shutter 1/500, flash with a diffuser so it does not bother the wrestlers. I have learned to use multi point for focus vs center point. Too many times that center point goes between the wrestlers and screws up focus. Sometimes it will get a foot coming straight out at tme and screw up my DOF but it is rare.

There was a guy there that was using 2 1600 alien bees fired with a pocket wizard. He was only using 1/250. That just seems too slow to me. His exposure looked good but I would think he would get motion blur. I dunno, had a lot more gear than me so he must no better.

johng

well, I took a look at these as well as the gallery itself. Your exposures and WB are all over the place. The flash is very inconsistent - underexposed and overexposed shots. I'll stick to the photos you posted here - lots of flash burn in these. Also, are you using active d-lighting or something similar? There is an unnatural lack of shadow in these which makes the images appear flatter with less dimension. The WB is off a bit too - probably not helped by the bright mat. The brightness may be able to be toned down in post - if you shot RAW you're golden as you can fix the brightness and WB issues. If you worked the shadows in post I would suggest going back to the originals - if it's something done in-camera I might suggest turning it off.

johng

JSPhotography wrote:

There was a guy there that was using 2 1600 alien bees fired with a pocket wizard. He was only using 1/250. That just seems too slow to me. His exposure looked good but I would think he would get motion blur. I dunno, had a lot more gear than me so he must no better.

Actually 1/250 works great. The key is the balance of camera exposure to ambient light. The closer the camera's exposure is to ambient the more blur. The more underexposed the camera is set at the more the flash burst will freeze motion. With two bounced or reflected 1600s the photog was likely generating all the light from them - so no issues freezing motion.

JSPhotography

johng wrote:

well, I took a look at these as well as the gallery itself. Your exposures and WB are all over the place. The flash is very inconsistent - underexposed and overexposed shots. I'll stick to the photos you posted here - lots of flash burn in these. Also, are you using active d-lighting or something similar? There is an unnatural lack of shadow in these which makes the images appear flatter with less dimension. The WB is off a bit too - probably not helped by the bright mat. The brightness may be able to be toned down in post - if you shot RAW you're golden as you can fix the brightness and WB issues. If you worked the shadows in post I would suggest going back to the originals - if it's something done in-camera I might suggest turning it off.

Yes, I shot in RAW. The inconsistancy you are seeing I think is mostly me. I did have a handfull of shots where I forgot to turn the flash on but they were of my grandson and they needed to get up on my website. I sat there last night openning each one and making adjustments. I have Elements 7. When I tried to stay with the same adjustment numbers it didn't seem to work. How should I go about making those adjustments?

JSPhotography

johng wrote:

Actually 1/250 works great. The key is the balance of camera exposure to ambient light. The closer the camera's exposure is to ambient the more blur. The more underexposed the camera is set at the more the flash burst will freeze motion. With two bounced or reflected 1600s the photog was likely generating all the light from them - so no issues freezing motion.

So he was actualy controling his exposure by the length of time of his flash instead of the shutter?

johng

JSPhotography wrote:

I sat there last night openning each one and making adjustments. I have Elements 7. When I tried to stay with the same adjustment numbers it didn't seem to work. How should I go about making those adjustments?

Without exif it's tough to give definite answers. In general though you can only expect the same adjustments in POST to work IF everything was same in-camera (i.e. you used manual WB, manual exposure and manual flash power). If you're letting the gear adjust WB, adjust exposure or adjust flash power then you're going to have some variability in your shots.

The exposure is the first thing - if you're not already doing it, shoot with a manual exposure. For flash I prefer ttl over manual but I do review shots to dial in flash exposure compensation. And realize you're going to get the off 1 or 2 shots because the flash isn't charged. I find that if exposures are good then WB is much easier to work with.

Now- on the WB front. If you're using more flash output, WB should be fairly easy and consistant. Much easier than if you're trying to balance flash with ambient.

But that's all for next time. For this time I would suggest fixing exposure firt in your raw conversion then apply a standard WB setting. You might have to adjust the temperature up or down on a couple. But if you get the exposure corrected first you might find your WB isn't all that bad UNLESS you have uneven temperatures in a given photo - a result of ambient and flash mixing unevenly (another argument for overpowering ambient light if lighting is inconsistant).

But the truth is - if you spend the time to get WB and exposure correct in-camera and take some test shots to determine how your flash will work with ambient and make those adjustmentss during warm-ups AND you're frequently checking output to verify whether you need FEC or whether you turned a dial by mistake you'll drastically reduce your post processing time to simple crop/sharpen with the occasional levels or curves work. You're already at the event spending time - so spending a bit of the down time to get things right in-camera is the goal.

Hope that helps

johng

JSPhotography wrote:

So he was actualy controling his exposure by the length of time of his flash instead of the shutter?

Be careful - there are 2 concepts at work here:
1) Exposure
2) freezing subject motion.

You can't easily control the length of the flash duration itself, but you can control how much the flash contributes to the overall exposure.

On one extreme is using flash as fill. The camera's ISO, aperture and shutter speed are basically exposing the scene correctly. In this instance flash output is minimal - used just to fill in some shadows.

At the other extreme the camera's ISO, aperture and shutter speed are set to values that without a flash or strobe would return a black exposure. In this case the flash tries to output enough light to properly expose the subject. In this case ALL light is being provided by the flash. Flash bursts are usually 1/1000-1/2000 or faster. So even if the shutter is open for 1/30 of a second there is really only enough light for 1/1000 or so. You get the same 'freezing' effect as if you used a 1/1000 shutter speed.

But, at that extreme you need a LOT of flash power and if you don't have a huge diffuse strobe system (multiple strobes off reflectors or bounced) the lighting will look very unnatural - subject stark against a dark background.

So, the "art" is to find a balance between the two. Have the camera's exposure dark enough that the flash burst freezes motion but not too dark so that you have enough power and the resulting shots look more natural.

Does that help? Or have I confused things even more?

JSPhotography

Thanks johng. I'm keeping up with you. This will be a big help in the future. I appreciate all your input.