CW100 wrote:
nice set, I think if you increased EC you could have suffered blown highlights in the jerseys
I would have shot at f/5.6 if your shutter speed was 1/3200 at f/2.8! You might have even bee able to shoot at f/7.1, especially in broad daylight like that. Nice action shots though.
treebeard wrote:
I would have shot at f/5.6 if your shutter speed was 1/3200 at f/2.8! You might have even bee able to shoot at f/7.1, especially in broad daylight like that. Nice action shots though.
You sort of lucked out with a couple of these and being able to see the faces, but with most we can't see the face because you didn't expose for the faces.
I'm guessing you weren't shooting in manual mode? Hard to tell. But your ISO is at 200 on a couple and then 160 on a few others. Shutter speeds are also all over the place, but in none of the images is there any extra EC dialed in. For something like this with plenty of daylights, I'd have shot in Av, at f4 or maybe even f5.6, ISO400 and dialed in about +2/3 EC to get better exposure on faces under the helmets. Sure, you're likely to blow out white unis, but what's more important...having nicely exposed uniforms or being able to actually see the faces of the athletes? I know what my answer is: faces.
Scott, I shot on Av, @f2.8. I changed the ISO manually to ensure I didn't max out the shutter speed in bright sun.
I used 2.8 to get the most separation between subject and OOF areas/players. I'll shoot some shots at 5.6 next game to see the difference.
I'll also try EC of +2/3 or so for a quarter and see how they come out. The faces on most of my shots are in shadow. I agree that faces are more important than unis.
Scott Sewell wrote:
You sort of lucked out with a couple of these and being able to see the faces, but with most we can't see the face because you didn't expose for the faces.
I'm guessing you weren't shooting in manual mode? Hard to tell. But your ISO is at 200 on a couple and then 160 on a few others. Shutter speeds are also all over the place, but in none of the images is there any extra EC dialed in. For something like this with plenty of daylights, I'd have shot in Av, at f4 or maybe even f5.6, ISO400 and dialed in about +2/3 EC to get better exposure on faces under the helmets. Sure, you're likely to blow out white unis, but what's more important...having nicely exposed uniforms or being able to actually see the faces of the athletes? I know what my answer is: faces....Show more →
I'm curious, why Av instead on manual and shooting a little hot at +2/3? I ask because I will have a similar issue this weekend.
On the other side of the coin, I would have shot at ISO 100, 2.8 and a shutter that would allow me to expose for the faces. I always shoot manual, and once you get your exposure dialed in to expose for faces, you should not have to change your shutter speed at all. Most of your backgrounds are ok football backgrounds except for image 6 which needed the 2.8 aperture. What is that, a woman facing the other way on a bicycle? See... My eyes are drawn to that even at 2.8. What I like to do is use a exposure meter and take an average reading. What I mean is, take a reading for shadows and a reading for direct sunlight and average them. Put those settings into the camera and take a test shot of a player in a helmet, and see how it looks, take a shot of a shadowy area (might be a player with their back towards the sun, or in the shadows of the bleachers, and take a shot in direct sunlight and see how they all look (use the histogram). If you can see detail in the face and the only thing that is blinky is white uniforms, I can deal with that, maybe increase the shutter speed a third more, but not more than that or you will lose everything in the shadows.
But I am old school too....light meters, gray cards....I even have a 50 year old manual focus 50mm in my bag because its optics are just so smooth...
You don't hear many sports shooters say they use a light meter. Heck, not many photogs outside a studio with strobes use a light meter any more.
Say you're shooting at noon, sun is almost straight overhead, clear day, no shadows on the field, you'd meter say a player's front who is almost backlit for the shadow, and one who has the sun straight on them for the hi-lite? If you spot meter, why not on the face of a light and then dark skin, and average those two, would that work as a first round test image or is that average just not going to work for either skin type?
I was faced with a lot of what image 1 shows and wasn't happy with the shading of the faces for one team in the 1st and 3rd quarters. Backlit, shadowy faces as the offense of one team came at me and that was the dominant team that game.
I appreciate your time on this as I expect similar conditions this Saturday.
