Basketball - Anyone try intentional slow shutter speeds for effect?

MDalby

Have any of you tried any creative shutter speeds to blur the background?

"Shooting at 1/100 of a second or 1/80 of a second allows the player to be in focus and sharp but the background to be very blurry and creates a cool effect."

8 Tips for Taking Sports Photos Like a Pro

MD

dsloan

MDalby wrote: »

Have any of you tried any creative shutter speeds to blur the background?

"Shooting at 1/100 of a second or 1/80 of a second allows the player to be in focus and sharp but the background to be very blurry and creates a cool effect."

8 Tips for Taking Sports Photos Like a Pro

MD

for cars, definitely. for people, not so much.

JimKarczewski

Yeah, dunno about basketball. I mean, depends on how much of a difference there is between ambient and flash levels. I did this ALL THE TIME when I shot weddings. Easily shoot 1/20 at all times because I was shooting in a cave and flash would freeze the action anyway.. but sports, dunno.. really...

JimKarczewski

hahahahahahaha. I'm sorry, I have to laugh at that article about "AVOIDING FLASH"

Really? Every NBA and Division 1 school has flashes in the rafters for the pro shooters. Avoid it my a$$. Tell that to SI or any other publication shooting a College or Pro game.


ETA- What he really should had said was AVOID ON CAMERA FLASH. Since even he mentions the rafter flashes.

And you could so something like the truck racing picture with Basketball.. However, you would need something like the TT1/TT5 from PocketWizard to do a rear curtain sync instead of front curtain. Front will create a trail in front of the player, rear will have any trail behind them. Normal pocketwizards don't do it... I'm pretty sure.. Never figured it out if they do...

codrus

JimKarczewski wrote: »

And you could so something like the truck racing picture with Basketball.. However, you would need something like the TT1/TT5 from PocketWizard to do a rear curtain sync instead of front curtain. Front will create a trail in front of the player, rear will have any trail behind them. Normal pocketwizards don't do it... I'm pretty sure.. Never figured it out if they do...

If you're using normal PWs, then it's a manual flash, right? Can't you just set the camera to 2nd curtain sync and have it pop the PWs at the right time? I don't think you need a setting on the PW itself for it.

As for deliberately slower shutter speeds for the "motion" effect, with cars it's great because you can pan the camera and the only thing on the car that gets blurry is the wheels (which is extra good). It works nicely for airplanes too, with the propellers. People on the other hand, change shape as they move (position of arms & legs relative to torso), so it works poorly.



--Ian

JimKarczewski

codrus wrote: »

If you're using normal PWs, then it's a manual flash, right? Can't you just set the camera to 2nd curtain sync and have it pop the PWs at the right time? I don't think you need a setting on the PW itself for it.

As for deliberately slower shutter speeds for the "motion" effect, with cars it's great because you can pan the camera and the only thing on the car that gets blurry is the wheels (which is extra good). It works nicely for airplanes too, with the propellers. People on the other hand, change shape as they move (position of arms & legs relative to torso), so it works poorly.



--Ian

Well, here in lies the problem. I used to shoot weddings. I tried that... And what would happen is flash on camera was set to "rear" and camera didn't have settings for it... So you would get 2 distinct pops. One front (pocketwizard) one rear (on camera) giving you nice ghosted images.

Now, Canon supposedly can do it on the 1D bodies but not anything lower, which is really a PITA. So I guess it all depends on what camera you have...

Zerodog

Rear curtain flash maybe? Could be cool. You should give it a shot.