I just got the final approval needed to use the arena strobes to shoot Women's basketball on Wednesday. I've never shot sports with strobes before and am wondering what I should expect. I'm going to be triggering them with my skyports. There are 4 zones with three lights on each side of the court and 1 each on the ends. I'm wondering if I should use FP mode to shoot at a higher shutter speed and lower iso to cut out the ambient light or if I should instead just try to utilize the strobes to freeze the action and let the ambient light come in and go with a longer shutter speed. Please give me any strobe tips you have as I really hope to get this to work on Wednesday (and then possibly use it for a hockey game on the weekend if I can get approval for it).
-Andrew
dont think FP will work... id shoot at 250 and whatever setting work around that, maybe if you have an old d50/d70/d1x/h break it out and play with the insane sync speed
let the strobes stop the action. Set shutter to sync and set a combination of aperture/iso that will negate ambient (and be properly exposed with your strobes). Also the usual disclaimer of using proper safety gear and having proper liability insurance apply. Do a search for strobes on this board and you'll find a lot more info, probably more than you can digest by Wed.
Yeah, the strobes are already set up and the liability insurance the school has covers them afaik.
As for the other poster, the only bodies I have are d90 and d700 so no chance that I can use a hi sync speed. I guess I'll have to play around with the iso and aperture until I get good exposure
If you are hooking up to 'in-situ strobes' already wired into the building, then there is no way you could use FP flash as that relies on a camera specific flashgun and lots of clever syncronisation...
Matt Cope wrote:
If you are hooking up to 'in-situ strobes' already wired into the building, then there is no way you could use FP flash as that relies on a camera specific flashgun and lots of clever syncronisation...
Okay, that's good to know I wasn't sure about that. The only strobes I've used before have been SB-600s and METZ-54As so it will be my first time shooing with "real" strobes so I wasn't sure. I'm going to set my triggers up 3 hours before the game and test my exposure well before hand and get it down pat before the teams even start practicing.
1) How are you going to trigger the strobes? In most cases the strobes are connected to a radio transmitter/receiver (PocketWiazrd) that you need to trigger. Having a PocketWizard on your camera on the same channel is a must.
2) Shoot in manual mode, and only single shot mode. You can't burst with strobes, unless they have super fast recycle times.
3) Do a custom white balance with the strobes.
4) If you're using a PocketWizard, set your camera to manual mode, and the shutter to 1/250. The light is controlled by the aperture, not the shutter.
5) Set your ISO to the lowest setting and change in combination with Aperture to nail the exposure.
6) Check your light coverage. Are you getting only half court/ice, 1/3rd or something different.
7) Don't stare at the strobes when you trigger them, they are bright.
8) If done right you won't want to shoot ambient again.
9) Knowing the equipment in the ceiling (strobes) will help with these types of questions and heopfully your expectations.
10) Go early to learn the setup and test, test, test...
Thanks Paul. I'm going to use Elinchrom Skyports as there are four seperated zones. I plan to set it up so that i can easily switch zones at half time when I switch sides of the court. zones and it was much more affordable to just get 4 skyport receivers and two transmitters than it was to get 6 pocket wizard transceivers.
Sounds like you're set then. Make sure you have the right cable connectors (big strobes often use mini-jacks instead of PC cables), and follow Paul's advice above and you won't go far wrong.
Skyports are usually sold to people using big studio strobes so you should be alright, unless the house lights have really weird connectors. If you can get over there to check before the event that might be a good idea...
I find www.flashzebra.com really good for cheap cables by the way..
Ok, yeah I just got the skypotts because they are cheap and I hope to get elinchrom strobes at some point. accessing the catwalk without the house lights on is near impossible so I have to wait for before the game.
If there are already strobes there, that means somebody has been using them right?
I would strongly suggest you contact the person who either owns the strobes or uses them the most and talk to them about what you are doing. They may have set up one zip line that all the lights plug into to fire off of one add-a-tap via pocket wizard. So, you pulling out all the connections to add your skyports might not be a good idea.
They can also tell you about any idiosyncrasies they've noticed with their lights. (IF you sit in this corner, the shadow from the net falls across of any free line shooter or somesuch) OR, how they'd like you to power them off or on, or where their add-a-tap is to plug in to.
When renting or using someone else's lights, just have the courtesy to ask them before making any changes.
I would suggest setting your exposure via a meter. Strobes should be set 2 stops above ambient lights. If the lights are already set-up they pretty much will be set as needed. if you are setting them up for the first time I would suggest getting there well before the game (and practice) The main thing is setting your camera to the x-sync and adjusting the iso and aperture as needed. Remember the effective shutter speed is not the flash duration. if you are shooting at a college the NCAA requires a flash duration of at least 1/2000th of a second.
It's actually not really anybody's lights. They are owned by the school which also operates the arena and they are sometimes used by the schools Media Relations photography company, but at most two or three times a year by them. From what I understand they were originally purposed at the request of both the Rich Clarkson Associates (the photography company they contract) and the DU Clarion, the paper that I shoot for so there is not really anyone I can contact, no one at the athletic department has any idea about how to use them or anything, but I've done some reading and my editor is going to help me set the stuff up as well.
As for Dave's comment. I am sure that they have already been set up to NCAA specifications, but as for the meter idea, I will try to set them up using the meter built in to my camera for metering. I don't own a light meter because I haven't had a need for one yet and I hope I can get good results.
Thanks everybody for your suggestions, I can't wait to see what results I get and to share them here.
skyvan wrote:
It's actually not really anybody's lights. They are owned by the school which also operates the arena and they are sometimes used by the schools Media Relations photography company, but at most two or three times a year by them. From what I understand they were originally purposed at the request of both the Rich Clarkson Associates (the photography company they contract) and the DU Clarion, the paper that I shoot for so there is not really anyone I can contact, no one at the athletic department has any idea about how to use them or anything, but I've done some reading and my editor is going to help me set the stuff up as well.
As for Dave's comment. I am sure that they have already been set up to NCAA specifications, but as for the meter idea, I will try to set them up using the meter built in to my camera for metering. I don't own a light meter because I haven't had a need for one yet and I hope I can get good results.
Thanks everybody for your suggestions, I can't wait to see what results I get and to share them here....Show more →
Remember the camera meter works off of reflected light. When you use a light meter it will better meter the actual light. Take some test shots and use your histogram.
