Men's Basketball - WB critique

So I need some critique on white balance. I recently bit the bullet and upgraded to the 70-200 2.8 IS, and last night's game was my first chance to test it out. I shot in RAW and only had to tweak the WB minimally in post as I shot with a custom WB setting.

This is in a brand new gym which is a serious upgrade to our old dungeon. As good as the lighting is, however, after reading JBPhoto's thread on his AlienBees, I'm considering doing something similar. Hopefully our AD will go for it.

JBPhoto: you mentioned that you shoot at 1/250 because of maximum sync, but is there any kind of equivalent to high speed sync mode like on the 580ex?

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These look good, especially the first two. The third and fouth look a bit noisy to me though, especially the fourth. What was your ISO? Looks like excellent lighting in this gym. Anytime you sync a flash wirelessly you'll be limited to 1/250th, at least with the 20D and the 1D. You can use high speed sync with the 580EX as long as its hot shoe mounted or connected with a sync cord. You lose high speed sync as soon as you go wireless. Not sure if this is true with the ST-E3, but thats line of sight and from what I hear it dosen't work to well.

ISO was either 1250 or 1600 unfortunately. I shot manual at 1/400, 2.8. I was hoping to use ISO 800, but I wanted to have a shutter speed of at least 1/400 to help stop action. If I move down to 800 in this gym I could get away with 1/250, but it would be a bit underexposed. I'm going to try out my 85 1.8 next time. It seems very bright in this gym, and I was hoping a 2.8 lens would let me shoot at 640, but oh well. I'll have to tinker.

So you definitely can't shoot faster than 1/250 with the AlienBees (or any wireless setup I imagine). Rats. I guess that would be fast enough to freeze most shots. Yours turned out great in that last post.

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Originally Posted by JBPhoto

These look good, especially the first two. The third and fouth look a bit noisy to me though, especially the fourth. What was your ISO? Looks like excellent lighting in this gym. Anytime you sync a flash wirelessly you'll be limited to 1/250th, at least with the 20D and the 1D. You can use high speed sync with the 580EX as long as its hot shoe mounted or connected with a sync cord. You lose high speed sync as soon as you go wireless. Not sure if this is true with the ST-E3, but thats line of sight and from what I hear it dosen't work to well.

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1d sync speed is 1/500, and many people have reported a sync speed faster. the WB on these looks very good ekstasis, and it looks like you have some incredible light in this gym.

Really, 1/500th sync on the 1D? Way cool! That surprises me, my apologies if I'm in error. The specs on the 1D Mark II N that I've read on the B&H site say the max flash sync speed is 1/250th. I'm getting ready to pull the trigger on one so that's further justification if true. Is there some trick or control function to get it to 1/500th?

On the MKII N the High Speed Sync is 30 seconds to 1/8000th of a second - AKA Fill Flash
With NON-Canon flash it is 1/250th of a second
With large studio flash it is 1/125th of a second

Hope that answers all your questions on sync speed.

BTW - It's page 112 and 113 in the MKII N manual, the MKII N is a Type-A Body which is compatible with all EOS flashes.
The only trick is to put the flash into Fill Flash mode and thats it for High Speed Sync, the camera and flash then determine the the power by the camera settings.

JS