More Basketball lighting techniques...LONG POST

rwells

Hey guys/gals,


I haven't posted anything useful for a while, so it's time to share more basketball lighting techniques.


The pictures that I'll post here are for the purpose of showing how the lighting technique I used for them, well, looks. They aren't great action pictures, but will show the end result of the lighting.


Now, to the lighting:

As I have previously posted, I prefer to bounce a camera mounted speedlight on the wall behind me (I'm shooting under the basket). This gives good, even, smooth light. But, some gym's have a dark wall. Not conducive to bouncing off of.

I've seen other sports photogs mount a light on either side of the court, ie: cross-lighting. This sort of works, but has one BIG drawback.
SHADOWS

All the players down under the basket make for a lot of shadows if you use cross-lighting. Hmmm, what to do???




If you have three lights, set two of them up for cross-lighting, one on each side of the court shooting across to the other side.

(needs to be up off of floor level. Mount to bleacher railings with SuperClamps, etc. Mount them aiming somewhere in the vicinity of the key area, and shooting straight across, NOT pointed down toward the court. This will give nice feathered light on the players and no one will complain. YMMV on that one, but I've never had a complaint yet about feathered or bounced flash.)

Now, take the third speedlight and mount it on your camera. Set it to use E-TTL (Canon) or whatever is equivalent for your system. This is a no-brainer, let E-TTL figure out how much "fill" flash to use.

Set camera to manual mode - X-sync speed (1/250), set aperture & ISO as desired.

Now, the hot-shoe will fire the camera mounted flash, but what about the other two? You've got choices here and I'm not going into that, but I use Pocket Wizards. Hook-up a PW to each speedlight that you have in the bleachers. Now, hook one up to your camera's sync port. When you release the shutter the hot-shoe fires the mounted flash & the PW fires the two remote units.

Position your on-camera flash head so that it is basically pointing up toward the top of the basket. This will give feathered light to the players.

You can also do this set-up, and if the back wall is light colored, just point all three flashes at the back wall and have beautiful wrap-around bounce flash.

I've made this sound difficult. :huh I assure you it's not.


Why would we want to do all this?


You may never want to do this, but then again, you might like the results :thumb


Here are some resulting pictures using this method.

Oh, BTW: The 11 sodium vapor lights that were working were producing a meter reading of: ISO 3200 - 1/250 - f/2 --- Not much light :cry


Remember to look for those shadows...

1 --- ISO 400 - 1/250 - f/2.8 - 50mm


2 --- ISO 400 - 1/250 - f/2.8 - 50mm


3 --- ISO 400 - 1/250 - f/2.8 - 50mm


4 --- ISO 400 - 1/250 - f/2.8 - 50mm


5 --- ISO 400 - 1/250 - f/2.8 - 50mm


6 --- ISO 400 - 1/250 - f/2.8 - 50mm


7 --- ISO 400 - 1/250 - f/2.8 - 50mm


8 --- ISO 320 - 1/250 - f/3.5 - 50mm
I dialed down the on-camera flash with this shot. See the shadows that I'm talking about?


9 --- ISO 500 - 1/250 - f/2.2 - 50mm


10 --- ISO 400 - 1/250 - f/3.2 - 50mm


11 --- ISO 500 - 1/250 - f/2.8 - 50mm


12 --- ISO 400 - 1/250 - f/2.8 - 50mm
:rofl I finally had to post one of these!
If I only had a nickle for every one of these I've shot..............................



Hope this helps you out some day...

ulrikft

I really appreciate it! I just bought a flash of a nice guy here on the forum and my main application is Martial Arts (Kickboxing, thaiboxing and grappling). I guess I'll just get two cheap manual flashes that I'll put cheap wirelesses on in each opposite corner, and position me on the other end with the better flash, to mimic what you are doing here in a smaller area?

jkcashin

Hey... thanks. I linked this post to another forum I belong to... hopefull we will get some more dgrinners! I need to borrow some strobes and try this myself!

Jamie

sportsshooter06

Great lighting, I think it may be difficult and expensive for many.

