Help with WB, speedlite strobes and BB

OK, so I have some things finally starting to come together. I have my son's BB game to shoot tonight. I've got a 50mm 1.4 on my 40D, a set of RF-602s to trigger my two speedlites on stands. I played with the speedlites and triggers he other night and have that nailed down. The only thing I'm still struggling with is WB. I'd don't have enough power to over power the ambient light in these gyms. They are actually very well lit. SO I have to try and balance them and I'm having a horrible time of it.

HELP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I have you have two light sources of different temperatures and are mixing them together, there is nothing you can do to balance your WB without adding a gel to your flashes to make them fire at the same temperature as the ambient. Unfortunately, adding the gels to do this will diminish your flash intensity a bit which is never good when trying to use speedlights for indoor sports.

The bigger problem you will have is ghosting if you are not able to get enough light from the flashes to get far enough over ambient. If you have enough flash power to shoot and not have ghosting problems, you will also fix your WB problem because you will have eliminated, or at least mostly eliminated, the ambient light.

Well lit gyms require huge amounts of added light in order to be able to effectively strobe sports. I am afraid you might not have enough power to do what you are hoping.

Probably too late here, but here it goes.

You'll never get them balanced. You could try gelling the strobes, but you'll only match the ambient part of the time and you'll lose a stop or two of light out of your speedlites. If you can't reasonably get over the ambient, you might be best by just shooting ambient.

EDIT: Kevin explained it better and more thoroughly than I.

Thanks guys, I just got back from the game and I'm uploading the images to my drives right now. I haven't seen them but on my LCD, but the colors I got tonight weren't too bad. We'll see here in a little while when I can see them on a real screen.

How did they turn out?

Horribly out of focus. I just am at a loss as to why I can't seem to get anything in focus. I even rented a Canon 50mm f1.4 lens to see if it was any better than the Canon 50f1.8 Mk II. I had better success with the plastic job. I'm not really sure what happened. Maybe the lens I rented wasn't fully up to snuff, but more likely it was me as the lens focuses fine on still subjects while in "One Shot" mode on the camera. I had the lens all weekend and took it with me on a job up in Beaver Creek, CO to do an live TV shot with Shaun Johnson (Gold and silver medelist for the US Womens Gymnastics team). The camera was still set to AI Servo and I was using the 50 f1.4 when I got a chance to take a picture of Miss. Johnson. She wasn't moving at all and actually smiled and posed for me. The freaking image is soft! I'm more than a little bummed. I think OOF is a bit more important that WB right now. WB can be fixed, OOF is permanent and usually not too fixable. I've been reading The Strobist Blog site about direct flash and gelling the speedlites to correct to ambient light. That's the answer given above so I'm sure that's the way to go.

AI Servo mode when shooting still subjects can sometimes cause you problems. I find that with virtually every lens I own, I am better off shooting in one shot mode if shooting still subjects.

Regarding your action shots, I would be curious to see a couple of examples. I am guessing a lot of the OOF is related to ghosting from not being far enough over ambient with your flash settings but this is hard to know without seeing some examples. If you would like to post a couple I would be happy to give you my thoughts.

Sweet Kevin. I'll post them in the photo sharing section. I've been so discouraged by the results I just now went through them and did some PP. Only a couple of maybe, kind of sort of keepers... maybe.

If you can, post them without the PP work. It will make it easier to get an idea what you are getting from the camera. You could also post them on this thread if you like. I don't think it violates the theme of discussion since they are to review to help address your problem.

OK, you're a senior member and I'll do it. Hopefully Biff won't be too upset because I posted images in a talk forum.

Exposure info: f2.2, 1/250, ISO 500, two wireless speedlights set to 1/4 power bounced off of the back wall. Thats' pretty true of all these images. Only a couple at the beginning of the game I shot at ISO 640.
Here's one with no correction done at all. The WB is pretty close, but not right. It shows the out of focus kind of thing I'm talking about. The kid was just moving up and down and a bit forward shooting that free throw, but he's way soft. Well and he has that set of extra legs to help him jump really high.

