Shooting runners - questions

M38A1

I had the opportunity to shoot the Austin Beer Mile again this year. A running event that tosses in some drinking over the course of a mile. But I digress....

Conditions were ideal with a 4pm start time, bright sun low in the sky and no clouds. The area I was setup in was covered by a shade canopy allowing maybe 5% of the sun rays to come through. Grass was sort of a dead brown/gray, trees in the background a fall yellowish color.

Two big issues bit me to include White Balance, and Focus Lock Time.

Gear:
Nikon D700
No presets I'm aware of unless I did something stupid somehow
WB set to Auto
70-200 f/2.8 Nikkor

Nikon D90
No presets I'm aware of unless I did something stupid somehow
WB set to Auto
24-70 f/2.8 Nikkor


On the White Balance issue, everything I shot appeared to be cold/blueish. Upon download to my computer and viewing via Irfanview, they were still cold. BOTH cameras showed the same attribute. When I pulled them into LR, they showed 5100K. Moving it up to 7000K brought just about everything back in like from what I remember it to be. So that points to how the cameras were reading the light, right?

Straight out of the camera with LR showing 5100K


And run through LR bumped up to 7000K shot as follows:
Camera Maker: NIKON CORPORATION
Camera Model: NIKON D700
Image Date: 2012-11-24 17:17:54 (no TZ)
Focal Length: 160.0mm
Aperture: f/5.0
Exposure Time: 0.0040 s (1/250)
ISO equiv: 800
Exposure Bias: none
Metering Mode: Matrix
Exposure: aperture priority (semi-auto)
Flash Fired: No
Color Space: sRGB
GPS Coordinate: undefined, undefined




So for White Balance, what's going on? I didn't recall having this problem last year....




Now, for the Focus Lock Time problem. Using the above settings for just about every shot on the D700 70-200 f/2.8 (letting the shutter speed fluctuate since I used Aperture mode), and the lens set to Auto focus, FULL range, VR-OFF and Normal mode, runners are tough to shoot coming at you or running across your path. What I also found was most if not all the black/dark shirt guys were all slightly blurry. I also shot in cH (my go-fast button).

What am I doing wrong? I figured my body/lens combination should allow me to shoot this kind of stuff without much problem. I thought if I bumped up the ISO to allow for a faster shutter speed, in addition to selecting VR-ON and Active mode that would help. These guys/gals run in the six to 12mph range.

What else can I do? What are the tricks you guys and gals use to shoot active subjects in close proximity and keep them in focus?

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jhefti

Regarding the WB issue, when you put your camera in auto WB it does its best to figure out the proper temperature. In your shot, you have bright sun in the background, but the main subject in shade. Generally a temperature of 5000K is about right for direct sun, and something near 6000K or higher works in shade. What your camera did was to try to balance these conflicting requirements. What you did was to adjust WB for the runner, and what you see is a highly yellow-shifted (with some magenta tint to it) background where the sun is direct. This is a really tough shot to get right.

You were correct to do the proper WB on the runner, but the result is a background that's off. One can live with that. However, I often reduce the yellow saturation (and sometimes luminance) in HSL to bring down a sunny background and have it not stand out. (And for what it's worth, I think 7000K is too yellow shifted for this shot; and nudge the tint a little more towards the green.)

Regarding the focus issue, nailing the shot when the subject is coming at you is hard for most cameras. It's made even more difficult by the black shirt and shorts this guy is wearing. What works for me is to use one AF point and keep it on a high contrast part of the subject. In this guy's case, that might be his face as the rest of his outfit is very low contrast. Since your camera does the AF by measuring contrasts, you're giving it a near impossible task if you keep the AF point on his shirt.

Oh, and make sure you leave VR off if there is any movement of the camera, as it can lead to blur and other weird artifacts if it tries to stabilise the camera while you are moving it. (It sounds like you did this.) You should be shooting at a shutter speed in which VR is useless anyway.

JimKarczewski

I can only say for the WB if I were shooting in that position all day I would use cloudy or shade.. But I typically use cloudy over shade all the time vs AWB where I know things will be cool to warm them.

jhefti

If I may suggest, shooting RAW really helps with editing these kinds of shots where the camera will never get the WB correct. In RAW, it doesn't matter at all what the camera WB is set to as it does not affect the RAW file. All those WB presets affect only the post-acquisition processing done in the camera when converting to jpeg. You'll just have a lot more editorial flexibility in RAW, especially if the WB is far off the mark.

