HS Wrestling w/Off-camera flash

Saturday I had an assignment to shoot the Maryland Private School wrestling championships. They run the championship round on three mats at once. 1st-2nd on the middle mat, with 3rd-4th and 5th-6th on the end mats.

This is an old gym with not a lot of room from the edge of the mat to the bleachers. What I did was used two super-clamps on the closest railings, one on each side of the bleachers with a Canon 580EX attached pointing the flash towards the center of the mat. I set each flash at 1/2 power and 70mm zoom. With the crowd filling the stands, I hoped my settings were good enough. I fired the flashes using Pocket Wizards.

I sat in the corner of the mat and after a few test shots settled on ISO 400; f/4.0; 1/250s. I was pretty happy with the resuts. I did run into some problems when a very exciting match caused the coaches to jump up from their chairs and stand. This blocked one of my flashes in the middle of the mat.

Below are just a couple examples of the typical shots I got with this setup. All with my Mark IIN and 70-200 f/2.8L:

#1:

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I'd say you nailed the lighting setup. These are some of the best wrestling shots I've seen posted here.

Great job! Crisp. Just received my 580EX in the mail. Cannot wait to start using.

I can't say these are good. As Tony the Tiger would say, Their GRRRREAT

You dialed the lighting! well done!

Almost exactly the setup I use. The lighting looks nearly deadon, the websize images look a touch oversharpened to me.

MT wrote in post #2697190
Almost exactly the setup I use. The lighting looks nearly deadon, the websize images look a touch oversharpened to me.

That is probably true -- I had prepared these for submission to my editor (sharpened once at full-resolution), then I ran them through my standard action I use for web-sized images which I normally run before any sharpening, so yes, they are a bit oversharpened.

Very well done. I have never shot wrestling but can't see where there is much room for improvement in these pics.

I really like the last two. On the first one you can see the shadows from the lights, the effect from the flash that I dont like...

But you did nail the shots!

I agree the best on the Forum. I shoot alot of wrestling with just the one 580 on camera. Most of the time the lighting is just a singal light over the center of the mat. Very hard to get any backround light. I will have to get that second 580 and super clamps.
mike

Nice even lighting... well done. Cool they let you do it because it surely made a huge difference.