Swim Meet

I was asked to shoot at a swim meet -- indoor and at night! -- and here are some of the results. I'd appreciate your comments:


1)

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3)

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the colors look a bit off in 3 to me

Soo, Looks like you could bump up the shutter speed a little. But not bad for the first go around. Keep it up

IMHO, not being rude or anything, but the angles don't work for me.

Swim meet images, IMHO should be shot from about 45 degrees into the front or the back of the swimmer.

I feel that you're too high up on these images. maybe go lower.

another "typical" angle is from the front as the swimmer is approaching you.

All the images are tack on the face with nice motion on the hands, and very well lit, nice work. I would have to agree with Aaagogo about #3, feels awkward to me too, but I have sold images just like that becomes I was standing over lane 1, I prefer closer crop with that angle of just the face and shoulder. Looks to me you were very low in most the shots by getting three lane lines in the images, Nice. #1 I enjoy the most when you can get multiples with the focus on the lead swimmer, Excellent.

steve

Whether you are doing it intentionally or it just happened on your crops, you have left the swimmer somewhere to go. Good.

I have been conscious of that for a while and notice it makes a difference over cropping so tight that the next stroke takes the swimmer out of the frame.

I picked it up reading through the transportation forum - comments are made usually about planes needing a space to be able to fly into. It makes sense.

So good stuff.

Thank you all for your honest and constructive comments! I really appreciate you all.

This was my first ever swim meet shoot, and this small college pool had 236 competitors plus their friends, parents, relatives and whatnot all swarming around the pool... Frankly, I sort of resented that I was asked to shoot indoor pool at night in such crowded condition. In fact, I'm actually thinking about turning down such requests in the future. To top it off, two of my paying clients swam on the 5th lane -- meaning they were the farthest from my lens off the pool side. My third paying client then swam on the 1st lane.

The reason why I decided to post these images has primarily to do with the use of flash, one area that I have no experience whatsoever when it comes to shooting swimming indoors. Prior to the shooting, I tried up'ing the ISO to 1600 without the flash but quickly realized that it's just impossible given the dark condition. So then I went with the flash bouncing at full-power off the fortunately lower than expected ceiling. Even then I had to up the ISO to 800 for the shutter speed set at 1/250th which is what I personally prefer for freestyle (all my clients only swam that stroke) in order to capture some motion on the hand but fast enough to capture the facial, body, and some water splashing.

What I really want to know, for those with lots of experience shooting swimming in a similar condition, is whether I could have done something different with my flash, or did I exhaust my limitations then and there.

SYS wrote in post #5317161
Thank you all for your honest and constructive comments! I really appreciate you all.

This was my first ever swim meet shoot, and this small college pool had 236 competitors plus their friends, parents, relatives and whatnot all swarming around the pool... Frankly, I sort of resented that I was asked to shoot indoor pool at night in such crowded condition. In fact, I'm actually thinking about turning down such requests in the future. To top it off, two of my paying clients swam on the 5th lane -- meaning they were the farthest from my lens off the pool side. My third paying client then swam on the 1st lane.

The reason why I decided to post these images has primarily to do with the use of flash, one area that I have no experience whatsoever when it comes to shooting swimming indoors. Prior to the shooting, I tried up'ing the ISO to 1600 without the flash but quickly realized that it's just impossible given the dark condition. So then I went with the flash bouncing at full-power off the fortunately lower than expected ceiling. Even then I had to up the ISO to 800 for the shutter speed set at 1/250th which is what I personally prefer for freestyle (all my clients only swam that stroke) in order to capture some motion on the hand but fast enough to capture the facial, body, and some water splashing.

What I really want to know, for those with lots of experience shooting swimming in a similar condition, is whether I could have done something different with my flash, or did I exhaust my limitations then and there.

I prefer direct flash as it high lights the water. I have also shot laying down on the deck at the end of the pool with the flash bounced off the wall behind me.
It would help to get your hands on a 70-200 2.8 as that would help getting swimmers lanes 1 through 6 with running around the pool deck.

SYS wrote in post #5317161
Thank you all for your honest and constructive comments! I really appreciate you all.

This was my first ever swim meet shoot, and this small college pool had 236 competitors plus their friends, parents, relatives and whatnot all swarming around the pool... Frankly, I sort of resented that I was asked to shoot indoor pool at night in such crowded condition. In fact, I'm actually thinking about turning down such requests in the future. To top it off, two of my paying clients swam on the 5th lane -- meaning they were the farthest from my lens off the pool side. My third paying client then swam on the 1st lane.

The reason why I decided to post these images has primarily to do with the use of flash, one area that I have no experience whatsoever when it comes to shooting swimming indoors. Prior to the shooting, I tried up'ing the ISO to 1600 without the flash but quickly realized that it's just impossible given the dark condition. So then I went with the flash bouncing at full-power off the fortunately lower than expected ceiling. Even then I had to up the ISO to 800 for the shutter speed set at 1/250th which is what I personally prefer for freestyle (all my clients only swam that stroke) in order to capture some motion on the hand but fast enough to capture the facial, body, and some water splashing.

What I really want to know, for those with lots of experience shooting swimming in a similar condition, is whether I could have done something different with my flash, or did I exhaust my limitations then and there.

The basic set up is to have your flash power be 2 stops more powerful than your ambient light, and to have the flash fire for a very short amount of time. You then set your camera at the exposure of the flashes, not the ambient. When the flash fires it illuminates the subject and burns them over the background. If the duration of the flash firing is short enough the subject is burned only for that short amount of time, and appears frozen in the final image. The water will be dark royal blue and not Cyan but the splash will look like ice, NICE. You will have to adjust a little for skin tone while there warming up.

I have had some luck with High sync mode (fill Flash) but you can get ghosting at the low shutter speeds, mainly on the hands, but hey it looks good there. You will also need a battery pack for this type of shooting.

But you got stellar images with the low ceiling and bouncing the flash, for high ceiling try direct flash set as stated above.

http://www.waynesthisa​ndthat.com/flashdurati​ons.html

Paul S wrote in post #5318606
I prefer direct flash as it high lights the water. I have also shot laying down on the deck at the end of the pool with the flash bounced off the wall behind me.
It would help to get your hands on a 70-200 2.8 as that would help getting swimmers lanes 1 through 6 with running around the pool deck.

Thanks, Paul, for sharing your technique. However, don't you think the shadows created by the direct flash method are rather harsh? That's the main reason why I avoided it.

WebMonkey wrote in post #5319118
The basic set up is to have your flash power be 2 stops more powerful than your ambient light, and to have the flash fire for a very short amount of time. You then set your camera at the exposure of the flashes, not the ambient. When the flash fires it illuminates the subject and burns them over the background. If the duration of the flash firing is short enough the subject is burned only for that short amount of time, and appears frozen in the final image. The water will be dark royal blue and not Cyan but the splash will look like ice, NICE. You will have to adjust a little for skin tone while there warming up.

I have had some luck with High sync mode but you can get ghosting at the low shutter speeds, mainly on the hands, but hey it looks good there.

But you got stellar images with the low ceiling and bouncing the flash, for high ceiling try direct flash set as stated above.

http://www.waynesthisa​ndthat.com/flashdurati​ons.html

Interesting stuff, Steve. Thank you for the link. I'll have to read it with close attention!