Basketball

[fidgety]

Some snaps from a varsity game last night. I goofed on my white balance by leaving it at 3100 degrees Kelvin from a previous game so my snaps have a blue tint to them. Oh well, the production guys at the paper will fix that before they go to print. I was shooting at ISO 1600 instead of my usually 800 with speedlites as my son had them for a feature game elsewhere. Darn kid, he needs to get his own Pocket Wizards.

[Steve Hillman]

The top 2 capture the peak of the action well, the bottom shot is cropped a little too tight at the top and bottom for me.
I have never shot basketball, it looks to be a testing discipline.

[sgriggs2006]

Chris...
I remember reading somewhere about your lighting setup in the gyms...Can you point me to the post, or revisit it? I am especially interested in how you secure your strobes...
cheers,
sue.

[fidgety]

Chris...
I remember reading somewhere about your lighting setup in the gyms...Can you point me to the post, or revisit it? I am especially interested in how you secure your strobes...
cheers,
sue.

It's really quite simple once you get used to it. I use a Canon speedlite 550EX and place it on a Super Clamp. I then connect it to a Pocket Wizard which I hang from the clamp. I then clamp the speedlite on the top rail of the stands in a gym on each side and aim them at about the free throw line. I then set the speedlite to manual power of 1/4.
I then attach a Pocket Wizard to the hot show of my camera. I set my camera to ISO 800, manual at f 2.8 with a shutter speed of 1/250 so it syncs to the speedlite.
Other gyms may vary but for the one I cover on my beat those settings seem to work pretty well.

[sgriggs2006]

Excellent!! Does aiming at the free throw allow you to shoot action under the baskets as well?
s

[fidgety]

Yes. The width of the light beam coming down from him in the stands covers the entire lane pretty easily. I can even get a little bit of light near center court.