Men and Women Basketball with strobes

[LightBright]

I shot my first game with strobes. We used two strobes one on the farthest end of each side of the courts. They were both bounced off a wall to diffuse the lights in order to not distract the players. Camera was a 20d with 70-200 f2.8. I used to be against using artificial lighting, but now I’m officially hooked





I was happy to get this shot however I wished I had used f2.8 instead of f4. The crowds are rather distracting.








The shots below were taken with out strobes useing my a500 with 70-200 f2.8 G. There was no noise reduction done to any of the photos and im preaty happy with this camera when used with natural light.

[starriderrick]

I can see why your hooked..the clarity is impressive. My fav is the 2nd shot from the second set. What were your iso settings in the second set? Crisp,clean shots..Good stuff.

Rick

[LightBright]

Thank you Rick. My iso settings on the second set was at 3200 iso at jpeg format.

[Shebang]

Wow, LightBright -- you really lived up to your name! Congrats on the sticky -- well deserved.

[sgriggs2006]

Did you take a shot of your setup?
Just curious.
sue

[LightBright]

"Wow, LightBright -- you really lived up to your name! Congrats on the sticky -- well deserved."

Thank you Paula for your kind words

" Did you take a shot of your setup?
Just curious.
sue"

Hi, Sue, I didn't take a photo of the set up but it kinda looks like this. Those stand things in the diagram are strobes pointing at the wall. What is photographed is the bounced light that is bounced at the corner of the wall. Since the lights are aimed somewhat at the corner of both sides, the light fills up the front of the players as well as the sides. The strobe on the left is in the very top of the bleachers which has a large flat area. I was shooting at my own college so its easier to have access to the top. Hope this helps

[shootme]

Terrific series, well done, lighting is great and congrats on feature.

[DHMN69]

Interesting that one of your ambient shares became the featured photo on top of this page. Not that it shouldn't be a featured photo!

I'd love to be able to afford and (learn) to use strobes but gotta sell a LOT of ambient first, and the high school gym has no railings that would be good for setting up either..

[LightBright]

"Terrific series, well done, lighting is great and congrats on feature."

thank you shootme.



"Interesting that one of your ambient shares became the featured photo on top of this page. Not that it shouldn't be a featured photo!

I'd love to be able to afford and (learn) to use strobes but gotta sell a LOT of ambient first, and the high school gym has no railings that would be good for setting up either..

Thanks DHMN69
I think for me this was a one time thing for me using flash. I find the results nice but it takes too long to set up and as you said, it is expensive. The light is great; however we need to be snipers when photographing the action with single shot mode. I think I took around 43 action shots of the men’s and woman’s game combined (it was on the same day and location). I took another 70 flash pics as test shots because I had trouble with the exposure being inconsistent, my fault.
These newer cameras have really nice noise control at high iso's that it allows me to take 500 shots and not worry about bugging the players. Either way it’s a great thing to try flash. Many of my friends shoot nothing but strobes, now that I tried it once; I found out that it’s not for me. But it might be something you would like to get into. It’s definitely worth a try.