Shot JV football last night & got to try out fill-flash. The field is well-lit so I dialed that flash all the way down - also used HSS. Missing the green grass but we'll be on turf tonight so that should make up for it. Unfortunately, it will be very dark. I might have to go back to using flash to stop the action.

Here are two for your comments - thank you!
Kathleen

kathleen,
did you happen to take any shots not using the fill flash to see how it compares as far as the colors go? really, my understanding is that the fill flash for the night games is good for enhancing the colors that high iso can take away from. And yes, that field is well lit to get 1/640 using iso 3200. i could never get that shutter speed at our home field with that iso. your colors are bright.

Teppy -
As it happens, I forgot to turn my flash on after halftime & have a couple examples of the same settings minus flash. How do you think they compare?

Kathleen

Honestly, I'm not seeing much--if any--difference here. Certainly not enough to warrant actually having used flash.

I think the difference is in what I need to do on post-processing. The shadows in the non-flashed images are dark and I have to increase the exposure a bit. That leads to more grain which means more noise ninja. The colors, though, don't seem to be much different.

Tonight's game won't be as nice. Turf field, not many lights on the field & several badly placed spotlights off the field that mess with the camera. I'll start with fill-flash and see what I can do.

Thanks for looking!
Kathleen

The second two images are without flash? I wasn't really looking at the color, but the faces under the helmets. I'm not seeing much indication that flash is helping there. Must be doing a bang-up job at using the dodge/burn tool on those non-flash shots!

kathleen,
i do see the shadows as being a bit darker on the first pic with no flash. i don't really see any difference in the color "pop" though. i'm going to check it out tonight and see what happens.

Hi Kathleen,
I don't see much difference in the flashed images either but, I do think you need to drop the ISO and the SS a little to get the faces and shadow noise cleared up. Both sets look a little soft to me. I must say though, you are bounds and leaps from where you started with the flashed football shooting.
Bob

I think your fill-flashed photos have just a wee bit more pop to them, but that may be from your pp. What flash settings did you use? I see no unusual shadowing, nor any red eye/demon eye. And how was your speedlight mounted?

I agree with Teppy on the darker shadows (and the fact that I see the RAW images). The two images of the straight on players are both shot pretty close from the sidelines. I'm lucky to have a field with such great light on the sides.

With the flashed action shot, the post processing was minimal. I added a little more light and ran it through noise ninja. I ended up reducing the noise reduction since it didn't need as much. With the non-flashed image, I had to add more light than the first & then ended up running it through ninja at a higher number. In the end, the parents who purchase the shots won't notice the difference but it makes life easier for me to use the flash.

Bob - I did try shooting at 1600 and it was just too dark (even at 400). As I mentioned, I'm adding light in the pp - going to 1600 requires that I add even more light & then my noise gets ugly. Thank you for noticing my progression - it's been a ton of fun!

WmPat - Flash is mounted on a bracket above the camera, HSS and set to -3 exposure. Red-eye wasn't as big a problem during this outing & that could be due to the reduced flash. Prior to this, I was trying to overcome ambient light and ran into terrible demon eyes...

Scott - no dodge/burn. Just a little exposure addition and some shadow adjustments (which is pretty much the same thing).

I'm working on the images from tonight - we'll see what I have!

Thanks everyone!

KathleenMartin wrote:
HSS and set to -3 exposure.

I could see maybe -1 as fill flash, but -3?

Mark Peters wrote:
I could see maybe -1 as fill flash, but -3?

I dialed it back & forth a bit. I was worried about recycle time and I didn't want ghosting. Probably got too aggressive on that.

That probably explains why you can't really see a difference between the two sets...!