M38A1

Thanks for all the help....

I went back to look at some shots done in a field on Thanksgiving, about the same time and same conditions but zero tree canopy. EVERY shot was at 5000K and I'd swear I had that set to Auto. That struck me as a bit odd from afternoon setting sun to evening it would be the same.

Where would one have hard-set a specific WB on a D700 I can go check? Man there's a ton of menus in this thing... I sure don't recall doing such. Would it be possible I inadvertently set WB to a fixed setting accidentally and didn't realize it so it shot all at that setting?


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jhefti

M38A1 wrote: »

Thanks for all the help....

I went back to look at some shots done in a field on Thanksgiving, about the same time and same conditions but zero tree canopy. EVERY shot was at 5000K and I'd swear I had that set to Auto. That struck me as a bit odd from afternoon setting sun to evening it would be the same.

Where would one have hard-set a specific WB on a D700 I can go check? Man there's a ton of menus in this thing... I sure don't recall doing such. Would it be possible I inadvertently set WB to a fixed setting accidentally and didn't realize it so it shot all at that setting?


.

It's very unlikely that every scene under changing lighting conditions would have the same auto WB. I'll be you had a hard fix on it. Can't give you much advice on menus, though, as I shoot with Canon equipment.

M38A1

I went poking around on the body and found the WB settings. I'd still swear I had it in Auto mode for Thanksgiving and the Beer Mile. But there was a suspicious setting where you key in the K value. Guess what it was..... 5000.

So this afternoon I'll go out and shoot again, same time/conditions and play with it a bit to see if that was the culprit. Thanks for helping me work through this..... Will post more when I learn it.

LRussoPhoto

On your focus issue, I had a similar issue a few months back. I have shot many Tough Mudder and Spartan Races and never had an issue until I was highered by a company to shoot a similar style race. They requested me to use settings that take up less memory card space such as shooting in normal image quality and small image size as opposed to fine and med or even large that I normally shoot in. Also wanted me to shoot in size priority as opposed to image priority. I noticed a drastic drop in sharpness in these settings. I went back to my settings and the quality was back where I wanted it. I would check those settings.
And as hefti said, I like using the face as the focus point.

M38A1

I went back and did some test shots this afternoon. Well, after spending an hour in the WB area of the menus. I think what I might have done is had the D700 on Auto, but there's a couple options even within Auto. I may have had one of them turned on. Anywho, my tests revealed that while Auto does a descent job, in that environment either Sun or Cloud works quite well.

Thanks for the help!

babowc

Sometimes the AWB just doesn't work.. complex lighting, environment, etc.
I use K mode, in those circumstances.
I snap a few test pics and adjust accordingly. It'd be best to have a WB card, but I don't have it... so I go for the next best

Your 2nd picture looks too warm.

As for focus-lock, did you use AF-C with dynamic points or single?

And for your mode, I wouldn't use the aperture mode, allowing the SS to fluctuate.
Use the Shutter priority mode, and let your aperture change accordingly. (If lighting is consistent, experiment with the manual mode!)
You may even also be able to move to center-weighted metering, versus matrix-metering.

Ed911

I use custom in camera white balance...via an Expodisc. It's been one of my most accurate and easy to use custom white balance gadgets, delivering a very close to neutral image in some really wicked shooting situations.

It's sure a lot easier to get your skin tones like you like them in post when shooting the correct white balance for a given situation.

I see that in your second image, you adjusted your color temperature to 7K...and it still looks to red to me. On my calibrated color monitor, he looks warmer and sunburned. Simply pushing your color temp up will not correct your color issues...it will however, as you have indicted, warm your image. You still have to remove any other color casts that may appear.

SmugMug has some pretty good tutorials on skin tones...highly recommended.

jhefti

Honestly, with a shot as complex as this--sun, shade, and the runner himself being in both--there is no in-camera WB setting that will work correctly every time. It's really better to shoot RAW and do the WB in the post.

Regarding aperture priority vs. shutter priority, I'll go with the former every time. Changing the aperture will change the quality of the shot, since the DOF will be different. Just be sure that your ISO is sufficiently high to keep the SS above the minimum.

That said, it's really better to meter manually than allow the camera to make any decisions on the exposure. In high contrast shots, the exposure will bounce all over the place.