Youth basketball and JPEG question.

[BEphoto]

Friday I have an interview/training with a local youth sports photography company. The take action shots all around the area at different sporting events, then sale the discs immediately after the game to the parents.

All fine and dandy for outdoor sports right? Sure. ISO 100 and still get 1/1000 or so.

Okay, here is my issue. Of all the sports for me to get my "interview/training" for, it had to be basketball. Not that I dislike basketball by any means, it's just one of the hardest to shoot due to the poor lighting.

I have no problem bumping to ISO 1600 and firing away, going home and running them through some noise reduction and all is well. The only problem is that they shoot JPEG and the pics get cropped and burned on the spot. Are they just going to be noisy and that's that? Is there any type of NR software that works well with JPEG that they could have installed?

I'm not at all concerned about my ability to get the shots, just concerned that the outcome, due to lighting conditions I can't control, may not be all that great since you are pretty much forced to shoot at ISO 1600 for indoor sports.

Would you suggest using flash? I don't think it would do anything to help my ISO since it would mostly be just a fill.

Thanks, and any info is greatly appreciated.

[Zivnuska]

The answer is going to be dependent on the venue. Can you shoot ISO1600 and stop the action? If you shoot with your 70-200 f/2.8, that may or may not be possible. Shutter speeds of 1/400 is a minimum and 1/640 is better. The prospective employer should be able to tell you what settings they need to make it work where they shoot. Do you own the 85mm f/1.8? That is an inexpensive, fast focusing lens that is popular and gives an edge over a f/2.8 lens.

Fill flash? That won't work. High speed sync is not good for action photography and you still need to get fast shutter speeds (from the ambient) to stop the action. If you need supplemental lighting, it should be powerful enough to get 3 stops over ambient. The flash stops the action, gives lower ISO, has better quality light, and dominates over ambient to avoid ghosting. That is the ideal situation. I realize this explanation is getting more complicated but that is why you need to talk to your future employer about how they have made things work in the past in their venues.

I shoot a lot of basketball and the frustrations of shooting ambient in dark gyms led me to get strobes and pocket wizards.

[AdamLewis]

High Speed NR in camera could be worth a shot. Other than that, invest in some lighting equipment or faster glass (85/1.8, 135/2)

[S.Horton]

I think that's going to be tough.

Do they edit/crop/straighten/color correct on the spot, or just crop?

And, do you have to do that work there, with them?

[BEphoto]

from the way it sounds, ill shoot all through the game then just hand over my CF card to them and they do the rest. I guess i'll just find out tomorrow.

One plus is that i just found out that its at a brand new (1yr old) gym, so hopefully the lighting is better than most.

[clarence]

Is there any type of NR software that works well with JPEG that they could have installed?

I use the batch NR in Neat Image for JPGs from my 40D at 1600 & 3200. Love it.

They have 3 versions...
- demo (free, but for single images only, no batch)
- Home ($29, batch up to 50 images at a time)
- Pro ($59, unlimited batch size)

http://www.neatimage.com/download.html

[S.Horton]

from the way it sounds, ill shoot all through the game then just hand over my CF card to them and they do the rest. I guess i'll just find out tomorrow.

One plus is that i just found out that its at a brand new (1yr old) gym, so hopefully the lighting is better than most.

Ah, then it is all skillz.;)

You'll be fine!

[cdifoto]

Do a CWB, nail the exposure, and let in-camera NR do its thing.

[AdamLewis]

And kiss your buffer goodbye :lol:

[cdifoto]

And kiss your buffer goodbye :lol:
:confused:

The buffer with JPEG is awesome compared to RAW...

[AdamLewis]

:confused:

The buffer with JPEG is awesome compared to RAW...

High Speed NR is murder though...

[cdifoto]

High Speed NR is murder though.
Didn't know there was such a thing. I'm on old tech. :lol:

[clarence]

And kiss your buffer goodbye :lol:

With in-camera NR, the 40D buffer holds 7 shots before it slows down...

http://www.komar.org/faq/camera/canon-40d-versus-rebel-xti-400d/continuous-shooting-sound/
On my Canon 40D, it does 6.5 frames/second ... which while quieter than the XTi (even more so in real life than the video suggests) it sounds like a machine gun! As shown, I was able to shoot 50 frames at large JPEG ... but this was at ISO3200 ... it turns out the burst depth is highly dependant on ISO, and I was able to shoot 89 frames with ISO100 - WOW!
After that, it then drops to about one/frame second - i.e. the camera keeps shooting as it writes out data to the card. Note that high ISO noise reduction - CFII.2 - is turned OFF - if this is turned on, the 40D shows I only have six shots and with writing to the CF card, I was only able to get 7 shots off before the 40D slows down... in ISO100 or ISO3200. Note that even if you show RAW, you still get those 7 shots ... so this implies that the camera is CPU limited by processing the noise reduction algorithms.

