Monday, October 18, 2010

Team photo for Women's hockey


Today I was scheduled to shoot the UMaine women's hockey team. This photo is similar to the basketball shoot I had to do last year. Once again, time was minimal. I had the assistant to the athletic director help me set up so it went smoothly. I arrived at six pm to set up for a 6:30 shoot. The team had practice at 6:30 so once we were set up I was only going to have a few minutes to get the shot (so I had better be prepared...as always)
Since my basketball team photo (in a previous blog), I have made things a bit easier on myself. If you read my last blog entry, you know that I was pushed for power using only speedlights to do a big team portrait. I have since purchased two Paul Buff Einstein 640 lights http://www.paulcbuff.com/pcb2009/einstein.html. These are great units, consistent white balance and reliable performance. I can whole-heartedly recommend these lights.
My setup was simple. Two Einsteins on the right and front left. They were in Buff softboxes http://www.alienbees.com/foldable_detail.html(large on camera left and medium on camera right). These were both set at full power. From the rear on camera left and camera right were two speedlights (Vivitar 285 HV) both set to 1/16 power. the softboxes were aimed at the far side to feather the light away from the closer chairs and to balance the light more. the Vivitars were shot bare but I had a flag on each to avoid flare. They were aimed to cover all the rows but the flags blocked any light from going past the front row. I used home-made flags made of two layers of cheap fun foam that can be found at any art supply store or WalMart for about two dollars.
I used a Sekonic L358 meter http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/221078-REG/Sekonic_401_358_L_358_Flash_Master_Meter.html to check the exposure at the corners and was getting from F8-F11 from the back to the front seat. I feathered the lights a bit more to the far side to balance the light a bit more and was good to go.

Sunday, January 10, 2010

Mark IV thoughts


Tonight I got a chance to shoot with a Mark IV camera side by side with my Mark III. Monty Rand http://www.montyrand.com/ was extremely generous in lending it to me for a UMaine Basketball game.
The first image was shot with the following settings:
Camera: Canon EOS-1D Mark IV
Exposure: 0.002 sec (1/640)
Aperture: f/2.8
Focal Length: 105 mm
ISO Speed: 6400

The second image was taken with a Mark III and with the same exact settings.

In the next day or so I will be posting my thoughts about the new Mark IV
STAY TUNED!!



UPDATE 3/5/2011
I never followed up on this blog. Oh well. So I have owned a Mark IV for over a year now and it is an improvement over the mark III in every respect. The AF is better, the IQ is better. The high ISO is about a 2/3 stop improvement despite having a greater than 50% increase in Megapixels (10mp to 16mp)
best upgrades:
orientation sensitive AF point- a must have for a sports shooter
AF performance is more reliable in good to relatively low light (ISO 6400 1/640 2.8)

Least impressive upgrade:
poorly implemented auto ISO. Until you can dial in exposure comp in M mode, it is basically useless to me.

Saturday, January 9, 2010

What to do when shooting is impossible?


One of my jobs is working as the photographer for the University of Maine athletic department. It is fun, challenging and has given me the opportunity to learn a lot about sports photography. One thing that never gets talked about is when getting a good shot is really not feasible.
One such location is the Memorial Gymnasium at the University. The light in there is absolutely horrible. I was shooting a track meet and as you can imagine, these athletes move fast! In the past I have brought in strobes to light certain events but many of the events don't allow flash use because of the distraction. The high jump is one such example.
So the choice is give up or simply work with what you have. This high jumper was doing the rather archaic Fosbury flop which I haven't seen very often and I really wanted to get a shot of her but here is the kicker:
Camera: Canon EOS-1D Mark III
Exposure: 0.004 sec (1/250)
Aperture: f/2.8
Focal Length: 135 mm
ISO Speed: 6400
those are my setting from this shot. Now as you can see I am at ISO 6400...the camera won't go higher than that. the shutter speed is at 1/250 which to freeze action is already too slow and at F2.8 I am not getting a lot in focus. I could have gone to F2 since I was shooting with Canon's amazing 135mmL F2 lens (worth every penny if you can use the focal length) http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/112539-USA/Canon_2520A004_Telephoto_EF_135mm_f_2_0L.html
but then my DOF would have been really razor thin..not that there is much in sharp focus in this image : )
It is always nice to nail the sharp image of an athlete in the perfect moment. That challenge keeps sports shooters doing what they do. However, there is something really nice about an image that conveys the movement, speed, and action. That is what I had to try to get with this series because getting a sharp image was simply out of the question.
When I was shooting the high jumpers the above settings were used and I panned the camera at times and then prefocused on the bar at other times.

