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Basketball Tournament Time...
JimKarczewski
Registered Users Posts: 969 Major grins
I'm sure it's probably the same for most of the country, but in IL and IN we're in tournament season.. Tonight was the first of 5 straight days of tournament action spread across IL and IN.
Tonight I shot in one of my favorite kind of gyms, a dark hole. Set up 8 flashes, ended up with 1/250@3.5, ISO 640 which is about 4.5 stops over ambient.
Thanks for looking..
Tonight I shot in one of my favorite kind of gyms, a dark hole. Set up 8 flashes, ended up with 1/250@3.5, ISO 640 which is about 4.5 stops over ambient.
Thanks for looking..
Jim Karczewski - http://www.jimkarczewski.com
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Thank you, nice to see how strobbed basketball can look.
Natural light would had never worked. 1/650 @ 2.8 @ ISO 12k, I just refuse to shoot that high of an ISO. Yeah, I CAN do it, but it looks like mush when it makes it to print, even overexposing 1/3 to make it "look" lighter. Plus, a lot of time flash is used because of the wonderful world of cycling lights. What a joy it is not to have to deal with that crap!
Yeah, our high school gym has had me thinking many times I should do the strobe thing. The ISO is not too bad--around 4000--but the worst cycling I've ever seen. My shots sure would look better with some lighting help.
The odd thing is that is used to be where a professional basketball team (the Warriors) used to play. Dunno how they could televise it!
Uhm. Thats easy! Lights cycle at 60Hz in the US. Shooting video, you're doing 24 or 30fps. You are below the 1/60th of a second cycle of the lights, so the camera won't notice it, and typically when you shoot video you shoot 2x the speed you are shooting. So, 24fps is 1/48 and 30 is 1/60. So, reason why you don't see it is because the video was shooting at a slow shutter speed. If you could get away with shooting at 1/60 you would notice the cycling would disappear.
The only way to rid the cycling lights is to have lights wired on a 3 phase system. Which means 3, 120V lines coming into the facility, each with their phase 1/20 shifted. What that does is gives you more consistent light. As one light is falling off it's peak, at 1/20th it's still probably pretty bright, the next cycle is peaking, and again for the 3rd cycle. This is how cycling is eliminated is by running a 3 phase system. It's more expensive to wire, so there is a reason a lot of places don't do it!
I personally love the ability to overpower the lights and kill it making whatever kind of light I want.
In fact tonight, probably won't get to post them till Sunday as bed is calling and a long day tomorrow, I shot with 8 lights. All 8 were NOT firing at the same time. 4 had been set to Channel 24A on Pocketwizard 3's and 4 were set to 24B. A Multimax was then used for SpeedCycler mode, selecting groups A and B. When the shutter fired it alternated between A and B so I could probably had shot till I filled my buffer at 1/4 power on 580EXII (with a lithium battery pack) and Godox Ving850 Lithium batteries. Normally the Godox are good for 4 shots at 1/8 power, but due to the SpeedCycler the time of rest given to the lights allowed it to continuously fire (with it's paired channel sitting next to it) as much as I wanted. I take that back. There are 2 cases the lights would stop firing.. I fill my buffer or overheat the strobe tube.
Depending on lighting conditions Saturday night, I'll either use the speedcycler again (for brighter lit gyms) or revert back to 1/8 power. Though, I'd like to try a mix one day. As the 580EX and EXII seem to be able to handle the Lithium (Godox) pack pretty well, I might be able to get them at 1/4 and fire them both for main and use the Godox Ving 850's at 1/4 power on speed cycler for fill light, with the PW3 it makes it pretty simple to determine what's going to fire and what's not.
Flash always keeps my brain thinking on what I can do better.. That's for damn sure. Never gives me the feeling of, "Ugh, another basketball game to shoot!" Which it seems like some local photojournalists have fallen in to when I see them looking at their camera for 1/2 the game rather than capturing the action!
Actually, according to my videographer friends, the cycling lights are a problem for them too. Being a mathematical type I assumed the same argument that you outlined here. However, I think it's too simplistic to use the 60 Hz argument. Rather you need to look at the integral of the intensity over the entire cycle. Apparently in the case of this particular gym, it is a real issue.
Regarding strobes, most of my indoor shooting is in fairly well lit stadiums of pro and collegiate teams. I'll deal with that...