Night Football Flash Set-up

I just had my off shoe cord break last night from the weight of the 580EX II. Do you guys use the canon off shoe cord or a different brand? Thanks.

Chris

Great tips everyone... Thanks for sharing them. I have a flash bracket, but never picked up the patch cord yet... Think I'll head to the local store before the game tonight and pick one up...

magiclanterncreations wrote in post #6302881
I just had my off shoe cord break last night from the weight of the 580EX II. Do you guys use the canon off shoe cord or a different brand? Thanks.

Chris

Chris - I use the Canon one, but it's the second (current - with the lever lock not the screw lock, and the metal hot shoe plate) generation. The first gen was very bad quality and I would break at least one every year.

Note to self: acquire the EF 400 f/2.8L first!

instead of mounting the bracket on the camera, why not use the 2nd tripod hole on the lens? I've been doing that for the past 2 years, makes shooting vertical easier as the camera rotates around the lens. Don't know if the 300 f/2.8 has 2, but the 400 does and that's what I've been shooting with for the past 7 years.

Football tends to be about 60-75% vertical for me.

300mm f2.8 IS only has 1 hole. But one can get wimberley flash bracket which mounts to the lens plate and will work with any lens.

Seems to me that I'd want the flash and pole mounted to the monopod and/or lens foot. Allows for vert orientation. Also, Is there a rating on the lens-to-camera mount? At what point will that begin to wear?

Here is my new setup

HOSTED PHOTO
please log in to view hosted photos in full size.

This is my set-up for shooting at night.

HTTP response: NOT FOUND | MIME changed to 'image/gif' | Redirected to error image by FLICKR

To funny Chris!!

You're my hero Chris.

On a more relevant note though, I have a 430 EX and am thinking of trying it out with my 70-200 f/2.8 IS this week for football. Are there any good tips/settings I should use. I have not really had the oppurtunity to use the flash much yet and I have shot ambient at our games so far. Any tips would be greatly appreciated.

Simply amazing Chris. Do you use that at 1/2 or 1/4 power?

Mestes, I got a kick out of yours as well...how ironic that your "model" has red eye? Awesome! (just bustin your stones, man)

SwiftFootTim wrote in post #6501187
You're my hero Chris.

On a more relevant note though, I have a 430 EX and am thinking of trying it out with my 70-200 f/2.8 IS this week for football. Are there any good tips/settings I should use. I have not really had the oppurtunity to use the flash much yet and I have shot ambient at our games so far. Any tips would be greatly appreciated.

There are a lot of variables that go into what settings to use. I set my camera to ISO 800, aperture priority of 2.8, set the Speedlight to ETTL which gives me a shutter sync speed of 1/250 and fire away. I may make some under or over compensation ajustments based on how far away the team/player is I plan on shooting but that's the starting point I use.

Keep looking through this thread and get a taste for whateveryone else does, average it out and use that as a starting point.

Best of luck!

Chris

[QUOTE=namasste;650137​8]Simply amazing Chris. Do you use that at 1/2 or 1/4 power?

Since that baby has a standard aperture of f8 I go full power on the flash.

namasste wrote in post #6501378
Simply amazing Chris. Do you use that at 1/2 or 1/4 power?

Mestes, I got a kick out of yours as well...how ironic that your "model" has red eye? Awesome! (just bustin your stones, man)

Only other camera was either my phone or my wifes point and shoot and that what I used but as you can see its horrible.