Skiing Racing at night?

[Ryan Miner]

Has anyone ever taken race photos at night? I have a shoot next Thursday and can use lighting tips if you've got them. As you know, the nights lights are dim dim dim....they pale in comparison to the lighting of a course for World Cup. Any advice you've got would be appreciated!

Ryan

[FlyingPhotog]

Oh man. If the night lighting on a the hill is anything like I remember from my ski racing days (granted this was way back in HS) I don't think there's going to be much you can do short of crank up the ISO and beg, borrow or steal the fastest lens you can get your hands on (know anyone with the 200mm f/1.8?)

I'd probably forego direct flash for two reasons:
1) You'll get nothing but skiers in a black hole
2) Ski Racing is not a sport that suffers distractions lightly. I wouldn't want to be the one who makes a skier miss a gate (or worse) because I temporarily blinded them.

Good Luck.

[Ryan Miner]

It's exactly as you remember it.....barely enough light even for the racers to see the gates!

That's a good point....not shooting directly so as not to blind the racers...I tried shooting from downhill and if you look at their eyes many kids look across and down to the next gate away from me....but check out the photos from the other night and if you have some tips on how to improve that would be great....thanks!

www.ryanminer.com/marbleheadskiteam

I have a 70-200 Canon IS 2.8...a fixed 1.8 would be awesome...I'll check around!

[FlyingPhotog]

It's exactly as you remember it.....barely enough light even for the racers to see the gates!

That's a good point....not shooting directly so as not to blind the racers...I tried shooting from downhill and if you look at their eyes many kids look across and down to the next gate away from me....but check out the photos from the other night and if you have some tips on how to improve that would be great....thanks!

www.ryanminer.com/marbleheadskiteam (http://www.ryanminer.com/marbleheadskiteam)

I have a 70-200 Canon IS 2.8...a fixed 1.8 would be awesome...I'll check around!

I'd have to say that, considering the lack of light, you've done pretty darn well. You've certainly got a great sense of timing to get the skiers actually hitting the gates.

[primoz]

To be honest, all night races I was shooting were World cup races (http://www.photo.si/advanced_search1.php?searchtype1=city&condition1=like&searchstring1=schladming&andor1=or&searchtype2=city&condition2=like&searchstring2=zagreb&andor2=and&searchtype3=caption&condition3=like&searchstring3=skiing&lenb=0), so things are probably different. But for World cup, light is so good, that if it would be up to me, all races would be night races :)
Snow reflects light back nicely, so even if light is not all that great, it doesn't look all that bad on the end. Snow on course works like huge reflector bouncing light back up, so faces are lit nicely. But as I wrote these were World cup races with live tv, which means much better light then some HS race would have. Light is actually so good, that I normally shoot with iso640-800 at f/2.8 and 1/800 or even 1/1000 and no flash at all.
For worse light I would probably go with a bit less standard photos. This means much more panning photos, because with 1/200 or something you can't really hope for sharp photos when shooting standard way. Flash is normally pretty much useless for anything but slalom, because you are standing way too far away for flash. For slalom it might actually even work, but even there only if you can be close enough to be shooting on 150mm or shorter.
Otherwise based on your description, your photos are far from bad, for those conditions. There are limits to this what you can do, and sometimes it just can't be perfect... if we like it or not.

[@nt!x]

sounds like fun! Good luck :-)