Few Basketball

Have been shoot some basketball action for the kids at PC

All shot with D300 nikon 85 f1.8 or 35 f1.8 at 1250 iso usually 1/500 at f2.0

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Kent Vinyard Photography

Those look nice. Man, I hate those gym lights. They are SO hard to color match. In the NBA arenas they mount really powerful strobes in the catwalks that overpower the ambient. That is how they get such crisp, clean colors. Us mere mortals are stuck with trying to match yucky abmient lighting.

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James Pratt
www.advridermag.com
www.-james-pratt.com
www.motorcyclestock.com

Thanks James,
It would be super nice to have a bunch of overhead strobes so I could shoot about 1/500 at f8.0 Ah Paradise!
Beleive it or not these were shot at auto white balance. These new Nikons are much better that older ones like my D2h.
It just goes crazy with the white balance if you don't use custom WB. There is just no place to hang strobes in the PC gymn.
PC north & PC west both have seating with rails around where you could set up strobes before the games. I wonder if the Nikon
remote wireless would work in areas like a gymn? Probably would have to use pocket wizards. Anyway for high school these will work ok.

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Kent Vinyard Photography

Good to see you still shooting the Pirates! I kinda miss shooting next to you at those football games! Nice work.

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Randy -OKC
www.wildeyesimages.com
www.randycandersonphotography.com

I think the NBA guys get closer to 1/2000 or higher at F8, maybe F11 or so. They use strobes with a very short flash duration so can get much higher sync times, thereby eliminating ghosting. They got some nice, nice stuff. Not sure what all they use, but a nice Profoto 2400WS pack and one head costs upwards of $10,000 PER LIGHT. Wouldn't that be nice for someone to give you a bunch of those?

On second thought, I have to wonder about how they would work their shutter at those high speeds. I have read about that stuff but don't know how it all works since I don't have anything even close to that fast!

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James Pratt
www.advridermag.com
www.-james-pratt.com
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Been a LONG time since I've been to the forum. Got a lot to catch up on. I'm really impressed with these D300 photos. They turned out great!

I just got through shooting a high school state tournament here in Texas with four Alien Bees and I still had to shoot 500 and 640 ISO with a shutter speed of 250/320. I had two 1600s on one end and two 400s on the other end. I think the fstop was somehwere from 3.2 to 4 if I remember correctly.

But being able to shoot with strobes is SO much better. Once you shoot with lights you really will never want to shoot without them again Smile

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Have you noticed any ghosting with the AB's in a fast sports environment like that? I didn't think they would have a short enough flash duration to capture really high speed action. It would certainly be better than no flash, but probably not the same as the lights they use in places like NBA arenas.

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James Pratt
www.advridermag.com
www.-james-pratt.com
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Oh yeah I'm sure they are not equitable as to what is shot in the NBA, but when compared to shooting with lights as to without lights there is simply no comparison.

Here is a link to our finals photos: http://www.lscsn.com/photocart/index.php?category=421

The 1A-2A-4A finals were shot with a pair of Alien Bee 1600s in each corner of the gym on the side that the photographer was sitting/shooting from. During the action he shot from the right-hand side of the baseline.

The 3A-5A finals were shot with two Alien Bee 1600s from the corner of the gym on the side that the photographer was shooting from and then two Alien Bee 400s up higher in the stands on the opposite side of where the shooter was shooting from.

The 400s were pointed out toward the court (until one or both of them got moved in the final game) And the 1600s were pointed nearly directly up toward the ceiling.

I'm not sure I will go back to a four-light set up again where the lights are not actually in the ceilings.

My question was if you could see any ghosting in fast action shots. I was wondering if the Alien Bee's had a short enough flash duration to freeze fast action. I have only used them in the studio, not in sports. Their flash duration at full power is around 1/1100 and at 1/32 power you only get 1/550 of a second. I know some of the really high end strobes get around 1/12000 at full power. I would think even at 1/1100 you might see a bit of ghosting in really fast hand or foot movement. Have you noticed this at all?

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James Pratt
www.advridermag.com
www.-james-pratt.com
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I'm sure there is some. That's why I posted the gallery link so you could take a look and see what kind of images we are getting with these set ups. Normally in basketball at the peak moment of action there's not a lot of movement so it's pretty easy to freeze the action. The only thing about the 1600s is they do not recycle quite as quickly as the 800s. But in the gyms that we have to shoot in here in Texas the use of lights just makes you so much happier with the end results Smile

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Thanks. I looked at the gallery, but the images are too small to be able to see detail and they have that huge watermark on then so can't really see much. Thanks for the feedback.

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James Pratt
www.advridermag.com
www.-james-pratt.com
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See if you can see this thread. http://www.texasphotoforum.com/forum/sports/118473-tapps-state-basketball-championships.html These are some of them without the watermark and are larger.

Here's a few more from a different photographer in a different gym but with the same two-light set up. http://www.facebook.com/#!/photo.php?pid=61951649&o=all&op=1&view=all&subj=101927479196&aid=-1&id=8304643&oid=101927479196

I'll try and get a couple posted from my four-light set up.

Here are a couple of mine from the four-light setup.

Those look pretty good. You can see just a bit of ghosting in the second picture on the guys hand, but it is not objectionable at all.

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James Pratt
www.advridermag.com
www.-james-pratt.com
www.motorcyclestock.com