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p.1 #6 · p.1 #6 · Supercross - January 30, 2016 @ Oakland Coliseum (photo heavy) | |
Mataz426 wrote:
Looked at the whole gallery and they looked excellent overall. I think your settings were spot on. When the light get low, auto ISO and shooting in manual totally makes sense Hell you really never had to push the ISO that high. I've never done it, but It's harder than people think, that's for sure. Great job
Thanks!
I actually try to shoot manual everything (except focus of course). So with the exception of the podium shots, everything was shot in fixed ISO / manual exposure. Here is the setup I use:
- Shutter speed I try to stay over 1/1000th (maybe as low as 1/800th) but try not to go too high either (a little blur on the wheels gives a better sense of motion).
- Aperture: If the light permits it, I try to go 3.2 on the aperture (because at 2.8 the depth of field can be too shallow to get the scene you are looking for all in focus). But that's a balance between ISO and aperture.
- ISO... As low as possible of course.
- WB - I usually do a manual WB and keep adjusting as the light changes. But this particular time I forgot to bring my grey card, so I went auto-WB. I always to a WB correction in post anyways.
Then when shooting, I keep adjusting my setup based on the lighting condition. This means that every time I change location or point the camera to a new direction, I just take a test shot then view it using the Highlight mode on the camera and try to adjust the settings so that I have very little white clipping (and black clipping to some extent too). With this approach, I usually get darker photos than using what the meter says, but these days, with the performance of the cameras (I shoot using a D4 and a D4s), in post it's much easier to push the exposure up to bring back the shadows than try to recover details in blown highlights.
If from a given position I need to cover two areas with different exposure parameters (like the inside of a turn and a jump for example), I just do a setup on each one trying to have only one dial to change to go from one to the other (speed or aperture). Then I just count the number of clicks I need to rotate the dial to go from one to the other and try not to screw up too much from there.
Finally, today it's easy to get a 36MP camera, get a wide angle, spray at 10 frames per second and crop the hell of of the images in post. And I see many people at all levels doing that: from the Dad With a Camera to the pro shooting for the local newspaper. Where it becomes a problem is when you need to shoot at high ISO, because then the grain will start to show, even at somewhat reasonable crop ratios.
So... I try to shoot as much as possible with longer focal length lenses so that I need a minimal crop in post. It's easier to do when shooting sports like motocross, because you know in advance the exact point where the action you want to capture will be (not the case in ball and stick sports for example). It's "easier" but by no mean easy! Still working on it.
Cheers.
Denis
www.widgic.com
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