Youth BB: A whole new aproach for me and maybe others...

After the te last debacle of shooting youth Bball with the 50 f1.4 and using two speedlites set at too low of a power I decided to try something else. I got lots of advice about lenses and lighting. SO I thought I'd add a little more POP to my speedlites. I have three Rx units for my RF-602 system. And it is possible to trigger two flash units with only one Rx. One via the hotshoe adabler and the other via the sync cord out. I made a funny little cable that has a female 1/4" adapter on one end and a PC sync connection on the other end. Now I can trigger another hotshoe speedlite using a connector I got from Flash Zebra.
http://www.flashzebra.​com/products/0115/inde​x.shtml

Then the next step was to connect the two sppedlites together closely so that I'm not throwing too many different sources of light. So I simply velcro'ed the two speedlites together and then wrapped them securely with a velcro strap. The unit looks like this:
http://www.flickr.com/​photos/chaswg/42795293​98/
and this:
http://www.flickr.com/​photos/chaswg/42787842​97/

So the results of these units was what I was hoping for. A lot of light! I had room for even more output as I was only firing the two main speedlites (the Canon 540EZ and the Zeikos 680EX) at half power. The other two units have no ability to adjust power out put. So then I had to aim these units. I decided to try bouncing them off the back wall again. I mounted one to a lightstand wrapped to the bleachers to my left and the other to some wall mounted, chin-up bar. The spacing between the two was about equal from sideline and to back wall. The power output of the combined units was the only thing I didn't know, so some playing around and adjusting them was going to be needed. And that's what I did.

The lighting was taken care of, now the lens issue or the lack of focus from the previous game needed some attention. So my hope was that I was putting out more light, therefore I could use my 70-200 f4L. I ramped the ISO up to 800 and then 1000 to see what I could get away with.

The results:

Definitely a major improvement. Nice work and a very creative solution using your lights.

Pretty nice results. #1 and 2 are great captures. I'm curious whether the red unis are actually hot pink as they show on my monitor? And the lettering on the white team's jerseys is hot pink as well.

Must be because skin tones, hair, floor, rim, net walls, gatorade bottles all appear to have good WB.

dave

Thanks Kevin! I think you had a big part in my re-thinking the lights. I just need to dial them in some more. Last was suppose to be a double header set of games for our boys and me. But the second team didn't bother to show up and so there was no second game. I was bummed and so were the boys. They played really well last night winning their first game pretty easily. I was hoping to further dial in the lights and get more opportunaties to figure it all out.

Yea Dave, in fact they are kind of a fuschia/pink color. The team's head coach was really pissed about it when he picked them up. Cheap uniforms I guess. They are suppose to be reversable so each team has the same colors. They are playing prep level ball this year and next. After that they get to have real uniforms. Everyone hates them. The more light you put on them the pinker they get. We just keep telling the boys they are red.

Very nice Chas! Big improvement all around. Lighting and focusing.

Make sure you're using a hood with the lights that far forward. Its easy to flare out your lens.

Much better than last time...great lighting and players in focus. Creative shots make editing much more fun.

Huge difference! Really nice creative solution. Let there be light...

Thanks guys. I'm pretty happy with the results too. I did use hoods on both lenses used.
The only issue I had was that the 70-200 was a little long when used on a 40D when the activity is this close.
I need to shoot from off the paint more because that lens is so tight. But I have to be careful not to also shoot the lights. I can't shoot directly down the baseline unless I use some blackwrap to flag the speedlites from flaring me out. Easy to do thou.

Next week's game is in a different facility so I'll have to see what I can do there. Hopefully something simular.