Flash for basketball -direct, bounce, other?

[n1as]

Last night I shot in the MS gym. ISO 3200, 1/400 f/2.0 was giving good exposures and working OK but I decided to try flash.

I hate direct flash. I hate the way direct flash looks. It reflects off our team's uniforms and gives blown glowy highlights.

The ceiling in this gym is lower than the one in our HS gym so I decided to try bouncing. It worked. Man, what a difference. Color balance between the flash and ambient was a bit funky but such is life.

In the HS gym, the ceilings are higher and I'm skeptical about my ability to bounce it, so I'm thinking of clipping the flash to a light cage on the wall behind me and just pointing it onto the court. That would put the flash about 8' in the air and firing from one corner of the court toward the top of the key. I'd fire the flash remotely, of course.

But would the light from a remote direct flash still give me the ugly look of on-camera direct flash?

When people use strobes, do the use direct, umbrellas or ceiling bounce?

- Keith -

[dmwierz]

Keith,

This is a matter of taste. I personally agree with you, but not everyone feels the same way. And yes, the direct light from a strobe is similar to direct flash. This might not be true when the strobes are firing directly down from the ceiling, though, as they do in pro arenas.

The color balance issue you had could be from the color cast the ceiling gives - remember when you bounce off something non-white, the light you get is non-white.

The only time I have used an umbrella is once I used one strobe for fill, firing into an umbrella, with another strobe bouncing off the ceiling.

[swjim]

You might want to check this link out:

http://strobist.blogspot.com/2007/02/on-assignment-speedlighting-college-gym.html