In post, I knew I couldn't save the image in terms of clarity so instead I enhanced what it did have..movement.
I added another layer in photoshop and put in some motion blur to exagerate the movement a lot. Then I added a layer filter to bring back some definition to her face. I liked the result and it also gave me something rather than walking away saying it was impossible.

Quick portrait shoot with strobist gear

this image is from a quick shoot I did with my dearest friend Mary. she was off to Georgia and we wanted some shots of us together.
Setup:
the background is a black velvety material that I got from Walmart. The nice thing about this fabric is that unless you really put light on it, it won't show the light. It makes it very easy to get a black background. It is supported by an Impact background support system that I got from B&H for about $100
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/437786-REG/Impact_3046_Background_Support_System_.html

I set up one umbrella to camera left with a canon 58oexII set at 1/2 power. The umbrella was slightly higher than head level and off at about a 45 degree angle. To fill in on the right side, I put a sunpak 383 set at 1/16 on a stand and fired it into a homemade bookend. The bookend is simply two large pieces of white foamcore board taped together with white duct tape. You can buy the board at a staples for about $15.

I shot with a 70-200 2.8 on a tripod and shot at F8 to get everything in focus.

Post processing was very simple. I use photoshop CS4
One layer to use the spot healing brush, patch tool, and clone stamp to fix blemishes or hot spots
One layer to Add a touch of gaussian blur to the perimeter
An adjustment layer to reduce the saturation a touch for a different feel.

That's it. The shoot including setup and clean up was less than 45 minutes and we got a bunch of nice shots.

visit David Hobby's brilliant site for a ton of info for strobist work
http://www.strobist.blogspot.com/

Friday, January 8, 2010

Photo Assignment


So I was called to shoot a team portrait of the UMaine Women's basketball team with three days notice. The University needed to update their team photo which goes into all of their informational publications, the website, and becomes a 3' by 4' photo hung in Alfond arena.
Time was going to be very limited since I was shooting this just prior to a game. I figured I would have about five minutes to get them to me, get them into position, and get the shot.

I arrived about an hour early with my gear. I was shooting the game later so I had my typical lenses for sports but for this shot I brought my 24-105L F4 IS Lens (for basketball I bring a 50 F1.4, a 85 F1.8, 135 F2, 70-200 F2.8 IS, and a 300L F2.8 IS, not always all of them but some combo).

I walked around the floor looking for the best spot. I had been told that they always shoot at the far end with the box seats in the background but when I looked at it, it seemed pretty bad actually. I really liked the idea of having the Maine logo on the ground in front of the team so I decided to set up there and hope the coach went for it (she did).

I set up a 60" umbrella camera left just out of frame with a Vivitar 285 HV in it. Mirrored on the right side, I set up a 43" umbrella with another Vivitar 285 hv in it. both were set up as reflective, not shoot thru.

With those two set up, I put my Canon Mark III on a tripod and framed the shot using the logo on the floor as reference. I knew I would have less than 20 people in the shot so planned for two rows behind the logo. I then had my assistant stand in the front and back rows in different positions to see how the light was falling. I needed to feather the umbrellas to the opposite side to get the most even distribution.

I started with 1/2 power but quickly moved to full power on both flashes. Lighting a big group with no ambient to speak of is pushing these units, especially when using an umbrella. I had two problems to fix:

One, I wasn't getting enough coverage to light the logo and the players with the two umbrellas. I added my 580 EX II on my camera and set it to ETTL metering. I was firing my flashes with Elinchrom skyports so I had that into my pc sync port on the camera and that freed up the hotshoe. Normally I would put the skyport transmitter right onto my hotshoe. That gave me the coverage I needed for the logo and also evened out the light on the players (at this point it was my assistant)

two, I wasn't getting a lot of pop from the two umbrellas. I put a sunpak 383 on a stand to the back right of the shooting area to give some highlights/kicker action. This was on 1/16 and shot bare.

So that was the setup. I was getting good enough light at ISO 800 and the Mark III cleans up very well at ISO 800. for sports I sometimes shoot ISO 6400 with it but that certainly isn't something you would want to blow up to a huge poster.

So once all the girls were on the court, the coach brought them over, I told them to put one line in front on one knee. The second row had the coaches on the perimeter. I shot a total of 12 frames once they were in position and then cut them loose to practice.

Getting there early and having someone to stand in to check the lighting made it doable.

Cheers,
Peter