The biggest thing I notice is that most of them are back focusing. Note the in focus spot on the floor behind the kid in shot 1, the kid in the background in shot 3, 4, 6 and 7. Numbers 2 and 5 are probably in focus because your focus picked up the subject closer to you.

This could be caused by a couple of things or a combination.

1) Your focus point is slipping off the subject and locking on to something in the background.
2) Your focus point was on a subject in the background when you set it and did not reacquire focus as you adjusted.
3) Your camera/lens combo has an problem with back focusing and needs to be sent in for repair.

One way to test this would be to have someone walk about 5 feet in front of a brick wall or something with some contrast (Not a solid painted wall) and take some photos of them in AI Servo mode and see if they are in focus or if the wall is in focus. Have them walk so it is easy to keep the focus point on them. If you consistently have the wall in focus, the problem is more than likely an issue with your camera/lens. If the subject stays mostly in focus, the problem is caused by the person behind the camera.

You are getting some ghosting but that is not the cause of the problems you are seeing here.

I would work on figuring out the focus problem before worrying about the WB issues. The WB problem is not near as significant as the focus problem at this point.

Hope that helps and if any others have thoughts, please add them.

Hmmmm... well the lens was a rental, so that could be the issue there. I returned it today so I can't test it out. Too bad as I'd really like to figure this out before I buy my own EF 50 f1.4
You say this back focusing issue could also be with the camera too. Can I test that sepperately with another lens or is that apples and oranges?

My feeling is that the lens is the likely culprit as I have used this body all summer and fall shooting football with my 70-200 f4L and never had that kind of issue at all. If an image was OOF then it was on me not tracking the subject well enough. And, I did get a higher percentage of keepers using my 50 f1.8 MkII lens. The OOF shots there were simply a really old, crappy lens being asked to do something it was never ment to do.
All weekend long that I had this EF 50 f1.4 rental lens I wasn't totally pleased with it. Only when the subject didn't move and the camera was set to One Shot did it produce a crisp image. Every other lens I have in my collection will produce sharp images on my 40D body.

Thanks Kevin!

I didn't read all the posts but I will chime in a bit. The thing that stuck out to me was bounced 1/4 power. I feel that is the biggest problem with the your photos. I shoot in a very well lit gym and find that direct full power is the only way to overpower the ambient and I use a alienbee b800. You could also try going full power when you bounce, but you still may not have enough power with speedlights.

The focus issue reminds me of trying to shoot bball with the 85mm 1.8. The problem with these lens is the speed of the af, a lot of pics end up being oof. I have tried many lenses inside the gym and I stick with 70-200mm and 300mm (shoot the defense side too) for better number of keepers.

WB, try different things like flash or custom until you get the results your looking for. I have been using the kelvin function on the mark III for strobe bball and it has been giving me much better results. Once you figure out all this stuff, write down the settings for the gyms you shoot in. It helps setup for the future.

Here is an example of the well lit gym: 1/250 iso640 f/3.5 alienbee b800 full power direct

IMAGE LINK: http://www.rochestercc​photography.com …763_mAVmG#75275​5293_kd3BA

Hey Chris, so just the one b800? Any set up shots of your light(s)? Also, the "kelvin function" on your Mk III? I understand the Kelvin scale quite well as amatter of fact, but this function in your camera, can you describe it, or are you just messing with setting your own via making changes to the WB in 100K steps through the jog wheels?

Nice images on your web site!

Here's another I forgot I wanted to post, this one is just way bad. Look at the ref. In the original version before some cropping the lower right hand corner is all there. I only cropped out a small amount from the left side and top. The freaking ref was never in the center focus point and this kid was pretty close to me, centered in the frame. Not real hard to track that one. Yet it's way out.

ChasWG wrote in post #9384726
Hey Chris, so just the one b800? Any set up shots of your light(s)? Also, the "kelvin function" on your Mk III? I understand the Kelvin scale quite well as amatter of fact, but this function in your camera, can you describe it, or are you just messing with setting your own via making changes to the WB in 100K steps through the jog wheel?

Yeah, I just used one ab800 superclamped to the second story track railing of the gym and pointed it towards the foul line. I will take a pic of the setup tonight if I remember when I'm there for a boys game. The mark III has a kelvin function for wb, just as you described...messing with the wheel per 100.