High School Volleyball - first time with strobes

mattdan12

I posted the other day looking for advice on setting up strobes for a HS volleyball game. Here are the results from the games this past Thursday.

This was my first time using strobes and it took a little while to get used to only getting a single shot at a time, rather than a burst of 2-3. As a result my timing was way off on a lot of shots. I also didn't get many good shots of blocking or attacking, I'll work on that next time...

Anyway, here are a few examples from the JV and Varsity games. Most are at 5.6 at 1/250 - I guess I was going with the smaller aperture to try and get rid of some of the motion blur. Since I'm pretty unfamiliar with using strobes, I'm guessing my thinking may be flawed. Both strobes were set to full and were bounced off the ceiling.

C&C is welcome. I'm looking for advice on how to get rid of the motion blur that is still present in most of these.

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I had a lot of shots like this - kind of like playing "Where's Waldo" - I think there is a volleyball player in there somewhere.




A photo of one of the strobes:

donek

Aperture isn't going to reduce motion blur. The only thing that will do it is a faster shutter speed or a shorter burst of light from your strobes. You can't sync and faster, so flash duration is your key. I don't know the duration on your strobe burst at full power, but it will be reduced by lowering the power. This is how you control the power on a strobe. Turn it on longer and you give off more light. Try a larger aperture and lower power and you are likely to loose some of that blur. You really need to to take an ambient exposure and then work to get at least 2 stops over it. One way you can achieve 2 stops over ambient is to focus on a smaller part of the gym. Look at your situation and see if there is some way to confine your work to a smaller area. You'll be able to more easily overpower the ambient light that way.

The watermark is annoying, but the shots are pretty good aside from the large depth of field.