Thursday, January 21, 2010

Step into the Light...



Sometimes, you wanna light it... and sometimes, you GOTTA light it! When you're assigned to shoot indoor track in the 5th Regiment Armory, and you inadvertently left the night-vision goggles in your other camera bag, you have no choice but to break out the speedlites!

3 comments:

  1. ECHJanuary 21, 2010 at 11:43 PM

    Great stuff. Are all those hurdles shots, shot at the same spot? And, are the flashes zoomed in a bunch? If they are, how would you know how much to zoom in when shooting something like this, where your subject could be lane 1 one race and then lane 5 the next race?

    I've never shot at 5th regiment, but I found it necessary to use the speedlites at Hagerstown CC. I actually got kicked out of the shot put area because of my lights. Had to stick to runners and pole vault. Honestly....I didn't do so well with any of it. Hah.

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  2. Ryan M.January 21, 2010 at 11:57 PM

    For the hurdles shots, I set the lights parallel to the last set of hurdles. The flashes were on 1/4power, zoomed to 105mm, and turned vertically. I used the same setup for the 50yard dash shots, so you can see how small the light path really was. They were about 15-20 away from the outside hurdles on each side. The lighting was pretty even overall, just a little hotter on the ends. The bigger issue was the skin tones. Shots 10 and 12 were on both on the same end hurdle, and you can see the light was a little hot on the white guy.

    I stick with side lighting as much as possible, both for the effect and also to keep the light directly out of their eyes. For the shot-put the lights were set up pretty similar to the hurdle shots, but with the left light slightly beyond 90degrees to the athlete, and the right light just slightly forward of 90degrees to the athlete. Fortunately I didn't have any issues with the lights. Then again, the 5th regiment armory is so dark, I'm sure they welcomed any extra bit of light they could get!!!

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  3. ECHJanuary 23, 2010 at 6:24 PM

    I appreciate the info.

    So far, I've noticed that my biggest problem with strobing indoor track, is getting good focus on my subjects. For those hurdle shots, did you focus on the hurdles and wait for them to hit the spot? My lens just can't seem to catch up to runners. I don't have this problem with any other indoor sport, but they're definitely not moving as fast as they do in these track meets. Any thoughts?

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