What can you do with 'impossible' lighting situations?

[TheKingInYellow]

Here was the scenario today.

Shooting a friendly soccer game between a girls' team coached by one of my co-workers and one made of players at our office. Just a friendly match, and I just wanted to shoot it to learn about shooting sports.

I rented a lens, and thought I would be in good shape. I rented a 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM, figuring that the 2.8 was going to be needed to get reasonable shutter speeds.

So I get to the arena, and it's dark. I mean it's *DARK* dark. I switched to aperture priority, locked the ISO in at 800, locked the aperture at f/2.8 and at best I was getting shutter speeds at around 1/200th, and most shots were 1/125th or even 1/40th in some spots.

So, I thought about using fill flash, even though I only have the onboard flash on my XSi. It helped a bit *but* the boards around the indoor field were a reflective white, of course. Even with a diffuser, it made shots against the boards worse, not better. Also, waiting for the flash to recharge completely killed my ability to shoot consecutive shots.

So, I have maybe 15 shots that I would consider keepers out 300 or so that I took. I consider even the 15 keepers to be pretty weak, and I'm going to need to spend a good amount of time cleaning up noise considering that I need to bring the exposure up a full stop or more in Lightroom.

Is there anything else I could have done, or do you I just consider the 15 I got to be a good haul?

Thanks for any advice you can offer!

[zona5101]

Hopefully the 15 you did get will be a nice set for your work mates to remember the outing. What to do...you had a pretty fast lens, you could have bumped your iso some more. You can avoid some motion blur by not shooting perpendicular to the players but shoot them facing you or moving towards you. But probably the only thing would be bring more light...as in an external flash that has some ummpt. Your on board is probably only good for 15 feet or so. A good external will get you out to 60 feet or more...mounted off axis on a bracket to throw the shadow and eliminate chance of red eye.
Short of mounting pro flashes in the rafters I'm not sure what else there is...

[TheKingInYellow]

Originally Posted by zona5101

You can avoid some motion blur by not shooting perpendicular to the players but shoot them facing you or moving towards you.

I had heard this trick as well, but I had to shoot from one sideline only, nothing behind the nets, etc...

Oh well, it sounds like I did as much as I could then. Glad to hear that from another source though.

[Chip]

If there's not enough light to stop the action with the gear you have, then how about trying:

1) a non-action shot - at a break in the action, or when a player is not moving too fast, zoom in on a face or a group of faces and take candid shots. This can be a good way to capture some of the emotion and exertion that athletes experience; and/or

2) go with the blur - maybe try to use motion blur as a positive, and incorporate it purposefully into your shots? It can be a nice change of pace to see a part of a body (feet, legs, etc) blurred while the rest of the body is in pretty sharp focus. And panning with athletes isn't easy, but when successful it can make for some cool photos.

Also, as zona mentioned, turning up the ISO should help. If shots are properly exposed, a photo with high ISO may well have surprisingly less noise than you'd expect.

My 2 cents.

[TheKingInYellow]

Well I've put my best shots in a Flickr set HERE if anyone wants to see. I'd like opinions on how I did.

Thanks!

[ARKreations]

While you may not have SI banging your door down for them, they look much better than I expected from your prior description. Given the conditions, I'd say they look pretty good.
The key focal points are pretty sharp and draw the attention where you want it and away from the blurred extremities.

[Gonzo13]

If it was me I would have tried shooting with the 50mm 1.8 II and either tried to get closer or cropped the images in PP. I was at a Dodgers game this summer and started using my 50mm 2.5 because I was getting motion blur with everything else. Just a thought though.

[Chip]

Originally Posted by krossk

While you may not have SI banging your door down for them, they look much better than I expected from your prior description. Given the conditions, I'd say they look pretty good.
The key focal points are pretty sharp and draw the attention where you want it and away from the blurred extremities.

I agree.

The one thing I don't get is the -1EV on all these? If the EV had been set to 0, the photos should have been even brighter.

[TheKingInYellow]

Originally Posted by Chip

I agree.

The one thing I don't get is the -1EV on all these? If the EV had been set to 0, the photos should have been even brighter.

Honestly, I think that was a mistake. I was screwing with it to try and get the shutter speed up, and should have left it at 0. I did a fair bit of brightening in post, but I don't know that the resulting picture was any better for it.

This was a real learning experience.

[TheKingInYellow]

Originally Posted by krossk

While you may not have SI banging your door down for them, they look much better than I expected from your prior description. Given the conditions, I'd say they look pretty good.
The key focal points are pretty sharp and draw the attention where you want it and away from the blurred extremities.

A day later, I'm happier with them than I was before. But thanks for the kind words, a little encouragement goes a long way for a new member of the hobby