Swimming With flash..

JimKarczewski

So, at least in Indiana flash is allowed after the start off the blocks (the starter has a strobe that goes off for those that I'm assuming are hearing impaired?)

Anyway, Conference championship today. 8 schools I believe participating. Having shot in this school before I know that the lights cycle and add to that some (not a ton) of natural light coming in from frosted windows at the top of the pool. So to kill that problem, I used flash, specifically 4 flashes. One on each pole of the lane marker flags pointed across to the opposite pole at a 45 degree angle. Flashes were set at 1/8 power, 50mm zoom for the lights down pool, 70mm (to try and reach the finish line/starting block) for the 2 lights facing the blocks. Ended up there was only 1 sweet spot, between the poles, outside of that and looked like crap, which I was hoping the 70mm zoom pointed towards the starting blocks/finish would help, but did not.

Here are my picks that didn't make it to the paper because some moron (me) didn't take the original handout showing lane assignments or what heat (most events had 3 heats) the swimmer won in, only if I happened to annotate than info in my notes was I able to figure it out.

These were all shot, ISO640, 1/250 @ 3.2

Ferguson

I'm sorry, I hope you want honest feedback, but I think you need to turn the flashes off, or at least tone them down.

A few of these (#3, #5) look like posterizations, i.e. an abstract or artsy format and are kind of cool. But if these are meant to represent real-life-looking, the flash has totally over-exposed portions and the water reflection is killing you.

My apologies if that seems harsh; I hate it when people just say "nice shots" to me, so I hope you take that constructively.

rsirota

I was concerned when I saw the subject... "Swimming with a Flash" does not sound safe

perroneford

Ferguson wrote: »

I'm sorry, I hope you want honest feedback, but I think you need to turn the flashes off, or at least tone them down.

A few of these (#3, #5) look like posterizations, i.e. an abstract or artsy format and are kind of cool. But if these are meant to represent real-life-looking, the flash has totally over-exposed portions and the water reflection is killing you.

My apologies if that seems harsh; I hate it when people just say "nice shots" to me, so I hope you take that constructively.

I'm not convinced flash is the culprit. Looks like a processing choice.

JimKarczewski

Unfortunately some of the issues mentioned are culprit of batch processing. I need to go back and individually adjust exposure for each image as depending on where they are in the pool affects the exposure of the image. And just to be safe, 1 gallon hefty bags with zip locks work wonders in the pool to keep the flashes dry!

johng

Feedback: Whether the issues displayed in a number of these images are caused by batch processing or improper flash, it should still be caught before publication. I'll be very interested to see the images after individual processing vs. batch. As is, it's about a 50-50 split on acceptable and unacceptable in this series.

JimKarczewski

johng wrote: »

Feedback: Whether the issues displayed in a number of these images are caused by batch processing or improper flash, it should still be caught before publication. I'll be very interested to see the images after individual processing vs. batch. As is, it's about a 50-50 split on acceptable and unacceptable in this series.

My problem is I have the "deadline" mentality a LOT. I need to get these images done and FTP'd ASAP, which is what I did here. Tonight I'm going back and doing everything individually so they can be uploaded to my gallery for parents. Unfortunately getting stuck in that mindset is a bad thing, even though when I do submit images I edit individually not batch (except clarity, WB, noise, etc) but exposure is always adjusted per image. Then again, when I'm doing that kind of submission I'm working with 10 pics max and this gallery has about 50 images.