I know everyone wants great photos of there kids playing sports. Unfortunately, for many while it is obtainable, it is difficult. The lighting you offer is great, your photos are very good.
PW's cost alot of money, good strobes alot of money, the correct lens and camera, even more money.

Just being realistic, not critical, I like to offer help, I love seeing others take great photos, spending 1000.00 or more, I just find that difficult.

Thanks for the great advice and photos.

rwells

That's cool

I realize the cost issues involved here, although not that much if you use cheap manual flashes for the remote units. PW's are expensive, but there are other alternatives that are a lot more cost friendly. (albeit not as dependable)


As I stated in my post, you may never need/want to use this setup, I just posted it in case someone wanted/needed the info. I've personally never seen/heard of this particular setup before, so I thought I'd share.


I also think this would be a good lighting setup for those wedding photogs who are cross-lighting the reception area. The only thing I don't personally like about that is, once again, the drastic shadows. This should work well to eliminate that.


Having more information is never a bad thing.


Thanks for taking the time to look and respond

Dbl

Nice write up on this technique from a while back on the strobist site.

http://strobist.blogspot.com/2006/04/on-assignment-prep-basketball.html

ulrikft

http://www.mpex.com/page.htm?PG=Strobist%20Kits

For starving people like me..

rwells

Dbl wrote:

Nice write up on this technique from a while back on the strobist site.

http://strobist.blogspot.com/2006/04/on-assignment-prep-basketball.html

Dan,

That is a good writeup, but it's not what I described. I've used that type of lighting (when possible to locate the flash's like Dave does), but as you can see in his pictures, he STILL has those shadows. Also, he is placing the cross-lighting from the "end" of the gym. The technique I describe has the strobes located on the "sides" of the gym.

Everyone is different in their likes/dislikes, but I don't particularly like those kind of shadows.

The technique I described gets rid of them, to whatever degree that suits you. (You can adjust this by dialing up/down your on-camera flash)

If someone likes those type shadows, and it makes them happy, then I'm happy

For me, the shadows don't make me happy :cry , so I figured out a way to eliminate them. YMMV


Hope that helps...

donek

Randy,

Thanks so much for posting this. I've been using bounce flash all season, but have been considering some off camera flash solutions. I recently found the strobist site and have been reading up on off camera flash, but hadn't found anything on gym applications. I'm not sure if I should wait and save the money for pocket wizards or go for the cheepo e-bay triggers.

The one thing I haven't found out (probably haven't dug deep enough) is if the e-bay triggers support bursts. Anybody here know?

Shane422

Just to add a bit. For alternatives to Pocket Wizards, look at the Elinchrim Skyports. They are $180 for a universal set which includes the transmitter and reciever. Additional recievers are $100. I've had a set for about 6 months now and they are definitely reliable and a reasonable professional alternative to PWs. The triggering range is a bit decreased, but they are still good to about 400ft. Simetime in Q1 or Q2, they will introduce a addition that will allow triggering of your camera as well.

I wrote up a small review of mine here.

I've also used the eBay Hot shoe style triggers. They are about $30 for a set. They do work reasonably well on my Nikon equipment. I never had a misfire on my Sb600. I upgraded so I could have one system for speedlights and monolights.

jkcashin

sportsshooter06 wrote:

Great lighting, I think it may be difficult and expensive for many.

snipped for brevity...

I agree with your points... but one option to consider is that now that I (we) have this extra knowledge, I (we) can always consider renting/borrowing if faced with a similar situation. His advice gives me some more options I never would have considered before.

Jamie

rwells

I was shooting in a gym last week and another photog was using the Elinchrom Skyports to trigger his remote flash's. They worked just fine in that gym, and he stated that they have been "pretty reliable" in gyms, but didn't have the reach he needed outside.

I'm not sure what distance he was referring to. I've not used those units personally, so I can't recommend nor refute their performance. They do appear to be about half the cost for three units as compared to PW's.


Again, the triggering device was not my topic. I'll leave that up to ya'll to hash out.