So as long as you're not a "spray and pray" machine-gun shooter, a 7-shot burst isn't too limiting.

[AdamLewis]

Didn't know there was such a thing. I'm on old tech. :lol:

You said "let in-camera NR do its thing" ?..

[AdamLewis]

With in-camera NR, the 40D buffer holds 7 shots before it slows down...

http://www.komar.org/faq/camera/canon-40d-versus-rebel-xti-400d/continuous-shooting-sound/


So as long as you're not a "spray and pray" machine-gun shooter, a 7-shot burst isn't too limiting.

7 shots is pretty limiting. You dont have to hang a motor drive either to make it happen.

Say someone drives to a basket and you take a modest 3 shots.
Shot gets blocked and goes to the floor and you take 2 more shots.
Players fight for a couple seconds and you take 4 shots...er...wait...

You cant.

Because you hit your 7 shot buffer two shots ago.

Now you cant shoot the outcome of the grapple, the reaction from the players, the coach, or the fans.

When everything really starts unfolding and you document it all, you cant hit your buffer very quickly. There doesnt have to be any "spray and pray" to it.

[cdifoto]

You said "let in-camera NR do its thing" ?..
Yeah the default NR that's always done during the process of raw sensor data to jpeg on the card.

[clarence]

Say someone drives to a basket and you take a modest 3 shots.
Shot gets blocked and goes to the floor and you take 2 more shots.
Players fight for a couple seconds and you take 4 shots...er...wait...

You cant.

Because you hit your 7 shot buffer two shots ago.

Now you cant shoot the outcome of the grapple, the reaction from the players, the coach, or the fans.

When everything really starts unfolding and you document it all, you cant hit your buffer very quickly. There doesnt have to be any "spray and pray" to it.

The buffer continues to process and empty during the couple of seconds while the players were fighting.

But yes, it is certainly possible to have a scenario where you wish the buffer wasn't lagging.

So 99.44% of the time, the original poster may benefit from having NR.

But 0.56% of the time he may run into delayed fps due to a full NR processing buffer.

[DDCSD]

I doubt noise will be much of an issue at 1600. I just got an email from a lady that bought two 24x30 posters from me. One shot was strobed at ISO 250 and the other at ISO1600 bumped up 2/3rds of a stop (on my MkIIN). I warned her beforehand that there would be a noticeable difference between the two, she said in the email that she can barely tell.

Normal people don't notice noise like we do.

WB is what you should be worrying about. CWB doesn't work all that well for small gym lighting. Those lights cycle so much that you often get 2 different color temps in the same frame.


With all of that said, if you plan on doing basketball in the future, Alien Bees are a great investment.

[clarence]

With all of that said, if you plan on doing basketball in the future, Alien Bees are a great investment.Agreed. But for those shooters above who are frustrated with the potential of shooting faster than in-camera NR processing, strobing can significantly limit any bursts of continuous shots.

[DDCSD]

Agreed. But for those shooters above who are frustrated with the potential of shooting faster than in-camera NR processing, strobing can significantly limit any bursts of continuous shots.


I think the burst issue is a non-issue for youth basketball, at least when you're looking at sales to parents. Adam's scenario, while a great point for certain situations, isn't a big deal when you're talking about youth sales. Parents don't care if you catch every single moment, they only care if they can recognize that it is their child in the photo.

If anything, bursts tick parents off. No parent wants to go through 500 shots (really just 100 unique shots, but 5 frames of each "shot") just to find a few shots of their child.

[BEphoto]

speaking of strobing, how do you get permission to hang strobes, and how exactly do you go about doing it?? i've always wondered that with youth sports.

[rdompor]

speaking of strobing, how do you get permission to hang strobes, and how exactly do you go about doing it?? i've always wondered that with youth sports.

I imagine you would talk to the SID/AD, and convince them it is safe and productive.