Wrestling

Happy New Year Everyone!

Here are a few of the more than 500 shots I took at a high school quad wrestling meet a few days ago. Actually five teams, it was a five hour ordeal!

Great images! Those are very clean and I can't see any noise in the wrestlers. What was the lighting setup? It looks like you either had an on camera flash, or were triggering some off camera strobes.

Thanks Jorge. The top one was with a single 580EX, full power, on a 13' stand, fired with Pocket Wizards. The flash was about 50' from the subjects. I was positioned about 20' in front and 10' or so left of the flash. The bottom three was after my battery pack went dead. I changed the flash batteries and shot on camera in ETTL with a Sto-Fen Omnibounce. They are all ISO 400, top one is 1/250th at f/4 and the others are 1/250th at f/2.8.

What lenses were you using? How far away were you?

Nice pics......Very Nice..

I used my 70-200 f/2.8 IS, about 30 feet from the subjects. These range between 145 and 185mm.

Nice shots, nice and sharp and everything.

I have some wrestling pictures that came out nice and sharp and clear, but I dislike the sport for photography because their faces are always in weird places :p

Nice job here JB! But how the heck did I miss these the first time around? :confused:

The flash really helps doesn't it.....

JS

Thanks JS, and thanks for your endorsement for the featured photo! I was very happy with these results and the flash setup. There were two mats going for this meet which meant I was constantly changing direction of the flash. I'd probably go with the 580EX again vs. strobes since I know it works.

SW put it in POTW, I didn't see the thread til after it was in POTW :confused:

Only two mats? Try shooting three or 4 at a time. Two of my recent matches were running three or four mats at a time and then add in that I was trying to keep track of 3 schools. It really helped when two county schools were wrestling each other. And I use the 580EX when I shoot in the poorly lit gyms.

JS

JS,
When you shoot do you use the 580EX only or do you use any other light set up?

I am getting ready to shoot a few meets and will be practicing at the gym before hand in practices. I was wondering what your light set up is....

JB..If I read correctly, you were using your 580EX after your lighting set up quite on you?

Thanks..Phil

Phil,
It really depends on the lighting, some gyms I don't use any flash, but when I do I just use the 580EX on fill flash and adjust the ISO and the shutter speed to get a descent background lighting so it looks more natural. And if I am in a big hurry I just set it to fill flash and shoot away and don't worry about the background.

JS

Phil,

These shots were all 580EX. I had the flash on a 13' stand about 15-20 feet behind me and 5-10' left or right of camera. I turned auto sleep off, which after 4 hours of shooting drained the batteries in both my flash and my batter pack. So I changed the batteries in the flash and shot on camera in fill flash mode for the last hour. I had an extra four batteries, but not an extra twelve.

Thanks....I will try my setup using my falsh and see what the results are...

I hope they are close to yours JB...

Phil